Pep using haaland as a trap card ... and it works really well!
As always it's a masterclass and it's against real madrid! Pep played it and ancelotti got trapped , that's why we witnessed that manchester city being so dominant to end real madrid campaign to reach the final and win the trophy , it's a mess for ancelotti ... he might really leaving after this to manage brazil national team.
Well i don't really think you need a huge brain tactic in order to use the advantage of having a striker like Erling Haaland on your side that has this incredibly strong statistics this season. The defenders of the opponent will automatically focus on Haaland because everyone knows how many goals he has already scored this season, therefore other attacking players of Manchester City have more room to play and to score. This happens automatically i think and there is no coaching masterclass needed to make that happen. It will be interesting to see what happens in the final in terms of coaching, because so far Pep seemed to have "overcoached" a lot of times in big games.
I also think that it is not some mastermind coaching. It is simple bait which the opponent seems to always fall for. And the opponent also knows very well that most of the time it is going to be really hard for a single defender to actually stop Haaland. So the team will almost always invest more players to stop him.
But while more than one player is trying to stop him the other players of Manchester City are enjoying space. And Manchester City is taking full advantage of that. I believe Manchester City has a good chance of winning both the Champions League and the FA Cup final. It will be actually unbelievable if they lose even one of that.