Chelsea, Angel Di Maria and the dangers of facing Benfica's right flank at the Club World Cup

New York Times

6 hours ago

After Chelsea lost against Flamengo last week in the second of their three group games at the Club World Cup, head coach Enzo Maresca would have likely accepted a runners-up finish in Group D and started his preparation early to face the winners of Group C in the first knockout round.
Before Tuesday's four games across those two pools, the team most likely to top Group C were Bayern Munich after back-to-back wins going into their match against Benfica. Instead, Bruno Lage's men provided a resolute defensive performance in their 1-0 victory over the Germans to set up a last-16 clash with Chelsea on Saturday.
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Benfica managed just 28 per cent possession against Bayern, but their right-sided efforts with and without the ball were a notable theme throughout the game, with the trio of Angel Di Maria, Fredrik Aursnes and Gianluca Prestianni operating excellently together.
As Maresca turns his attention to the Portuguese side, their right flank might be worth paying attention to.
In truth, the goal against Bayern yesterday was painfully simple. An overload on the wing, and the ball crossed in for a box-crashing team-mate to finish. Yet it was the relationships between Benfica's players that were notable.
The ever-versatile Aursnes — who typically operates as a midfielder — has performed excellently from right-back in the past two games, regularly overlapping and underlapping Di Maria, the 37-year-old former Real Madrid, Manchester United and Paris Saint-Germain right-winger.
That was the key to unlock Bayern's defence, with a simple run on the outside seeing Aursnes target the penalty spot with his cross, for Andreas Schjelderup to arrive and finish first-time.
Bayern could hardly have been surprised, given that a near-identical move was on show in Benfica's previous game, against Auckland City.
Here, after Prestianni's simple lay-off to Di Maria, the 19-year-old darts into the half-space while Aursnes overlaps towards the byline. Aursnes' delivery is exactly the same — pulling a ball back to the penalty spot; it is then retrieved by Nicolas Otamendi, who lays it off for Renato Sanches to finish from outside the box.
When he wasn't overlapping yesterday, Aursnes used the few opportunities Benfica had to break forward to underlap Di Maria as the former Argentina international received the ball, dragging Bayern players with him and leaving his team-mate in a one-v-one situation.
It is a pattern that head coach Lage is keen to implement regularly. According to SkillCorner data, only five teams across Europe's top seven leagues made more underlapping runs than Benfica's 1.1 per 30 minutes in possession during the 2024-25 season.
So take note, Maresca, Levi Colwill and Marc Cucurella — Benfica like to combine down their right channel.
With 43 per cent of their attacking touches coming along that vertical third of the pitch (fourth-highest share among all teams in the Club World Cup), you cannot say we didn't warn you.
Di Maria, Aursnes and Prestianni were also in sync out of possession against Bayern — particularly in the first half, which saw Vincent Kompany's side fail to put a shot on target in the sweltering Charlotte, North Carolina, heat.
Benfica's compact, low defensive block frustrated the German champions, with Aursnes providing an aggressive defensive display by stepping forward from right-back to snuff out attacks.
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What was notable was how coherently his team-mates covered him when those jumps were made.
Here, Aursnes tracks Serge Gnabry as the latter drifts towards the touchline, creating a gap in Benfica's defensive line. However, the Norway international is pointing to team-mate Prestianni to cover him and follow the run made between them by Bayern's Raphael Guerreiro.
As the ball is circulated, it is Prestianni filling in at right-back as Aursnes shuffles back to his position.
Only seconds later, a similar sequence occurs. This time, it is Di Maria who dovetails with Aursnes' jump forward onto Guerreiro, dropping in to track Gnabry's run and similarly play temporarily at right-back.
The synchronicity between Benfica's right-sided trio was impressive, although Bayern's first-half performance meant much of the game was in front of the men from Lisbon.
If Chelsea are looking for clues on how they can expose that channel there in Charlotte at the weekend, off-ball runs from out to in might be their best bet.
Bayern switched things in the second half, with Leroy Sane moving to the left flank. His off-ball movement posed a greater threat to Aursnes, as he often stayed on the blind side and made diagonal runs in-behind.
Barely five minutes after the interval, Sane nearly got on the end of a through ball behind Aursnes, who was left flat-footed by his darting pace. Had the pass been weighted slightly better, this would be a clear opportunity on goal.
It was a clear tactic from Bayern in the second half, with Sane hugging the touchline and stretching Benfica's back line whenever the ball was on the opposite side — again, out of the eyeline of Aursnes.
In truth, a lot of Bayern's attacks came down their own right side in that second half, with Aursnes increasingly forced to track runners and deal with back-post crosses as Benfica retreated ever deeper as the match entered its closing stages.
But not before Sane had one final penetrating run from out-to-in, with a chance that he should have scored from.
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With Aursnes' aggressive positioning when Benfica were pushing higher, Bayern's incisive passing saw Harry Kane receive the ball in the centre circle with runners ahead of him. Aursnes' slide was not enough to stop the pass onto Sane's stronger left foot as he ran in behind for a one-on-one with Anatoliy Trubin, who saved excellently.
With the game in front of them, Benfica's coordinated defensive work was hugely impressive, their players fighting for each other and plugging gaps with metronomic timing.
However, Maresca will be encouraged to see that those wide areas are not impenetrable, if only his players stretch the pitch with purposeful running. With the pace, directness, and natural left-foot provided by Noni Madueke on the left of Chelsea's attack, the 23-year-old England forward could use Sane's second-half performance as a blueprint as he tries to unlock Lage's defence.
'We know that they are a top club with a top manager and top players, and it is going to be tough,' Maresca said after beating ES Tunis 3-0 in their final Group D match to secure second place behind Flamengo. 'But, like I said, we started in the first 32 teams and now we are trying to be in the final eight.'
With Saturday's tie promising to be an interesting tactical contest, keep an eye out for the battle in wide areas — it could prove crucial.
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