When in their own half, both Manchester City and Bayern Munich moved their pivot out of the way to have a midfielder drop into the space they vacated to open up a clean pass through the center of Newcastle and Bayern Leverkusen’s compact defense.

Newcastle likes having those four forwards, compact, central. They will allow you to pass to the two players in the pivot, Manuel Akanji and Mateo Kovacic, but to get the ball into Newcastle’s half, you have to go through the wide areas.

In the second half, Manchester City made an adjustment and started moving Akanji and Kovacic out of the way so that İlkay Gündoğan could drop into that space.

When Gündoğan drops, the player that marks him is far away. He has tons of time and space once he drops, enough time to turn and play a ball forward or get off a cleaner pass out wide. It could also force one of Newcastle’s four forwards to come to demark from someone else to mark him, freeing another pass central.

Bayern Munich did this from the offset against Bayern Leverkusen. Same thing, Leverkusen wanted the central to be compact, but they tried to get in front of the two pivot players, Joshua Kimmich and Aleksandar Pavlovic.

When Kimmich and Pavlovic move wide and higher into the half-spaces, that opens the pass into Musiala, who is dropping into that space. His marker is tight, but they can’t block off the pass into Musiala’s feet.

This movement is an effective method to manipulate the man-marking scheme of a compact defense when in your own half, if you are using a double pivot.

Match: Newcastle 1-1 Manchester City and Bayern Munich 1-1 Bayern Leverkusen, 28 September 2024