Why Mario Götze?

Sports media and fans are always searching for the next great talent, ready to turn it into the next Pelé, Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods. Demonstrations of great sport performances at young ages are enough for big transfers and contracts with sports gear brands. However, what turned the above cited players legends in their sports was a consistent high performance in the long-term.

In the actual days, it is possible to cite few of them: Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi, LeBron James, the top four male tennis players (Federer, Nadal, Murray and Djokovic) and Serena Williams.

Mario Götze had his first international appearance for Germany at age 18, as he showed to be one outlier. After that, he kept working on his skills and had steady improvements, according to data from WhoScored?.  On the following diagram  are displayed his performances for total assists, key passes per game, dribbles per game, fouls received per game and the rating for each of his Bundesliga seasons.

His golden years happened during seasons 2011/2012, 2012/2013 and 2013/2014, as his outstanding numbers regarding assists, key passes and dribbles improved his rating and made him one of the top 10 Bundesliga players for three straight years at ages 20, 21 and 22. The decrease in his performance is highly notable in the last three seasons, as he struggled with injuries, coach’s decisions and a transfer in the last summer. This places him today at position 149 at the Bundesliga according to WhoScored? and at position 154 according to Squawka.

His national team colleagues Julian Draxler (23 y/o), Julian Brandt (20 y/o) and Max Meyer (21 y/0) are better ranked in this season and show a similar performance in the last three seasons as Götze’s.

Brandt shows a great improvement, having one assist less than in the last season after only ten fixtures, maintaining his key passes per game and dribbling much more than before. Draxler is dribbling less than before, but has improved his key passes and still has a good rating. Meyer performed better last season than now, but oscillations are expected at this age. Götze’s performance, as showed before, has been decreasing and only his key passes improved since last season, although it’s still far from the 2,5 key passes per game he had during season 2010/2011.

Why Mario Götze? Joachim Löw could educate Götze on Germany´s play style during the last six years and trusts him the false nine role always when a system change is desired, as Götze recognizes free spaces and offers himself for vertical passes, creating spaces and goal chances for his teammates. Götze shows an ability to learn different playing styles and adapt himself to them. However, he does not produce anymore the highlights he became known for and he should be aware that the German staff is monitoring other young talents, who may be able to deliver high-level performance on the long-term.

Corinthians: an average champion?

Corinthians won the Brazilian league ten days ago for the second time in the last two seasons. After taking the lead of the table on August 16th at the 19th fixture, they became champions at the 35th of 38 fixtures on November 19th. Corinthians has undoubtedly the best offense (70 goals for) and the best defense (30 goals against) in the league. The second best goal difference in the league has Atlético Mineiro, also second on the table, with 16. Corinthians is, therefore, doing something great in the country of football, right? Yes! Maybe.

I used Who Scored? data to compare Corinthians performance within the Brazilian league and with the Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga and with its respective leaders at the moment (November 29th). Using the values of each category, I ranked Corinthians in the other leagues and compared how the leaders are doing it.

Manchester City, Barcelona and Bayern München tend to be first and second best on each category on their local leagues. Corinthians is bad ranked when it comes to shots per game, but they assist more than anyone else and their shots come on target very well. Different from the other teams, Corinthians is not extremely ball possession-oriented and, in this sense, seems to be extremely efficient in the game construction phase, making good decisions and finding the best options. The first place on rating should reflect this efficiency.

On the picture below, from Footstats, we can see on the left the total amount of completed passes and, on the right, the wrong passes.

Corinthians is the third team with the most right passes made, behind the two teams with the highest ball possession percentages. Although they present also a great number of wrong passes, when looking further to crosses, long passes and dribbles, the Brazilian champions present very low numbers in all of these criteria, tending to a consistent style of play, looking for a collectiv game with short passes.

According to Who Scored?, Bayern München has five of the best ten players in league. Manchester City, one. Barcelona, all the best three. Corinthians has two and, according to Footstats, only one. The local media has been reporting the strength of the roster, where no one is described as the star or being untouchable.

The numbers point to this direction, as Corinthians don’t present a dominant performance in every single parameter as the other table leaders. They did, however, for sure an extremely good season and gave their opponents no chances. The problem lies on the metrics, which aren’t sensible enough to point out their strengths and weaknesses.

Do you have any idea on how we could better measure and describe Corinthians performance?

@TacticalNumbers
eduardo.rostaiser@gmail.com

Russel Westbrook is the most important NBA player at the moment

No, I’m not crazy. The numbers are telling it.

Stephen Curry and the Warriors are playing one memorable season so far and something great may be in front of us in the next months. Curry leads the league with 33,4 points per night, has the highest PIE (Player Impact Estimate) after eleven games according to NBA.com/Stats and has delivered a few highlights in the past weeks. The Warriors remain unbeaten this season and need five more wins to set a best start record since Washington Capitols (1948-1949) and Houston Rockets (1993/1994). Both of them had 15-0. So what’s my point?

Stephen Curry has being doing one thing extremely well and other ones are just average (for a top-level player). I decided to compare him to the other four top five PIE players till now (15th November 2015). They are: Blake Griffin (Los Angeles Clippers), Russel Westbrook (Oklahoma City Thunder), Chris Bosh (Miami Heat) and LeBron James (Cleveland Cavaliers).

NBA.com/Stats shows nowadays the traditional and the advanced statistics. The traditional statistics present averages and help to understand the performance of a single player. The advanced statistics (or floor statistics, according to Dean Oliver in Basketball on Paper) show the impact a player has on his/her team’s performance and for this reason represent the starting point for more advanced analysis.

When looking to the averages, Curry has the best 3-point and free-throw percentages, steals and points and +/- averages among the top five (please refer to the glossary in the end of the post). Related to field goals percentage and rebounds, it’s ok to have slightly lower values than other players more used to play closer to the rim. The number of assists is influenced by the great number of shots he takes himself.

Now to the point: Curry and Westbrook present both the best Net Rating, though Curry presents slightly better Defensive Rating. Westbrook has a problem with the most turnovers among the five players at the moment, and that’s why the turnover ratio of Westbrook is the highest among them. To compensate it, Westbrook presents an Assist to Turnover ratio of 2,18, only behind Blake Griffin.

However, the most important numbers are represented by the Assist Percentage and by the Assist Ratio. These indicators show that Westbrook is from far the best one on getting his teammates involved in the game.  Furthermore, he has also great impact on the rebounds his team catches on both ends and is for sure the most consistent player this season in different aspects of the game, as he has already 8 double doubles and two triple doubles in this season, competing only with Andre Drummond (Detroit Pistons), who has 10 double doubles.

Those are irreplaceble players, but losing Westbrook would seem to have greater impact on Thunder performance than any other of the cited players would have on their teams.

What do you think about it?

 @TacticalNumbers
eduardo.rostaiser@gmail.com

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Glossary:

Defensive Rating (DefRtg): Measures a team’s points allowed per 100 possessions. On a player level this statistic is team points allowed per 100 possessions while he is on court.
Offensive Rating (OffRtg): Measures a team’s points scored per 100 possessions. On a player level this statistic is team points scored per 100 possessions while he is on court.
Net Rating (NetRtg): Measures a team’s point differential per 100 possessions. On player level this statistic is the team’s point differential per 100 possessions while he is on court.
+/- : The +/- stat looks at point differential when players are in and out of a game, demonstrating how teams perform with various combinations.
Percentage of Defensive Rebounds (%DREB): The percentage of team defensive rebounds grabbed by a player.
Percentage of Offensive Rebounds (%OREB): The percentage of team offensive rebounds grabbed by a player
Rebound Percentage (REB%): The percentage of available total rebounds a player or team grabbed while on the floor.
Assist Percentage (Ast%): The percentage of teammate field goals a player assisted while he was on the floor.
Assist Ratio (AST Ratio): The number of assists a player averages per 100 possessions used.
Assist to Turnover Ratio: The number of assists for player or team compared to the number of turnovers they have committed.
Double double:  When a player reaches ten or more in two statistical categories.
Triple double:  When a player reaches ten or more in three statistical categories.

Neymar: Barcelona’s key player

That’s right. Neymar scored another goal that we won’t forget soon. Here it is, in case you missed it:

There were a few of these masterpieces in his not so long career and he is used to be the center of attention. But since his arrival in Barcelona back in the summer 2013, he had to share and, why not, avoid playing the team-leader role he was used to. The first season was used for adaptation and questions arose if the investments would ever pay-off. His second season was clearly better than the first one and showed he could be a great player on the big stages as well.

26th September 2015: Lionel Messi leaves the pitch at the 9th minute during a league match and won’t be back in the next two months. The question runs the world: how will Barcelona do this long without its biggest star? Is Neymar ready to assume his old role?

I hadn’t an anwer at the moment either, but now I can look back and see what the numbers have to tell us. I used STATS data to build the table below, which shows Neymar numbers relative to passes completed, passes made, passes completed percentage, shots made, goals scored, suffered fouls and assists made during this season playing with and without Messi. I also have goals scored and suffered and points won, so we can infere the collective performance.

The numbers clearly show improvement in Neymar’s performance since he was put under pressure. Passes completed and passes completed percentage present slightly lower values. A decrease in ball possession is expected when you lose someone who is able to keep the ball as Lionel Messi. Even though, the total number of passes made is the same. In this sense, Neymar increased his participation on team offense. Since then, he shoots more and scores more goals and, furthermore, Barcelona scores more goals and wins more points. Neymar influences the performance of his teammates as well, as he has distributed assists since Messi’s injury.

The last evidence showing how Barcelona plays at the moment is presented by the heat maps of Who Scored?. The first one shows Barcelona – Sevilla on 8th August 2015 for the UEFA Super Cup, when Neymar did not play. Here we can see how most of the actions took place where Messi plays.

On 20th September 2015, things were more balanced when playing Levante and, with both of the stars on the pitch, we can see a more fairly distribution of the actions.

And finally, when playing Villareal on 8th November 2015, Barcelona concentrated its actions on the left side and we can see a mirrored heat map of that one in the first situation.

Neymar is rated at the moment the best player at the Spanish La Liga according to Who Scored?. Together with the presented informations, there is only one possible answer to the stated questions: Neymar is ready for this role and Barcelona is doing well without Messi.

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