This article is part of Football FanCast’s The Chalkboard series, which provides a tactical insight into teams, players, managers, potential signings and more…
Barcelona cruised to a comfortable 3-0 victory over Eibar at the weekend, with Antoine Griezmann in particularly impressive form.
Interestingly enough, that game also marked the return of Jordi Alba.
On the chalkboard
A lot has been discussed about Griezmann’s prefered position on the pitch.
Even though he is primarily a centre-forward by nature, Ernesto Valverde decided to slot the Frenchman on the left-wing instead.
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As a direct result of that, his performances dipped, with the Frenchman not getting off to the best start in Catalonia.
But even with all of that being said, he still has four goals and three assists in a total of eight games played in La Liga. In the game against Eibar, however, he truly came to life, netting a goal and an assist in the process.
And a lot of that was down to Alba’s return.
Unleashed
Alba is an attacking full-back that often makes those pacy runs into the final third.
As a result of that, he scored three goals and assisted 17 across all competitions in the 2018/19 season.
In the ongoing campaign, however, he suffered an unlucky injury that saw him miss four games in total. But now he’s back and his return might play a huge role in unlocking Griezmann’s potential.
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Since Alba constantly overlapped and spent time out wide on the left, something Nelson Semedo, his replacement during the time he was out of contention, couldn’t do as well, it allowed Griezmann to drop slightly deeper and be more involved in all the proceedings on the pitch.
When Griezmann played without Alba, he was the one who was forced out wide and it often made him completely isolated, which can be seen in the number of touches he made in most of those games as an isolated winger.
He made only 32 against Getafe, 33 against Athletic Bilbao and 45 against Granada. But now, with Alba’s return, suddenly Griezmann was not tasked with staying high and out wide at all times, something that we can also see from his heatmap from the Eibar game.
Instead, the Frenchman dropped deeper and tended to spend more time in the central areas, recording 61 touches in the process and crowning his display with a goal and an assist to his name as well.
Of course, this is only the first game they have played together after Alba’s return from injury and we’ll still have to wait to see if he can continue the trend going forward.
But with the pacy full-back once again in the squad, the Frenchman should, in theory, enjoy more freedom in his role and that could subsequently lead to more goals and more assists from Griezmann.
