How Kompany’s Absence Could Prove a Blessing for Belgium’s EURO Title Hopes

In this short post, I will explain how the injury of Belgium’s captain Vincent Kompany could potentially boost Belgium’s hopes of EURO 2016 victory – and why it probably won’t.

The key to understanding why the absence of a great player in this case may actually turn out to have a beneficial effect on team performance relates to automatisms. Concretely, Kompany plays in the central defense and is sure to play there with Belgium when fit. This necessarily means that the duo Vertonghen-Alderweireld will be broken up and at least one of them will be played on the sides, which is exactly what happened at the 2014 World Cup – when also Van Buyten was a certitude for coach Wilmots in the central defense.

Today, it makes much less sense to consider Belgium's defenders individually than at the time of the previous World Cup, though, for the following straightforward reason: Vertonghen and Alderweireld have been playing side by side all season, as a central defensive duo. Moreover, this was in the Premier League, the world’s most competitive domestic league, as well as in the Europa League. And, above all, no team in the Premier League conceded fewer goals this season than did Tottenham Hotspur. The automatisms of a central defensive duo that played at this rate of success in a direct combination for over 30 games at the highest level can be considered a godsend for any national team.

When Spain won the 2010 World Cup, coach del Bosque had three excellent central defenders at his disposal: Puyol, Ramos and Piqué. Two of them, he would field in the centre of the defense; one of them, he would move to the right-back position. While both Ramos and Puyol could fit the right-back position, naturally, del Bosque always elected to field Ramos on the right, preserving the Barça tandem in the heart of the defense. Spain’s 2010 world cup victory would go down as a prototypical example of one that followed from exploiting automatisms generated at the club level, mainly at Barça.

Source: theguardian.com

Skeptics may question the level of automatisms between Vertonghen and Alderweireld relative to the one of, say, Piqué and Puyol, given that the two Belgians have only been together at Tottenham since the beginning of the season. It is important to realize, though, that Alderweireld and Vertonghen coincided frequently during their careers and were formed in the same football academy: from 2004 till 2006, both were being formed at the youth of Ajax Amsterdam, after having joined from the same club in Belgium, Germinal Beerschot. From 2008 till 2012, Vertonghen and Alderweireld made up the defensive block at Ajax’ senior squad. (Thomas Vermaelen followed a similar trajectory, but left Ajax already in 2009.) Alderweireld and Vertonghen share as solid a common basis as you will find in contemporary football.

Source: scoopnest.com

There are yet two more compelling reasons to combine Alderweireld and Vertonghen at the centre of Belgium's defense. First is that whereas the former is right-footed, the latter is left-footed, underlining their complementarity. Second is that another Belgian who had an individually outstanding season at Tottenham, Mousa Dembélé, there plays one line above the defensive duo, opening up the possibility to leverage automatisms relating not just to the duo, but to the triangle as well.

Within the realm of economic rationality, having more available options can only lead to better or similar outcomes, but not worse. Economic rationality, however, is not the regime of a football team and certainly not the one of the Belgian national team. Leaving the influential captain out of the team or not playing him in his favored position could have had serious repercussions. It is thus only through Kompany’s absence that the way was freed for the successful Spurs duo to be united in the heart of the Belgium defense.

Especially with other contenders for the central defensive roles Vermaelen and Lombaerts mainly having been used as substitutes at their clubs this season and youngster Engels having had to forfeit the Euros because of injury, building on the successful central Tottenham duo would appear to be a no-brainer. Yet, I suspect coach Wilmots to come up with some alternative that will still require breaking up one of the most effective defensive duos present at the Euros.

BBC vs MSN: But This Year’s Clearly Different, Right?

In last January’s post, I subjected the goal-scoring performances of Barça’s trident and Real Madrid’s BBC to a comparative analysis. I showed that even though Messi, Neymar and Suárez overall turned out to be more efficient than Cristiano, Benzema and Bale, the constituent members of BBC do actually turn out to make each other better (synergistic), whereas Barça’s trident members rather seem to score more often when some of their strike partners are absent (cannibalistic). Neymar emerged as the most pivotal member of Barça’s trident. This analysis encompassed data from the start of both tridents being united at their respective clubs. Now that the 2015-2016 season is nearing a conclusion, it will also be important to investigate what the relations are like for the current season. Perhaps Barça’s trident is already combining much better than before? Let’s revisit the results for the current season only, including both La Liga and Champions League, to date.

We may recall that for the aggregated data, there was only one member of the two trios who was actually more productive when part of his threesome than when not: Cristiano Ronaldo. When looking at the current season, it turns out that all of BBC’s strike partners are more efficient when playing together than when not, whereas no member of Barça’s trident is finding the net more easily when MSN is complete than when not.

Fig. 1: Goal-scoring performance as part of trident (bar) relative to when not part of trident (100%-line)

As can be seen in Fig. 1, the numbers are most extreme for Neymar and for Bale. During 90 minutes on the field with both Messi and Suárez, Neymar scored, on average, 0.4 penalty-adjusted goals. When not part of the trident, in contrast, the captain of the Brazilian national team managed to score slightly more than 1 goal per 90 minutes. Neymar already played for over 1,000 minutes for Barça as not part of the trident this season and almost 2,000 as part of the trident. So even though the numbers for the current season alone are naturally more sensitive than the aggregated ones, there is a solid basis for comparison.

The scoring numbers for Gareth Bale are almost mirror images of Neymar’s. When not part of BBC, the Welshman scored slightly more than half a field goal so far during 90 mins; when part of BBC, 1.2 goals per 90 mins on average. This season so far, Bale has thus been more than twice as productive when part of BBC than when not and his bar in Fig. 1 actually extends beyond what is shown. Bale has been out injured quite a bit though and so there is less performance data on him than would be desirable. Still, he already played in over 800 minutes as part of the BBC constellation and in almost 700 as not part thereof.

So the synergism of BBC vs. the cannibalism of MSN turns out to be all the more true for the current season. Whereas BBC appear to be setting each other up to score more and more, Barça’s trident is not – yet(?) – showing any signs of such improvement. We may well recall from the January post that findings regarding BBC’s synergism and MSN’s cannibalism where quite much lessoned though by the fact that the constituent members of MSN combined were still more efficient than the ones of BBC combined. Let’s see if this still holds true for the current season. Turns out it does not! So far, the sum of the average number of goals scored by Messi, Neymar and Suárez during 90 minutes this season is 2.5, compared to 3 for the sum of BBC’s members. Furthermore, 90 minutes of actually fielding MSN together so far resulted in 2.1 goals, per 90 minutes, vs. 3.5 goals in the case of BBC.

Why then, one naturally wonders, are Barça already this season's uncrowned La Liga champion, with the merengues lagging ten points behind? Although both teams scored and conceded about equally in the league, the scoring data support a twofold answer. First, whereas the above analysis focused only on efficiency, i.e. the average number of (penalty-adjusted) goals per 90 minutes, naturally, efficacy, i.e. the actual total number of (penalty-adjusted) goals scored, is also crucial. Concretely, both Benzema and Bale have been injured quite some time, making that the members of BBC have played slightly short of a combined 7,000 minutes so far this season, in La Liga and Champions League together. Suárez, Neymar and Messi already have more than 8,500 minutes on their combined season’s teller. The efficacy of those three combined is actually higher than the one of Cristiano, Benzema and Bale combined: 78.5 penalty-adjusted goals vs. 76.

Second, the crux to understanding the differential in terms of team outcomes is "goal importance", a measure of how many incremental points one’s goals actually provide to one’s team. Cristiano, for instance, is the undisputed top scorer so far, with 37 penalty-adjusted goals. Suárez has 31, six less. Yet, Suárez’ goals often led Barça to take the lead and/or to win a game, whereas more than a few of Cristiano's goals didn’t actually result in Real Madrid gaining any more points from matches (e.g. neither of Cristiano’s four goals against both Malmö or Celta mattered). The total number of point increments for Barça as a direct result of goals scored by its trident members this season to date amounts to 48.5, compared to 37.5 in the case of Real Madrid (Benzema’s 24 penalty-adjusted goals actually yielded hist team more points so far than did Cristiano’s 37). This underlines the added value of a multi-measure analysis when it comes to top scorers, which has been the subject of a number of earlier posts in this blog, also detailing the goal-importance measure.

Let us conclude the analysis by looking at which player is most pivotal in the blaugrana's scoring as a team. I propose to do this by comparing how often a team (not just the trident) scores with and without a player on the field (a similar analysis for Real Madrid is prohibited by Cristiano not having been on the field for only a minute).

Fig. 2: Avg. number of Barça goals per game with and without player having been on the pitch

Although Barça turn out to score more often without Suárez on the field, the above discussion on goal importance illustrates why this probably should not be overemphasized. The main insight is that the role of Neymar turns out to be even more critical in the current season than for the aggregated data: with Neymar on the field, Barça managed to score 2.76 goals, vs. 1.89 without the Brazilian. The explanation hereof in light of Neymar being both the least efficacious as well as the least efficient of the three members of MSN? As for the aggregated data, of all possible combinations (i.e. solo, duos, trio), the one in which they were most efficient for both Messi and Suárez has been in combination with Neymar only. The presence of the Brazilian seems to enable his strike partners to score, this season more than ever. Most probably, he is the one who destabilizes the opponent, even more than Messi does, which in turn is what creates goal-scoring opportunities.

The Birth of the Aging Striker?

During the Champions League round-of-16 first legs, one thing worth noticing was that the ones to open the score for the all-star teams of Real Madrid and PSG were “old-timers” and club top scorers Cristiano Ronaldo (31) and Zlatan Ibrahimovic (34), respectively. What is more, Zlatan has now scored in each of his last nine(!) appearances for PSG, including Champions League, Ligue 1 and French Cup. In the only one of their last ten encounters PSG did not manage to score, the Swedish veteran was not fielded. 

Source: telegraaf.nl

Meanwhile, Jamie Vardy, aged 29, is leading the Premier-League’s "pichichi". An unlikely feat, particularly given that, at the age of 24 – generally considered already quite “old” for a striker – Vardy seemed to have reached his terminal in the fifth tier of English football. During the 2014 FIFA World Cup, the BBC published an article claiming that, in accordance with popular wisdom, a football player peaks at the age of 27.5. Naturally, goalkeepers are expected to peak above and strikers below this average. Are Vardy, Zlatan and others defying logic then? Or could it be the logic rather than these players that is dated? 

As you probably rightfully noticed, all of the above examples I carefully cherry-picked. For instance, there was no mention of the opening goals by youngsters Dybala and Draxler, both 22 years of age. In order to see if something of interest may actually be going on, let’s be slightly more scientific. As of currently, the top-10 scorers active in the five main European leagues, including any goals they may have scored in the Champions or Europa Leagues and with penalties counting for half a field goal, are, in order: Cristiano Ronaldo, Suárez, Lewandowski, Higuaín, Aubameyang, Ibrahimovic, Benzema, Müller, Aduriz and Messi. Their average age is slightly above 29 years and 6 months (median age: 28.44). For strikers – moreover, the top ones in Europe at this very moment – that seems pretty old. It begs the question, “are top strikers – as is the general population – actually getting older?”

Source: marca.com

In order to investigate this question, I turn to the “Golden Shoe” (or "Golden Boot"), an annual trophy awarded to the most prolific scorer in any national league within Europe (since 1997, adjusted by a coefficient depending on the strength of the league). The Golden Shoe is being awarded since the 1967-1968 season, when Eusébio was the first to try it on. For each year since, I computed the average age of the scorers that made it to the podium (top-3). Importantly, the winner of this award is not elected but rather results from having scored most goals. Hence, any changes that may appear over time won’t resemble changing preferences but rather an evolution of the game and/or scorers as such. For the running season, I include the current top-3 in the Golden-Shoe ranking: Barça’s 29-year-old Suárez, Napoli’s 28-year-old Higuaín and Benfica’s 31-year-old Jonas. The below chart indicates the average age of each season’s top-3.

Figure 1: Average age of "Golden Shoe" award top-3 (years on X-axis; age on Y-axis)

At first sight, there is no trend clearly emerging and what mainly grabs the eye are the many fluctuations. I next include a linear trend-line, hinting to some general trend. The important thing to note is the trend-line's upward slope, indicative of an increase in average age over time.

Figure 2: Average age of "Golden Shoe" award top-3 (years on X-axis; age on Y-axis).
Actual data in blue; linear trend-line in red.

The next graph depicts the non-linear trend-line that is closest to the data and which is readily supported by Excel. This trend-line starts off at slightly below 25 years of age and increases - let it be not monotonically - to nearly 29 years. 

Figure 3: Average age of "Golden Shoe" award top-3 (years on X-axis; age on Y-axis).
Actual data in blue; non-linear trend-line in red.

For those readers who know about statistics, the R²-values neither of the linear nor of the non-linear trend-line are high. However, the Spearman rank coefficient of season and age is 0.29 and significantly different from 0, suggesting that there is indeed an upward trend in topscorers' age over time. Even if from a strictly scientific viewpoint the evidence is limited, I could draw a parallel with global warming: the possibility of a few years difference over a less-than-50-year period may still be worth some consideration, wouldn’t you think? Here's what Aritz Aduriz (35) has to say about that.

Barça’s Trident vs. Real’s BBC: Synergies or Cannibals?

During the past weekend in La Liga, no less than ten goals were scored by Barça’s and Real Madrid’s super trios, divided evenly between both. Moreover, each constituent member – Messi, Neymar and Suárez vs. Bale, Benzema and Cristiano Ronaldo, respectively – got himself on the score sheet.

At first sight, one would have to conclude that both trios work splendidly. Indeed, both teams already collected a Champions League trophy on the back of their respective tridents. But let's have a closer look at last weekend's performances. Both teams played one half with their complete trident and one half with an incomplete one and whereas Real Madrid managed all of their five goals during the half their super trio were united and none during the one they weren’t, Barça only scored two goals – one of which a Messi penalty – during the half with their trident in tact. Additionally, Suárez completed his hat-trick entirely during the half when one of his strike partners – Messi – was no longer fielded. 

The important question arising then is, “Do these players actually make each other better?” Concretely, on average during a 90-minute game, do they score more goals when combined than the sum of the individuals, when not operating in a trident (i.e. are they “synergistic”?) or, instead, are they rather “stealing” each others goals, e.g. by being at the end of assists that otherwise a teammate would have scored (i.e. “cannibalistic”)? 

To answer these questions and to better understand what and if there is actually something meaningful going on in terms of discriminant performances between both tridents, in terms of individual vs. combined performance, we naturally need to consider more data. Thus, in preparation for this post, I collected information about all the goals scored by Bale, Benzema and Cristiano Ronaldo as well as by Messi, Neymar and Suárez since they were united at their respective clubs (seasons ’13-’14 and ’14-’15, respectively) to date and considered what combination had been on the field at the time of scoring. As I do elsewhere, I take into account both La Liga and Champions League games, counting penalties for half a (field) goal. The main findings can be summarized as follows:

Table 1: Comparing efficiency (i.e. avg. number of goals scored
      per 90 mins. on the field) as part and when not part of MSN

Table 2: Comparing efficiency (i.e. avg. number of goals scored
      per 90 mins. on the field) as part and when not part of BBC

As it turns out, only one of the six players, Cristiano Ronaldo, actually scored more goals when part of his trident than when not. Some level of "cannibalism" may be expected, e.g. as penalties and free kicks may fall to a teammate in the absence of strike partners, but the relative performance of Barça's three main strikers when vs. when not combined is quite startling, as depicted in the below graph. The red line indicates each player's respective scoring level (100%) when not part of the trident; each bar indicates the corresponding player's scoring level when part of the trident relative to this line:

Figure 1: Goal-scoring performance as part of trident relative to when not part of trident

It can clearly be seen that Barça's trident's scoring performance falls well short of Messi, Neymar and Suárez' scoring performances as individuals (or duos). In fact, as a trio, MSN, on average, scored 2.14 goals per 90 minutes, whereas the sum of Messi's, Neymar's and Suárez' average scoring performances per 90 minutes, when not part of the trio, adds up to 3.22 - over a full (field) goal more. Moreover, the Barça player least cannibalized by the trident, Messi, is still more negatively affected as compared to Real's most negatively affected player, Bale. Real Madrid's BBC scored, on avg. per 90 minutes, 2.33 goals vs. 2.44 as the sum of the individuals' performances - less than a meaningful difference. 

Is there something going horribly wrong then with Barça's trident relative to BBC? Yes and no. On the one hand, yes, as Barça's individual trident members all appear to be sacrificing a substantial portion of their efficiency when operating as a trident. On the other hand, no, because, in absolute terms, overall, Messi, Neymar and Suárez still scored more goals than Bale, Benzema and Cristiano, on average, per 90 minutes (2.56 vs. 2.36). Thus, it would be harsh to claim the former are underperforming compared to the latter. What does clearly emerge, is that Barça's trident still show ample potential to up their performance if they find ways to create more synergies among the constituent players.

Critical question: now that we know that Barça have been substantially more efficient when not fielding Messi, Neymar and Suárez all together, would it actually help the team to keep one of them on the bench? To assess this, we need to consider the goal-scoring performance of the team as a whole (not just the trident) when fielding the trident and when not. After all, if one is not to field a member of MSN, someone else, e.g. Munir, with his own relative (in)efficiency will take his place. Barça's average number of goals scored per 90 minutes turns out to have been very similar when having fielded and when not having fielded the trident (2.60 vs. 2.63), which leads to yet another question: as the team turned out no less efficient without the trident, could FC Barcelona actually save itself quite some money by selling off either Messi, Neymar or Suárez, without sacrificing team goals? And if so, which one of them? 

Hereto, I repeated the exercise of considering team goals, this time with and without each Messi, Neymar and Suárez, respectively, having been on the field at the time of scoring. The results are depicted in the below graph. The blue bars indicate the average number of team goals per 90 minutes with the corresponding player having been on the field; the red ones, without him having been on the pitch - from the start of the '14-'15 season to date:

Figure 2: Avg. number of Barça goals per game with and without player having been on the pitch

From this, it seems that what Barça don't want to do is sell Neymar: not only did the blaugrana score more goals with the Brazilian on the field than with either the Argentinian or the Uruguayan, but also did Barça, on average, score fewer goals per game without Neymar than without either one of his strike partners. Furthermore, as evidenced by the descriptive statistics listed in Table 1, both Messi and Suárez found their most efficient combination of all possible ones (i.e. trident, duos or alone) in duo with Neymar. One likely explanation would be that Neymar is the one mainly able to unbalance the opponent, which is what creates goal-scoring opportunities for the team.

Europe's Hottest Prospects Going Into the New Year

With the final whistle of 2015's last match having been blown and the opening of the winter mercato being imminent, an excellent moment has come to re-assess the goal-scoring performances of Europe’s top scorers. In previous posts, I developed a multi-measure analysis, considering top scorers’ performance according to four meaningful dimensions, in addition to the simple number of goals scored: efficacy, efficiency, relative efficacy and importance of goals scored. No less than four different top scorers top one of these five rankings, underlining the value of the multi-measure approach. 

In the below analysis, as before, I will be taking into account appearances and goals scored in the five main domestic leagues in Europe as well as in the UEFA Champions and Europa leagues. To be considered a top scorer at this stage of the season, I require a player to have scored ten goals or more, a condition satisfied by 25 players, coming from 20 teams –FC Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, PSG and… Leicester City have two each.

The top 10 of simple top scorers as of 01/01/2016 is being headed by Cristiano Ronaldo:

·      “Simple” goals, or the number of goals scored:

Tabel 1. Simple ranking: Europe's top scorers by number of goals scored

Observation 1: Only one of this happy bunch (of 25) has a contract due to expire mid 2016 and can thus be snatched up without a transfer fee: Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

·      “Efficacy”, or the number of penalty-adjusted goals scored:

Tabel 2. Efficacy ranking: Converted penalties count for half a (field) goal

Observation 2: After making the proposed adjustment for penalties (i.e. valued at 0.5x), Lewandowski retains his top spot in the efficacy ranking, let it be shared with Cristiano – with Lewa having needed less time on the field to score his 22.

Observation 3: Bayern are the only team with two players in the penalty-adjusted top ten. Lewandowski-Müller thus remains the most efficacious duo in Europe.

·      “Efficiency”, or the average number of penalty-adjusted goals scored per 90 minutes on the pitch:

Tabel 3. Efficiency ranking: Avg. number of penalty-adjusted goals scored during 90 minutes

Observation 4: While Lewandowski is still Europe’s most efficacious top scorer, he no longer is the most efficient one. Furthermore, Lewa-Müller is no longer the most efficient duo. Benzema-Cristiano is the only couple in European football that, combined, scored more than two(!) (penalty-adjusted) goals on average per 90 minutes on the field.

Observation 5: In addition to the most efficient Benzema and Lewandowski, Aubameyang and Higuaín are the only other top scorers to have scored more than one (penalty-adjusted) goal on average per 90 mins on the pitch – indeed quite a feat, halfway down the season. Both Luis Suárez and Cristiano being not far off either.

·      “Relative efficacy”, or the percentage of penalty-adjusted goals scored relative to the team:

Tabel 4. Relative efficacy ranking: Percentage of team's penalty-adjusted goals scored by top scorer

Observation 6: Agirretxe and Ighalo continue to spearhead their respective team’s attack: both top scorers’ respective goals accounted for no less than 67% and 64% of Real Sociedad’s and Watford’s (penalty-adjusted) total, respectively. Indeed, it would be hard to overestimate the reliance of both teams on their top scorer’s goals.

Observation 7: Lukaku’s emergence, with a 44%-share of Everton’s (penalty-adjusted) goal tally, is well-worth pointing out.
 

Observation 8: Betis’ Castro and Rayo Vallecano’s Guerra both (temporarily) dropped out of the rel. efficacy ranking. Although each accounted for well over 50% of his respective team’s goal total, neither managed to put in double-digit goals and is thus, at this point, considered a top scorer.

·      “Importance”, or the average of the virtual and eventual incremental points won by the player’s team because of a player's goals:

Tabel 5. Importance ranking: Avg. of virtual and eventual incremental points won by team because of top scorer's goals

Observation 9: The prophecy at the end of the previous post has become reality: Jamie Vardy has become the most important top scorer on European fields. What is more, no tandem in Europe has gained more points for their team than the duo Vardy-Mahrez did for Leicester. All the more remarkable considering that Leicester does not play in the Europa - let alone Champions - League and thus both stars-on-the-rise had relatively fewer games to win points for their team. And that they play their games in the Premiership, Europe’s most competitive domestic league. And that Leicester is a club of relatively modest means – as evidenced by both top scorers original acquisition prices (£1m for Vardy; £350k for Mahrez)...

Source: theguardian.com

Observation 10: Did you notice the only player to feature in the top ranking according to all five dimensions? Hint 1: It’s one of the many considered not good enough by Louis van Gaal for his struggling Man. United squad. Hint 2: Little pea J

That’s right, it’s Chicharito. Quite an achievement considering the Mexican sniper arrived in a new – and quite a different – country and league only in September!

Source: telesurtv.net