The Significant Game

Possession is probably one of the football statistics which is cited most often. It has gained even more media attention as we have seen larger divergence in possession across teams. Frequently game approaches of teams are broadly categorized between possession-oriented and counter-attacking: think about Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Manchester City vs Chelsea, Borussia Dortmund and Liverpool. At first glance the possession statistic seems to be fairly trivial; who controls most of the ball during the 90 minutes? There are however some details that can have quite an impact on the final number. The simplest approach is to approximate possession with touches. This can however favour teams that try to play short and controlled passes and prefer a slow build-up play. On the other extreme you could try to assess possession for every second of the game, even interpret a uncontrolled clearance as giving up possession. The OptaPro Blog has written a very good article on this exact topic. In thi...

I got a lot of feedback of people wanting to compare Cristiano Ronaldo's free kick stats with those of Lionel Messi. See them below in direct comparison: Lionel Messi Cristiano Ronaldo

Let's start with the obvious: Cristiano Ronaldo has scored his fair share of free kicks over the course of his career. The way he takes his free kicks with his signature, cowboy like stance is ridiculed by many but makes him one of the most prolific and feared free kick takers. (I always thought that standardizing your run-up to a free kick is a smart idea). Possibly the pressure that rests on him and also his own motivation to be the best makes him try every chance he gets. Since Ronaldo plays in La Liga, no other player has attempted as many direct free kicks: 292. Right behind him is, of course, Lionel Messi with 232. After them there is a large gap with Pedro Leon (110) and Daniel Parejo (102) following. To highlight the monopoly Ronaldo has on free kicks in the Real Madrid team, it is worth looking at other players' tally. Following Ronaldo we have Gareth Bale with 35 attempts and Mesut Ozil with 17. Since Ronaldo arrived at Real Madrid he has taken 71% of their dire...

Everybody knows the feeling: your team gives away a last-minute free kick at the edge of the box. A goal could cost you points or even worse: extra time. How likely is it really to score a direct free kick? I have looked through over 24,000 free kicks across the top European leagues and competitions to show you the spots a free kick is most promising and what the overall conversion rate is, i.e. how often do you actually score from such an opportunity. To make this data more insightful I have split the pitch (or better half a pitch) into 100 equal sized boxes. If a free kick is taken inside on of these boxes I group the outcome together. Below you see a heat map plotted on top of a half pitch. The boxes with the deepest red colour have the highest conversion rates. About half of the pitch remains green. For the 18 yard box the reason is obvious: there are no direct free kicks possible inside the box. On other parts of the pitch players don't usually opt for the direct free ki...

The Guardian published a great article today, highlighting the influence Antonio Conte had on the shift in tactics and starting formations during this and last year's Premier League seasons. Conte's Chelsea dominated the league with their 3-4-2-1 forcing other managers to revise their tactical plan. Chelsea was the first team in 53 years to win the league with a back three as their default formation. We can observe this shift when looking at the share of starting formations in Premier League matches with a back three. This share has increased significantly since Conte's arrival at Chelsea; both driven by his own choices and by other manager's trying to react. Back in the Serie A a back three is much more common and has at times been the favourite starting line-up:

While in relative little use prior to 2012, the 4-2-3-1 system has gained importance recently and has replaced 4-4-2 as the most important starting formation in the Premier League. This trend has reversed over the past two years as we see the 4-3-3 system gaining back importance and 3-4-2-1 becoming significant (leading Chelsea FC to their 2016 Premier League title).

Last week I have looked into late winners and equalizers by Premier League teams for the season 2016/17 to determine which team delivered the most last second punches. Arsenal came out on top with 9 net points won after the 85th minute which is equivalent to four late winners and an equalizer. Let's find out which team takes the lead over a longer history. My data set has information on goal timing since season 07/08 which gives us ten full seasons of last minute goals. To make sure the outcome is comparable and to not clutter the chart I have excluded teams that have not played at least five seasons in the highest league over that time frame. Tottenham takes this one home with just shy of 30 net points won after the 85th minute over the last ten seasons. Arsenal and Manchester City follow behind with 24 and 18 respectively. What stands out is that the Top 6 teams also take top spots in this ranking with the exceptions of Chelsea which is trailing behind a little. If this ...

You know the feeling. You are following the live ticker of your least favorite team (which also may be a few points above yours in the table). The finally seem to be dropping a few points against a team from the bottom. The match is already in injury time. You refresh the page faster than it can load. Then of course... they score a late winner. They always somehow do. Am I just making that up? Is it Fergie-time or Bayerndusel (for the Bundesliga followers)? Let's check which team has the most luck (or relentless spirit): Our analysis is based on a database similar to the below which shows us for every match in the season the end result and information on each goal. We will start by counting goals scored after minute 85 by each Premier League team during the season 2016/17. The threshold of minute 85 is arbitrary but think after that point in time I'll start talking about bloody luck and those again. Looking at the above plot, we can see that the two nor...