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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
Sport
Ricky Charlesworth

Bournemouth 'copied' by Real Madrid as Cherries hailed for "shaping future of football"

At first glance, Bournemouth and Real Madrid don't appear to have too much in common.

The Cherries don't have 13 European Cups taking up space in their trophy room. Nor do they boast a stadium that can hold more than 80,000 fans, as Real's Santiago Bernabéu does.

However, Madrid might just have been taking notice of a certain tactic employed by the Championship side.

An eagle-eyed fan has noticed the similarity between a kick-off routine that Bournemouth first used earlier this season, and one done by Madrid in the Champions League earlier this month.

The original move saw Bournemouth pull it off to perfection during their 1-1 draw at Fulham back in December.

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It saw Dominic Solanke score just six seconds into the second half. The Cherries made three intricate passes from kick-off before Philip Billing then lofted a delicate through ball into the path of the onrushing Solanke and he emphatically fired home.

The goal had plenty of people purring, with Bournemouth boss Scott Parker saying at the time: "It was straight off the training ground.

"We worked on it on Thursday to try to work out where they were weak and sometimes they don't always come to fruition on the stage.

"But tonight, there's nothing more pleasing that it came off. We wanted to try to exploit the spaces between full-back and centre-half on transitions and the areas where Dominic Solanke was popping up, and it worked.

"This game was always going to be on fine margins so we worked hard on that, worked out on where they were weak in those situations.”

Now, a fan on Reddit has compared Bournemouth's tactics with a recent 'copycat' move employed by Real in their win over PSG on March 9.

Just like the Cherries' build-up, it sees Madrid play three quick, short passes before one player threads a ball through for the onrushing attacker.

Unfortunately for Real, the PSG goalkeeper is quickly off his line and reads the danger.

One fan wrote: "Bournemouth shaping the future of football, you love to see it."

Another put: "Bournemouth did it better."

Despite the vast differences in stature, history and success between the two sides there is a past meeting between the two teams.

And it was relatively recent too. Bournemouth welcome Real to the Vitality Stadium for a friendly back in 2013.

Cherries fans queued overnight to buy tickets, which cost up to £60, and the match was played in front of a capacity 12,000 crowd.

Carlo Ancelotti took a near full-strength squad to Bournemouth for what was his first game in charge of the Spanish giants.

Cristiano Ronaldo dazzled in a star-studded team and he scored a first-half brace before further goals from Sami Khedira, Gonzalo Higuain, Angel Di Maria and Casemiro sealed a convincing 6-0 win.

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