Barca may have had an unexpected advantage ahead of Tuesday night’s Champions League clash with Brest at the Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium after a white board showing the French side’s tactics was seen on Monday evening during training.
Brest arrived at the Montjuïc Stadium for the standard pre-match training session, but media cameras captured a whiteboard propped up on a drinks cooler which appeared to reveal their line-up and strategy.
Spanish broadcaster The Xinguito made a segment on the board. Intense pressing will be key, while another goal for Brest is to force Barcelona out during high pressure to “disconnect” striker Robert Lewandowski. When Brest are deeper, they want to close a wide space with a central midfielder and a winger protecting the full-back of the corresponding side.
What a vision Barcelona they will get from the image, widely disseminated, beyond their own scouting and analysis of the opposition remains to be seen. The expected squad is largely the same as the one that beat Sparta Prague on matchday four, with Hugo Magnetti, Abdallah Sima and Julien Le Cardinal coming into the starting eleven in place of Pierre Lees-Melou, Mama Balde and Soumalia Coulibaly.
😱 LET’S UNLEASH THE BREST STRATEGY! 😱
‼️ ‘HUNTED’. Flick, here you go.
💣 @plazacasals explains everything a #ChiringuitoBarcelona: pic.twitter.com/fKcfMU7vL9
— El Chiringuito TV (@elchiringuitotv) November 26, 2024
Brest have been the surprise package of the Champions League in 2024/25. Just reaching this level of competition has been a huge shock as the club finished third in Ligue 1 last season to qualify for European football for the first time.
Before that, they hadn’t finished in the top half of France’s top flight since 1990, had never won a major trophy and had spent most of the last 35 years playing second-, third- and fourth-tier football.
But while results in Ligue 1 have dipped in the early stages of this season, winning just four of 12 games to sit 12th in the current table, they have made the most of a favorable Champions League fixture list so far to sit amongst Europe’s continental giants.
Brest have beaten Sturm Graz, Red Bull Salzburg and Sparta Prague, the last two away from home, while drawing Bundesliga champions Bayer Leverkusen. Only Liverpool (12) have more points than Brest’s ten at this stage of the ‘league stage’, although the schedule now gets tougher, with PSV Eindhoven, Shakhtar Donetsk and Real Madrid to follow this week’s trip to Spain.
