Champions League Performance Insights: How finalists' tactical plans paid off
Monday, May 11, 2026
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With reflections from UEFA Technical Observers Rui Faria and Ange Postecoglou, UEFA's game insights unit analyses how Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain won through to the Champions League final.
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What does it take to reach a UEFA Champions League final? The ingredients can be varied but they certainly include individual brilliance, outstanding teamwork and being on the right side of those fine margins.
In the case of Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain, we can add something else – namely, the impressive and successful application of a tactical plan in each of last week's semi-final second legs.
With their approach, both teams were responding to a particular challenge encountered in the first leg – respectively, Atlético de Madrid's organised block and the threat from Bayern's wingers. Arsenal's answer was runs in behind, while Paris' was a collective defensive effort that we will elaborate on below with the support of UEFA Technical Observers Rui Faria and Ange Postecoglou.
Arsenal's runs in behind
"They want to have the game in front of them," said UEFA Technical Observer Edin Terzić when analysing Atlético's approach in the first leg. Arsenal responded last Tuesday night by making sure that whenever there was any space behind the Atlético block, they capitalised on it with runs in behind to disrupt the back line.
As the graphic above displays, whereas the first leg had contained a total of 35 runs in behind by Arsenal players, now there were 63. Striker Viktor Gyökeres alone made 29 – and in the process covered a total of 722 metres with sprints.
A large proportion of Arsenal's attacking threat in their 1-0 victory came from runs in behind – 1.3 of their overall xG of 1.6.
The video above offers a series of examples, the first involving Ben White, Bukayo Saka and Eberechi Eze, and the second showing how Saka gets behind Matteo Ruggeri with some clever movement.
Faria observed: "We can consider running in behind as one of the most important movements in football because it allows a team to stretch opposition defensive lines, create spaces between lines and turn possession into penetration."
The rest of the video focuses on Gyökeres, the centre-forward whose movement, in Faria's view, helped discourage Atleti from pressing aggressively at times.
"Instead of thinking about stepping forward to compress space and support the press, Atlético's defenders become concerned with protecting the space in behind and defending their own goal," he explained.
"His work rate and what he's giving the team is just incredible," said Arsenal coach Mikel Arteta and, as the final clip shows, it was a run in behind by the Swede that led to Saka's winning goal. "That threat forces Atlético's block to retreat and defend closer to their own goal," added Faria, and Arsenal duly made them pay.
Rui Faria: Why runs in behind count
• Create uncertainty – Defenders are forced to turn and face their own goal. They're less comfortable facing their own goal, as it creates uncertainty and hesitation.
• Create space – Even if the runner doesn't receive the ball, defenders drop deeper to track the movement, opening pockets between the lines for others.
• Increase speed – Instead of circulating the ball slowly around a compact block, one well-timed run can bypass the pressure and create a chance quickly.
• Stretch defences – Without runs behind, defenders can squeeze up the pitch and compress space. Constant runs make that compactness more difficult.
Paris 'funnel effect' closes central areas
To shift the focus to the Bayern vs Paris second leg, Ange Postecoglou highlighted the defensive work of the visitors to contain the menace of wingers Michael Olise and Luis Díaz following their dazzling – and goalscoring – turns in the nine-goal first leg. For Postecoglou, the key factor was the way that the Paris players covered the central areas of the pitch.
Postecoglou explained: "If you look at Bayern, a lot of their goals come from one-on-one situations with their wingers either cutting in or passes across the box or first time-crosses. They never got the opportunity to do that because Paris always flooded back into those areas."
He described it as the French side "funnelling back to that central area", and we see this clearly illustrated in the video above, which offers examples of Luis Enrique's men retreating.
Paris dropped deep in numbers and always had a numerical advantage when defending their box. They showed intelligence in how they defended and the example of Willian Pacho in clip three is reflective of this: look at how he urges his team-mate, Nuno Mendes, to show Olise wide rather than inside on to his favoured foot. When the ball does come in, Paris are ready with plenty of bodies in their area. "They've covered every possible scenario," added Postecoglou.
"Paris defended crosses incredibly well. They always defended the second balls very well. They were simply very active, and even though we got into dangerous situations, they still made sure that we maybe didn't get the final shot off."
The final video below shows Paris defending in a deep block – and denying shooting opportunities to Bayern. "Usually, this is where Bayern have a bit of joy," said Postecoglou, "but they just couldn't as the amount of bodies and the discipline of PSG didn't allow it."
The final point from Postecoglou, that we also see featured in this video, is the game management from Paris when opportunities arose to counterattack. "They always made sure that they had bodies behind the ball," he said. "Given the context of the fixture, there was a really strong defensive structure and mindset, without limiting their ability to hurt the opposition in transition."
Coaching reflection: Buying into the collective
Paris coach Luis Enrique hailed his team's defensive excellence in the Munich second leg and, for Ange Postecoglou, their performance offered a shining example of the power of talented individuals buying into the group ethos. "We saw a collective embrace of what their team needed on that given day," said Postecoglou.
After the attacking thrills of their 5-4 first-leg victory, this was the other side of Paris – "a side of the game that maybe they haven't needed to show up until now," as Postecoglou said of a team who, highly unusually for them, had only a 34% share of the ball against Bayern.
"You had really creative attacking players who understood that the defensive principles were really important in this fixture and they followed it and were really disciplined to a tee. I think that's the main coaching point: there's that collective understanding that for a game like this, in particular, where you have to respect what the opposition bring to it, it doesn't matter who you are or your position, there are going to be times where we're all going to have to defend and do the defensive principles.
"When you've got that buy-in from the group, then that makes a team like PSG really difficult to gain any momentum over. That collective mindset was really paramount to them overcoming Bayern."
Rui Faria worked as assistant to José Mourinho, winning the UEFA Cup and UEFA Champions League at Porto, multiple domestic titles with Chelsea and Real Madrid, the 2009/10 Champions League with Inter and then the 2016/17 UEFA Europa League with Manchester United.
Having established his coaching reputation in Australia, Greece-born Ange Postecoglou took his attacking style of play to Europe, winning a domestic double and then a domestic treble in two seasons at Celtic, before steering Tottenham to Europa League glory in 2024/25.
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