The Week in Stats: Lionel Messi gets involved

This week we look at the teams with the most intense high presses in Europe, plus the players with the highest numbers of shot involvements and saves in a single match.

Pressing issues

One of the easiest ways of estimating how intensely a team presses the opposition high up the pitch is a metric known as passes per defensive action (PPDA). This measures the number of passes a team’s opponents make for every attempted defensive act – a tackle, interception, etc. – undertaken by that team.

If a side is adopting a low bock and giving up much of the pitch to their opponents, then we can expect those opponents to make a higher number of passes per defective action. So by this gauge, a high PPDA indicates that a team is not implementing a high press, and vice-versa.

It’s important to understand that this in itself doesn’t indicate whether or not the high press is actually successful. A failed attempt to tackle an opponent counts as a defensive action just as much as one that wins the ball.

In addition, there’s nothing inherently good or bad about a low block or a high press, so the numbers here are primarily descriptive.

We’ll start by looking at the lowest PPDA figures over the past four full seasons – in other words, the sides that have adopted the most intense high presses.

Top of the list is Roger Schmidt, who’s currently head coach at Beijing Guoan in the Chinese Super League. Schmidt perfected his hyper-pressing game, a kind of supercharged version of the frenetic pressing tactics adopted so successfully by Jurgen Klopp at Dortmund during the start of the decade, at Red Bull Salzburg in Austria before moving on to Bayer Leverkusen in the Bundesliga from 2014–17.

Elsewhere, we see not just two of Luis Enrique’s three season in charge of Barcelona, but also the name of the man who replaced Enrique as Celta Vigo coach, namely Eduardo Berizzo. The Argentine, presently in charge of the Paraguay national side, was appointed at Athletic Bilbao in the summer but lost his job there before Christmas.

Please note that these figures of course don’t include Pep Guardiola’s time as head coach of Barcelona from 2008-12.

Meanwhile, although the teams that have adopted the lowest blocks have sometimes ended up with respectable mid-table finishes on modest budgets, these weren’t sides that won the hearts of many neutrals.

Particular sympathy is due to Aston Villa fans, as that Paul Lambert/Tim Sherwood management combination is the stuff of nightmares.

Moving on to the PPDA figures for this season, it’s worth noting that in broad terms the intensity of the high press has dropped off in these leagues, with the average PPDA rising from 9.66 during 2014-18 to 10.89 this term.

Although the sides in the charts above with the lowest PPDA mostly finished towards the top of the table, the overall correlation between PPDA and league position isn’t especially strong, as you can see by looking at the numbers for the current Premier League season. Huddersfield, for example, use a high press but are among the worst teams in the history of the league.

Big shots

Manchester City’s Bernardo Silva drew praise for his performance against Spurs on Saturday, which saw him involved in seven of his team’s 15 attempts on goal. Silva took three shots and made four key passes during the game – the latter term simply means that a player has set up a shot for someone else

As impressive as Silva’s display was, it fell a long way short of being the highest number of shot involvements in a game this season.

Lionel Messi’s extraordinary 20 shot involvements against Valladolid back in February only yielded one goal, and that was from the penalty spot, but it was still enough to ensure victory.

The next two entries in the list come from the now-infamous clash between Atalanta and Empoli earlier in April, which saw Atalanta take 47 shots without scoring. Alejandro Gomez and Josip Ilicic were each involved in 17 of those attempts, but to no avail.

On that same April weekend, Hoffenheim’s Andrej Kramaric also created nothing from his 16 shot involvements against Hertha in the Bundesliga, although he did at least hit the woodwork.

Similarly, Messi drew blanks away at Lyon in the Champions League round of 16, but he fared better against Huesca at Camp Nou with two goals and two assists.

Saving faces

Manchester City goalkeeper Ederson also received plaudits for a series of saves against Spurs that could prove decisive in the Premier League title race. Again, though, as fine as the individual stops were, Ederson’s total of four saves overall was far from remarkable.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the aforementioned 47-shot blank by Atalanta against Empoli takes pole position here, with Polish keeper Bartlomiej Dragowski making a save every five minutes and 18 seconds in that remarkable game.

As you can see from the goal view below, though, only one of those 47 shots was even close to the top corner of the goal – and that was off target.

Dragowski’s heroics comfortably surpassed the best performance of last season, which was David de Gea’s 14 saves during Manchester United’s 1-3 away win over Arsenal in December 2017.

You can watch many of the Empoli’s keeper’s saves for yourself here: