The Week in Stats: Champions League roundup

TALLINN, ESTONIA - AUGUST 15: The Champions League Winners Trophy is displayed prior to the UEFA Super Cup between Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid at Lillekula Stadium on August 15, 2018 in Tallinn, Estonia. (Photo by Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images)
TALLINN, ESTONIA - AUGUST 15: The Champions League Winners Trophy is displayed prior to the UEFA Super Cup between Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid at Lillekula Stadium on August 15, 2018 in Tallinn, Estonia. (Photo by Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images)

With the Champions League group stages ending, what conclusions can be drawn from the participating clubs’ advanced stats?

We’ll start with each team’s expected goals (xG) difference, which is just the total xG a side created minus the total xG that they allowed their opponents to create. Obviously, a high positive number indicates that a club have produced much better chances than their opponents, and vice versa.

This provides a good yardstick of how effective a team’s performances have been, as well as how deserved their final positions were.

The numbers come from the excellent Infogol site/app.

There are some obvious takeaways here:

  • Bayern and Real Madrid have been every bit as good in Europe as they’ve been bad in their domestic leagues.
  • Liverpool were better than most people gave them credit for.
  • Despite one wonderful performance at Wembley against Spurs, Barcelona have been far from dazzling overall.
  • This idea that Atletico Madrid will be playing a more expansive and entertaining brand of football this season is a fallacy.
  • Napoli were by far the best side to be knocked out.
  • Galatasaray were also unfortunate not to go through, with two unlucky losses to Porto sealing their fate.
  • Porto, Manchester United and Atletico Madrid are the teams least deserving of their places in the knockout rounds.

Next we’ll look at each club’s total xG created and conceded.

  • Dortmund had the best defense during the group stages and despite producing a series of exhilarating attacking displays in the Bundesliga this season, their forward play in Europe has been literally middling: they rank 16th out of 32 teams here in xG terms.
  • Liverpool actually created better chances over the course of their six matches than PSG did.
  • Napoli were unfortunate to go out, having put in the third-best defensive showing and the 13th-best attacking performances.
  • Manchester United’s attacking displays were worse than those of Viktoria Plzen.
  • Red Star Belgrade managed the remarkable feat of taking four points from perhaps the toughest group in the tournament, in spite of them having both the worst attacking and defensive records in this season’s Champions League.
  • Atleti really have struggled offensively.
  • Porto and Lyon need to improve their defensive displays if they’re to make it into the quarter-finals.

Now we’ll move on to the total xG, by both teams involved, that a club’s games produced. This is a good way of gauging how entertaining a club’s matches were. Low total xG numbers demonstrate that there was little goalmouth action in a side’s games, high figures show that the goalkeepers would have been very busy.

  • Hoffenheim were the most fun team to watch in this season’s group stages. Not that it did them any good, of course – they finished bottom of their group on only three points.
  • Club Brugge managed the unenviable feat of being both poor and very dull.
  • Dortmund’s Champions League games have been a world away from their buccaneering domestic matches.
  • Manchester United were as bad to watch under Mourinho as his many detractors claimed.
  • Red Star Belgrade were terrible, but their games at least offered plenty of entertainment value for neutrals.
  • Atleti haven’t changed at all.

Finally, we’ll look at the some of the stand-out match numbers from the group stages:

  • Of the five players with the most touches in a single game, three made them for Dortmund at home against Club Bruges – Manuel Akanji, Dan-Axel Zagadou and Mahmoud Dahoud. It didn’t do their team much good, as BVB could only manage a 0-0 draw. The other two were Marco Verratti and Toni Kroos.
  • That same game also saw those three Dortmund players make the highest number of passes in any UCL game this season: Akanji 166, Zagadou 160 and Dahoud 135.
  • Four players took more than eight shots in a match. Somewhat predictably, Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar and Luis Suarez were among them. Inter’s Mauro Icardi was the other. Ronaldo and Suarez failed to score in those games.
  • The highest number of shots on target was seven, by Roma’s Edin Dzeko at home against Viktoria Plzen and PSG’s Neymar in Paris against Red Star Belgrade. Both players scored hat-tricks.
  • Only two players hit more than 20 long balls in a game: Bayern Munich’s Jerome Boateng (twice) and his international team-mate Toni Kroos for Real Madrid.
  • The biggest number of chances created in a game was eight, a feat managed by Tottenham’s Kieran Trippier against PSV Eindhoven and Lorenzo Pellegrini of Roma against Viktoria Plzen. Both players earned a single assist apiece.
  • Three players committed more than five fouls in a match: Hoffenheim’s Joelinton, Taras Stepanenko of Shakhtar and AEK Athens forward Marko Livaja. Of them, only Livaja was given a red card, while Stepanenko didn’t receive a card of any kind.
  • The lowest number of shots in a game by one team was three by AEK Athens against Bayern in Munich. AEK were also among the eight teams who failed to register a single shot on target over a full 90 minutes. Unfortunately for the Greek side, they managed that feat on a tournament-high three separate occasions.
  • More surprisingly, those eight teams also included Liverpool (away at Napoli) and Dortmund (away to Atletico Madrid).
  • Four players hit the woodwork twice in one match: Man City’s David Silva, Lionel Messi and Philippe Coutinho of Barcelona, and Benfica’s Haris Seferovic.
  • The best passing accuracy for a midfielder completing the full 90 minutes – 98.7% – was shared between Barcelona’s Sergio Busquets and Ajax’s Frenkie de Jong, at home against Inter and AEK Athens respectively. Each of them only made a single misplaced pass during the entire game.
  • Dortmund were the only side to make more than 1,000 passes in a match, during the aforementioned goalless draw with Bruges.
  • BSC committed the highest number of fouls – 25 – during their away defeat to Valencia. Roma committed the fewest (3) while losing 3-0 in Madrid.
  • Porto posted the best conversion rate during the group stages in their away win over Galatasaray on the final match-day. They managed to score three goals from just four shots.