moved back to his usual right side.

Up front, behind the Embolo, Burgstaller duo, Franco di Santo was once again tasked with pressing the CBs and thereby disrupting the B04 buildup, specifically focusing on the vertical passing of Charles Aranguiz and the ball-carrying\counter attacking ability of Dominik Kohr. Those two were just two of the five (!!!) Leverkusen players in the top 25 in XG Buildup, a metric that looks at the total XG of all involved possessions without key passes and shots. The other three culprits were Kai Havertz, who would be involved in man to man battle with Max Meyer in the first half and the pacey-dribbling wingers Bailey and Brandt. In Domenico Tedesco’s estimation cutting off the supply to that trio with a strong and consistentalso see from the pics, Leno was the target of several back passes by his CBs, and he racked up 48 touches in the first 38 minutes and just 33 in the remainder of the game.

In particular, it was the right side of Leverkusen, where the less experienced Pana Retsos would recycle the ball to Leno frequently, as opposed to his counterpart Bender who was both less eager to pass back and less active in the passing game:

Alongside long passes out of the back, there were also four other alternatives that Bayer utilized in order to bypass the extremely coordinated and active Schalke press:

When Leno was rarely afforded time and a pocket of space to pass to, Julian Brandt dropped back on both sides into the halfspaces in