Categoria: Team Stats & Analysis
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Juventus under coach Pirlo
Juventus will be one of the most interesting teams to watch in Europe this season. The main reason for our excitement is the leap of faith taken by the top management in naming rookie Andrea Pirlo as the new Head Coach, an appointment that seems to jar with the Old Lady’s historical approach. Juventus’s squad…
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AZ Alkmaar's Talent Factory
The quantity and quality of players that the AZ Academy is able to promote to the first team every year is outstanding. This is no coincidence, but is the result of a well thought-out long-term plan, structured over the past five years. In this in-depth analysis we look at what distinguishes AZ’s player development process.…
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Ball possession in European football (part 3)
Final part of our trilogy of posts dedicated to ball possession in European football. We look into the recurring build-up patterns of four top European teams: Barcelona, Man City, Napoli and Bayern Munich. Third part of a trilogy The FIRST PART OF THE TRILOGY (LINK) was an introduction to ball possession. How it is calculated and…
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Ball possession in European football (part 2)
In this second post of our trilogy on ball possession, we expand the analysis we started in the first part, digging into the build-up habits of the top European teams. We propose the ratio of passes on total touches, as an indicator of “good football”. Napoli are topping the tables on this measure. Man City…
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Ball possession in European football (part 1)
This is part one of a trilogy of posts dedicated to the role of ball possession in football. In this post, we look at how ball possession is calculated and how the focus on ball possession is often (not always) a synonym of success. We also start digging into the bidirectional causation problem: do the teams play…
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Crossing: An effective strategy?
Crossing is still very much used by the top European teams (18.6 per match, on average). However, we doubt the efficiency of such an attacking strategy. We calculate that only 1 every 64 crosses is directly translated into a goal. Is it worth trying? We conclude it is not, unless you have someone like Mauro…
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