This Week in Stats: Real Madrid punish Liverpool mistakes

Real Madrid beat Liverpool 3-1 in the 2018 Champions League final. But did they deserve to? What do the stats from the big match suggest?

Lies, damned lies, statistics and Loris Karius. Real Madrid won the Champions League, thanks to a helping hand from the Liverpool goalkeeper. A great truism of soccer is that it often doesn’t matter what the underlying numbers say in a one-off match. It’s quality or mistakes in moments which define matches, and that has rarely been more starkly seen than in the 2018 Champions League final.

On the face of it, it was a fairly close match. None of the expected goal models had it as a significant margin in either direction; 11tegen11 gave it to Real by about 0.5, FiveThirtyEight said 0.3, while InfoGol thought Liverpool edged it. In boxing parlance, it was a split decision.

One way in which the match was undoubtedly split was before and after Mohamed Salah went off injured. The Egyptian was on the pitch for 32 minutes, but three quarters of Liverpool’s shots occurred in that period.

One of the great fears before the match from a Reds perspective was the disparity between the two benches. Salah was replaced by Adam Lallana, a player who has been restricted to fewer than 400 minutes this season thanks to injuries.

It’s not his fault he couldn’t step up in Salah’s absence, but the fact he only had four touches more than the former Roma man, despite having double the pitch time, shows how he struggled to get into the game.

Liverpool’s pressing had already dipped after the first 15 minutes, but with Firmino off form and Lallana not fit enough, it took too long to get going again.

One Red who did step up was Sadio Mane. It’s not surprising he had the most shots and completed the most dribbles for Liverpool, but the fact he made six tackles is an eye opener. He also committed as many fouls, five, as the whole Madrid side did, and collected the only yellow card of the night.

That said, Sergio Ramos didn’t commit any fouls in the opinion of the referee, so take that stat with a pinch of salt. But leaving that aside, Mane scored, hit the post and was definitely the Reds’ man of the match.

Bale bagged a brace

The actual man of the match was Gareth Bale. Remarkably, he won the award despite having just 16 touches during his half hour on the pitch. Only two of Bale’s touches will be remembered, and his fifth touch was one of the greatest goals ever seen.

If Liverpool struggled to change the game with their substitutes, Real Madrid had no such concerns. It was surprising Bale was on the bench, as he had bagged five goals in his previous seven starts, but he certainly made up for it when he got his chance.

It was as well Madrid had a good substitute, as Cristiano Ronaldo was mostly unable to influence proceedings. The Portuguese talisman had just three shots, and has only had fewer in one La Liga or Champions League match this season.

That was in part thanks to a fabulous last-man tackle by Andy Robertson when he had the goal at his mercy, but Real’s number seven didn’t threaten the Liverpool goal too often. Ronaldo’s only shot on target was brilliantly saved, but in years to come nobody will remember that.

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Oh, Loris

Going into the match, only one goalkeeper on either side had made Opta-defined errors leading to goals in the 2017-18 Champions League, and it wasn’t Loris Karius. The German had kept six clean sheets prior to the final, the most in the competition this season.

The soccer analysis site Twelve rated Karius as Liverpool’s fourth best player in the first half. He played the sweeper keeper role well, and only misplaced six of his 27 attempted passes. For large portions of this match Karius was perfectly capable, but that doesn’t matter now.

Using expected goals to judge individual shots is problematic, but indulge us for a moment. Madrid’s highest value chance was Ronaldo’s first-half header, which InfoGol rated as worth 0.39 expected goals, and Karius saved it. Their other on target effort which was saved was rated at 0.05.

As brilliant as Bale’s first goal was, it only had a nine percent probability of being scored, and his second was rated as just 0.03 xG. Karim Benzema’s goal was rated at 0.27, but that wasn’t even really a shot.

Too dull; didn’t read: Karius saved a far, far harder chance than those which he let in. But nobody will ever forget about the other two goals. Either mistake would make a blooper reel, but he made two potentially career-defining gaffes in about half an hour. Keylor Navas’ two goals from errors in earlier rounds are consigned to history now, while Loris will carry his forever.

The best team on the night won, and Bale’s first goal was worthy of winning any game. But it was Karius who was in many senses the man of the match, as it’s his contribution to it which ultimately defined it’s outcome.