FC Bayern Forum

tflags wrote:Curiously enough, European football is merely a category on the forum while still lacking it's own thread.

Many times forum members discuss certain leagues as being tactical (EPL), defensive (Serie A), Possesive (La Liga) or Physical (Bundesliga). While contrasting these views against raw data, one might find there's no correlation between these opinions and those shown on the pitch.

Except for one. Which we will cover here.

Let's start with possession which Bayern still commands at 64.4% so far this season. The Bundesliga has two teams leading in possesion as Barza comes in second (Spain), PSG (France) MC (EPL) and Dortmund (GER) in second to fifth respectively.

That seems pretty even other than Serie A serious lacking between the top 5 impulsive posessive teams in Europe's top 5 leagues.

What about physicality? In terms of fouls and red card; we have Alaves (SPA) leading with 85 fouls and 4 red cards followed by Cagilari (ITA) 74/8, Málaga (SPA) 72/7, Sporting Gijón (SPA) 75/4 and Palermo (ITA) 69/4. It is clearly representative that both Spain and Italy share the spoils here as the leagues with the more aggresive teams.

Up in the Air. Someone made a big fuss about second balls and having to adapt to England's football. That is quite surprising as there are no English clubs in the top five Aerial Duels Won ranking. Real Madrid, Roma, PSG, Angers and Juventus rank from 1 to 5 with 60.4% to 57.7% of up in the air duels won.

The new Santos. So; who's the new dribbling king of Europe and is any league master and comkmander in this respect? Hardly. The EPL is well represented with Chelsea (14.5) top followed by Spain (Barcelona, 14.3 dribbles per game), EPL again (MC 13.1), France (Lyon 12.7) and England again with Arsenal fifth at 12.5.

What about defensive measures? As for tackles Esnpanyol (1st) , Valencia (2nd) and Celta (4th) Spain has certainly good tacking teams with Leipzig and Nantes coming in at third and fifth for Germany and France.

Pass Accuracy? PSG and Nice for France in 1st and 2nd, Italy Germany and Spain on that order follow with Napoli, Bayern and RM.

Shots per game? Real Madrid (SPA), Napoli (ITA), Inter (ITA), Spurs (ENG) and Roma (ITA) average around 17 shots per game.

As you can see, no single league in Europe can be attributted as being dominant in aggression, possesion, accuracy, attempts at goal, tackling or dribbling. Certainly not on aerial football either.

Except for one. Interceptions per game. In this respect Mainz and Schalke make an impresive 24.2 interceptions per game on average. And while the number is quite impressive, no other league can come close since Frankfurt, Augsburg and Leipzig follow that raking with around 23 interceptions per game each.

I can just imagine the DFL promoting the league as the 'Intercepting league' in Europe. Maybe not.

MUTU wrote:

FCBayernMunchen wrote:Great and unexpected result for Malta tonight. If only we can start getting these results in competitive games


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The problem was that Shevchenko tricked us. Trailing 1-0 at half time, he subbed off all ten outfield players. As far as I know, when there are that many substitutions, the match does not count towards FIFA Rankings.

MUTU wrote:

FCBayernMunchen wrote:I don't think friendlies count anyway, no?

They do if they follow certain rules, one of which is to have up to 6 substitutions per team. [source]

Shevchenko made 10 substitutions at half time, which effectively disallowed the final result from being factored in the FIFA rankings.