Jonathan Wilson: Tactical switch tilts clásico in favor of Barcelona

[Jonathan Wilson]

There are still those, remarkably, who ask whether tactics really matter, still those who persist with the Luddite insistence that the best players will win out come what may. No matter that Lionel Messi never produces his Barcelona form for Argentina or that Dani Alves regularly flounders for Brazil, Barcelona, these flat-earthers keep saying, win because they have the best players. What happened in the Bernabeu on Saturday, surely, will disabuse them. Good players are important, of course, but this was a game turned on a tactical shift, a game Barcelona won because Pep Guardiola came up with a formulation to which Jose Mourinho could not find an answer.

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