Brest lineup and tactics accidentally leaked ahead of Barcelona clash

Barcelona may have been given an unexpected leg up ahead of Tuesday night's Champions League clash with Brest at the Estadi Olimpic Lluis Companys after a whiteboard seemingly showing the French side's tactics was seen during training on Monday evening.

Brest arrived at the Montjuic stadium for standard pre-matchday training, but media cameras captured a whiteboard leaning against a drinks cooler that appeared to give away their lineup and strategy.

Spanish broadcaster El Chiringuito did a segment on the whiteboard. An intense press is going to be key, while another Brest focus is to force Barcelona wide during a high press in order to "disconnect" striker Robert Lewandowski. When Brest are deeper, they want to close off wide space with a central midfielder and winger protecting the full-back on the relevant side.

How much of an insight Barcelona will get from the picture, widely circulated, beyond their own scouting and opposition analysis remains to be seen. The purported team is mostly the same as that which beat Sparta Prague on matchday four, with Hugo Magnetti, Abdallah Sima and Julien Le Cardinal coming into the XI in place of Pierre Lees-Melou, Mama Balde and Soumalia Coulibaly.

Brest have been the Champions League's surprise package in 2024/25. Just reaching this level of competition has been a huge shock, with the club finishing third in Ligue 1 last season to qualify for European football for the very first time.

Prior to that, they hadn't finished in the top half of France's top flight since 1990, having never won a major trophy and spending most of the last 35 years playing second, third and fourth-tier football.

But while results in Ligue 1 have tailed off in the early stages of this season, winning only four of 12 games to sit 12th in the current standings, they have made the most of a favourable Champions League fixture list so far to sit among continental giants in Europe.

Brest have beaten Sturm Graz, Red Bull Salzburg and Sparta Prague, the latter two away from home, while holding Bundesliga champions Bayer Leverkusen to a draw. Only Liverpool (12) have more points than Brest's ten at this stage of the 'league phase', although the fixture list now gets harder, with PSV Eindhoven, Shakhtar Donetsk and Real Madrid to follow this week's trip to Spain.

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