Chelsea 2-1 Leicester: Foxes lose the battle of 3-4-3 formations

I liked this alteration from Rodgers, the in/out formation switches in the FA Cup final rewarded the Foxes with their first trophy in the competition, and by deploying a structure that “could” facilitate both phases of play should’ve simplified the rotations of positions for Leicester City.

Unfortunately, and this is why Chelsea played with such dominance, Tuchel understood how to utilise these structures against the Foxes. The high press (from Leicester City) in wide areas was exploited and enabled a lot of space for the Chelsea front three versus Leicester City’s centre-backs in one-on-one scenarios.

To enable this, Tuchel asked his wide centre-backs to carry the ball upon receiving – attracting the press from either Maddison or Pérez, before laying off a pass into the wing-backs. In a domino effect, the Leicester City wing-backs would support the initiation of the high press and look to close the space, and time, the receiving wing-back had in possession. Consequently, they’d allow a lot of space for the Chelsea wingers to occupy in the width behind them – then after a simple combination with the central-midfielders (Jorginho in the defensive/middle third and N’golo Kante in the attacking third) they’d be through the Foxes press and behind the midfield line.

It’s made to look very simple, but the positioning of the Chelsea players, the angles they offer for passing lanes, and the execution of all these principles is of the highest quality. In contrast, I felt that Leicester City’s midfielders looked scared to offer for the ball under pressure – only Wilfred Ndidi was doing this (and that’s due to his positioning not due to his confidence in that role), whereas Youri Tielemans played higher up and away from receiving play from the Foxes defence.