Gio Reyna v Zenit


Zenit sat in a block. Gio Reyna was one of three Dortmund attackers playing underneath their striker, Haaland, and they were all working to break it down. The three — Reyna, Reus, and Sancho — would drift together through the narrow corridor between Zenit’s back and midfield lines. Reus was most often the central of the three. Reyna and Sancho took turns being on his right and left. Often they tried to keep it sort of narrow, particularly Reyna, and particularly on the right. They’d each move vertically too, mostly dropping back to pick up the ball, dribbling or passing central, or wide, or, if neither of those were in the cards, they'd circulate it to the other side through the midfield.

So it was Reyna, Reus, and Sancho underneath Haaland, all moving about in what seemed a well rehearsed plan of keeping sensible relation to one another, while, at each their own discretion, they made sub-movements within and across pockets of space. The aim of all this was to set things just right so one of them could receive a pass behind Zenit’s midfield line, then quickly combine to put another one of them behind into the short patch between the back line and the keeper. And then obviously at that point the idea would be to kick it in the goal.

It didn’t work as well as maybe it sounds like it might have now that I’m reading all that back. The Zenit block held pretty strong up until near the end. The few moments where Reyna could have broken the game open earlier (but in the end, as you’ll see, didn’t) often needed to come in transition or semi-transition:




So those were his near successes. You could also choose to think of some of them as failures, but I don’t. I’ve heard enough trustworthy people say that the important thing is getting yourself in the position in the first place, and that execution doesn’t matter at all. 


The Rest of the Game


The rest of the game was tedious. I could recount things that Reyna did during it, but I don’t know that that’s going to do any of us any good. If you're interested in more detail about his performance, though, what I’ve done -- and before you ask why, I’m telling you I don’t know why -- is I’ve taken the game and edited out all the dead-ball moments and some other clutter, fast-forwarded at 2x any time that Reyna isn’t on the screen, and added a bunch of arrows showing you where Reyna is when he comes back on the screen. For some reason I started doing it and then kept going. I've been taking a break from making comps, but it hasn't been going well at all. If anything I’m spending more time editing soccer videos than I was before the break started. 

Part 1 



Part 2



Part 3