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Matchday 30

Quality recoveries & build-up play that offers guarantees

This video illustrates how recoveries can be distinguished not only in terms of their effectiveness, but also their quality. Barcelona record the fourth-most advantageous recoveries in the league, i.e. situations that involve a numerical advantage and where the side in possession has more players ahead of the ball than the opposition.

Given the importance of build-up play in the system deployed by Xavi’s troops, the team’s set-up at the start of the attacking transition is key. This video shows how the Barcelona players react in these situations. It’s worth pointing out that 15% of the Catalan giants’ recoveries put them at an advantage.

It’s your Game

Matchday 15

Athletic Club

2 - 2

Granada CF

VIE 26.11.2021

20:00

Season 2021/2022

Estadio San Mamés

RCD Espanyol de Barcelona

1 - 0

Real Sociedad

DOM 28.11.2021

15:15

Season 2021/2022

RCDE Stadium

Cádiz CF

1 - 4

Atlético de Madrid

DOM 28.11.2021

17:30

Season 2021/2022

Estadio Nuevo Mirandilla

Real Madrid

2 - 1

Sevilla FC

DOM 28.11.2021

20:00

Season 2021/2022

Estadio Santiago Bernabéu

Athletic Club

2 - 2

Granada CF

VIE 26.11.2021

20:00

Season 2021/2022

Matchday 15

Estadio San Mamés

Powerhouses Athletic Club rule the roost in fitness stakes

Marcelino’s Athletic Club show no shortage of faith in their playing style and system. In all of their outings so far this term, they’ve set up in a 4-4-2 formation and haven’t strayed from this blueprint during the course of the games. They lie in third place in the LaLiga standings for the team with the highest backline, whilst they boast a compact unit with the ability to apply a high press and have posted the fourth-best figures in the division for recoveries made highest up the pitch.

All of this combines to make Marcelino’s troops an efficient side in the defensive third. Indeed, the Basques lie top of the pile when it comes to the number of shots the opposition need to score.

In the fitness stakes, nobody can live with the sprightly Bilbao outfit, who cover the most distance in the league and the most ground at high intensity and have registered the most sprints of all of the teams in division.

Granada CF lie near to the top of the league standings for the percentage of play near to its own area, both in terms of the average positioning and the height of the defensive line. In this sense, the Andalusians’ positional data contrasts greatly to that we’ve just examined in relation to Athletic.

The team’s proximity to their own goal and on-pitch positioning help to explain why the Nazaries are the side to have enjoyed the most possession in their own half. Robert Moreno’s men operate with a compact block and frugal space between their low lines. The team’s depth is amongst the lowest in the league and the same applies to their positional width.

Granada’s playing style could be described as being direct, with long passes accounting for 20% of the team’s total passes, although this figure has fallen in recent games.

They’re not a side that build play up at high speed and have registered the second-slowest ball circulation speeds in LaLiga, with 12.6 passes per minute.

Granada lie top of the division’s charts for the number of shots received. However, their goalkeepers deserve a shout-out, especially the performances of the reliable Maximiano, who boasts the fifth-best statistics in the division for the percentage of saves and yet it still takes the opposition 10.4 shots to break Granada’s resistance.

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Compact units with varying success in carries

Granada’s compact defensive block sees the team record one of the smallest convex hull ratios in this phase of the game. Moreno’s charges focus on closing out spaces in the inside channels.

When in possession, Granada have earnt themselves the reputation as being a pragmatic side and are one of the teams to involve the fewest players per possession. Meanwhile the visitors are amongst the top five sides in LaLiga in terms of distance gained in possession, which is a key factor when it comes to preventing the opposition from gaining advantages in transitions.

Meanwhile, this Athletic side display some of the hallmarks of Marcelino’s sides in the shape of quick transitions and mobility. The Leones lead the way in the division’s charts for high-intensity actions and sit pretty in third place for the number of opponents beaten by carries.

PLAYER FOCUS

Iñigo Martínez: leading and balance

The Spanish centre-back occupies third place in the LaLiga standings for clearances made per game. In addition to the stopper’s determination to play an influential role in his team’s defensive solidity, he’s also a real presence in the air. The Basque defender claims a place amongst the top 25 players in the Spanish top tier for success in aerial duels. There can be little question that Martinez plays a pivotal part in Athletic’s status as the best team in the league when it comes to efficiency in preventing the opposition from scoring.

His impressive ability in terms of his defensive duties are complemented by an aptitude to break lines with passes that allow his team to build from the back. Indeed, Martinez outperforms all of his teammates when it comes to the average number of opponents beaten per pass.

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Metric of the Week

Matchday 30

Find out the meaning of each metric

Number of players involved per possession offers clear indication of team’s style

There are a number of ways in which a team’s possession can be defined, with the number of players involved in them being one of the methods that we analyse. This criteria measures how many team members touch the ball during the course of an attacking transition. Teams whose game involves more intricate build-up play and possessions typically feature more players per possession.

As this video illustrates, Real Madrid are the LaLiga Santander champions for the number of players involved per possession, with an average of 3.67 per outing.

HOW IT'S MADE

Beyond Stats offers incredible metrics which go beyond the ordinary in the football industry: it does not limit itself to gathering the data normally used for the standard analyses that reach fans, but goes one step further, collecting a vast amount of in-match information, almost in real time, thanks to LaLiga’ s Mediacoach proprietary tool, that is capable of revealing new perspectives on the game at a deeper level, allowing patterns to be traced and future predictions to be made. 

In every LaLiga stadiums we have up to sixteen high-resolution, fixed perimeter cameras for optical tracking which follow the positions of the players, referees, and the ball on the field of play, collecting the physical and technical/tactical data at the dizzying rate of 25 times a second. These devices permit the integration, through the Mediacoach analysis tool, of two technologies: tracking and eventing. Tracking is based on the positional information collected by the stadium perimeter cameras and allows for the generation of metrics such as distance covered, top and average speeds, and number of sprints. Eventing allows more objective events to be recorded: number of passes, corners, and fouls committed and received, for example. The information captured through tracking and eventing is integrated and stored in the system forming a high-volume set of data. 

The raw data collected is processed for analysis by a multidisciplinary team composed of LaLiga experts in business intelligence & analytics and football analysis, through machine learning and artificial intelligence processes made possible thanks to the Azure technology supplied by Microsoft, which is capable of processing large volumes of data. After processing, an algorithm is generated that permits the visualisation of the metrics that reach fans through Beyond Stats. These statistics allow fans to better understand why their team has won or lost a match, or to benefit from a panoramic view of their performance and expectations, gifting football fans an unprecedented immersion in the experience.