Again, when you are out of options to pass and you are pressed by a team as good as PSG, those things happen. The best way to deal with it is to improve your work off the ball. Lamine and Rashford were woeful on the night at providing options to escape their press. Olmo weak and slow also. This meant the backline was left for dead and for PSG players to feast on. On these conditions, we defended decently. Did not give away that many chances, until Balde's fuck up.
Off the ball movement is surely needed.
But even then, there are 100s of small tactical battles on the field.
For example, here we are talking about pressing as if the only options are good press or bad press.
But regarding pressing, there are 10s of small tactical duels by coaches like:
-- will you press with 2, 3, 5 players on the backline?
-- will you indirectly force RB to move to the line or to the inside (when trying to escape the press)
-- which midfielders will you heavily mark in order to prevent them to get the ball from defenders?
Coaches add slightly different pressing and avoiding-press tricks in almost every game.
So, sometimes it isn't about: they pressed with more passion or Rashford was bad off the ball.
Sometimes it is about: Lucho had 2 tricks in pressing which Flick hasn't seen yet.
He has surprised us.
And Flick will fix it before the next game vs Psg, unless if Lucho pulls another new little trick.
There are hundreds of different variations of pressing and getting the ball out of the back.
Sometimes even the perfect off the ball movement doesn't help if the opponent is two steps infront of you with some new intelligent movement/pressing/covering trick.
Football tactics evolve on the weekly basis.
