At the halfway stage, it’s all to play for between Leicester City and A.S. Roma. The first leg, hosted at the King Power Stadium, ended in a 1-1 draw as Gianluca Mancini’s own goal in the second half restored neutrality after Lorenzo Pellegrini’s first-half strike.
The game went as expected: Brendan Rodgers’ side controlled the ball (68% possession), and in doing so, limited the chances for the Italian side. Unsurprisingly, considering it’s José Mourinho at the helm, A.S. Roma sacrificed a lot of their “static possession” intent, to play in a deep shape and execute counterattacks. This has been a difficult style for City to puncture against, deep blocks require intricate play (and a lot of patience) to break down.
With 68% possession, the Foxes only managed two shots on target — the same as their opponents. This wasn’t due to a lack of shooting opportunities, as across the fixture they accumulated 13 shots, just with a poor return on investment. However, credit where it’s due, I Giallorossi did an excellent job of defending their box, with Chris Smalling being an important part of that.
I would accredit some of the blame to Leicester City’s positioning in the final third. Jamie Vardy was isolated as the single forward, as both Ademola Lookman and Marc Albrighton (the starting wingers for Rodgers) held natural width for the majority. In the centre of midfield, James Maddison and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall featured as the roaming box-to-box players, but did so with a fascination to the half-spaces on both sides. All of this left Vardy as the singular option centrally.
When playing versus a back three, a point of interest is how the wide CBs are utilised (positionally). With Smalling having a good success rate versus Vardy in an individual duel, the other two centre-halves could drift wide and cover any ball-carries from the Foxes wide players, whilst remaining conscious of the inside channels that both Dewsbury-Hall and Maddison wanted to exploit.
Inside of any “static possession” for Leicester, the ball would be rotated and progressed through the thirds, before being recycled across the top of the box, as puncturing the penalty area was a difficult task for the Foxes — because of the previously mentioned poor positioning. All of these points are merely to contextualise why only 15% of the created shots ended up on target (versus their average for this season of 35.8%), when they shot, it was from the edge of the box.
James Maddison attempted 6 shots himself, with two of these being on his weaker left-foot from outside the 18-yard-box. Despite all of his qualities, these efforts are regarded as a low percentage (%) chance of scoring. I did like the occasional usage of Maddison’s high volume shooting output to mirage an actual progression down the right-side, he’d receive in an area that “could” be considered within his range, before he drags a defender into blocking the angle and utilising the space they vacated to find Ricardo Pereira in space on the right — converting these areas into chances wasn’t effective.
On the contrary, Mourinho’s side were efficient in their shooting conversion; four shots, 50% on target, and a goal. I think Rodgers will be frustrated with the nature of the conceded goal, as it was avoidable, the actual shooting opportunity was very low percentage. Kasper Schmeichel has been excellent with his shot stopping, his expected saves from 1-vs-1 situations is +2.16 (meaning he has outdone what is expected from him in 1-vs-1’s — using John Harrison’s metric), and has been pivotal in keeping the Foxes in games this season.
However, he didn’t cover himself in glory with the Lorenzo Pellegrini goal. The placement of his footing doesn’t provide a platform to cover the angles of the goal (if the shot went into either corner), and ended up making a routine shot down the middle difficult to deal with. The initial run from the Italian is smart, peeling off the midfield line (as the inside forward) and exposed Wesley Fofana — while he tried to engage the ball-player (Nicola Zalewski). But, more times than not, the Leicester City goalkeeper will deal with a chance of this quality.
Perhaps the most potent takeaway from the match, when playing in Europe, being clinical with your chances is crucial to success. The Italian giants proved they didn’t need much of the ball (32% possession) to generate a goal, but the slightly naive — upcoming side that is LCFC — were quite wasteful. I’m hopeful that the Foxes can replicate the performance level in the Stadio Olimpico, which is integral to progressing into the final, let’s just be better at converting control of attacking areas into higher percentage shots.