Manchester City finally won the Champions League on Saturday after beating Inter Milan 1-0 thanks to a 68th minute strike from Rodri, but the winning goal only came after Pep Guardiola finally managed to solve a puzzle the Italians had created for his side.
Ahead of the game, plenty of fans and pundits were calling on Guardiola not to change the side that has served him so well in the season's run in, in reference to his decision not to play with a defensive midfielder in City's 1-0 defeat to Chelsea in the 2021 Champions League final.
However, he inevitably tinkered. Instead of John Stones starting in central defence, the Englishman was shifted to right-back when defending with Manuel Akanji partnering Ruben Dias instead.
This allowed Stones to step into midfield still, but to create a diamond with Ilkay Gundogan at the point rather than a box that has been much more common for City this season.
With Inter Milan's 5-3-2 formation, City's numerical advantage usually garnered through the box midfield would have become stifled, leading to Guardiola changing tactics to the diamond. This, therefore, ensured they retained their advantage, though this time further up the field in more advanced positions.
While this made it more difficult to create chances for much of the game, due to Inter's bravery in pressing and cutting out passes.
Guardiola's in-game management came to the fore once again, though, with the Spaniard swapping Gundogan at the head of the diamond for Kevin De Bruyne, who was on the left of the midfield. Though he had to go off injured, Phil Foden came on and largely produced the same positivity the Belgian provided during the first half.
But the real genius came in the second half, with Guardiola forcing his midfield and attacking three to play a lot narrower, making Inter Milan even more compact. While this sounds counterproductive, it actually worked perfectly as City's interchanging became more fluid - as witnessed in the game's only goal.
When Bernardo Silva, City's right winger, dropped deeper and more centrally, Stones took up the Portuguese man's position a bit wider. With Inter's left wing-back Federico Dimarco unsure who to follow and with Akanji driving into the open space, Alessandro Bastoni broke out from centre-back to engage the ball.
As FourFourTwo's Adam Clery highlights in the video above, this proved fatal, though, with Akanji slotting the ball through the gap vacated by Bastoni to Silva. Inevitably, that one movement proved Inter's undoing, because when the pull-back from Silva was deflected into the path of Rodri, no Inter player was in the vicinity due to the chaos caused by the interchanging players.
