On the night, Liverpool’s centre-backs were tasked with backing up the press when the players ahead of the ball applied pressure.<\/p>\n
Ibrahima Konate, on the right, carried out these instructions throughout the game in support of Jeremie Frimpong – but the distances he ended up having to cover in an unfamiliar role left him exposed.<\/p>\n
If he was slow to react, PSG would drop an attacker deep, who could then get on the ball, turn and drive at the defence, with space between him and an out-of-position Konate.<\/p>\n
At times, Liverpool executed the press well, with their front three blocking PSG’s makeshift back three – before Frimpong jumped up to press whichever home player had rotated to the left side of defence. <\/p>\n
PSG, however, adapted to this. The players in full-back areas took up deeper positions, increasing the distance Liverpool’s wing-backs had to cover when pressing. <\/p>\n
When Frimpong did press, it was Konate’s job to follow his man.<\/p>\n
But with time on the ball, PSG began to play over the top, taking advantage of the spaces behind Konate, forcing 34-year-old Virgil van Dijk across from the centre.<\/p>\n
A good example of this early on was seen in Hakimi’s run from right-back to the left wing. Milos Kerkez, a natural left-back, tasked with marking him, likely felt uncomfortable moving to the other side of the pitch before Mendes played a long ball over Konate to find Hakimi unmarked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the night, Liverpool’s centre-backs were tasked with backing up the press when the players ahead of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[59,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-521062","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}