Inter v Bayern: passing statistics
The passing statistics after a Champions League game always make for interesting reading, particularly when Barcelona thrash a team, and we can point to the passing graphs and claim they sum up how much better Barcelona were, and how they won by passing the opposition off the pitch.
Inter’s situation is rather different – they seem to be happy to let the opposition have the ball, playing on the counter-attack when they need a goal, and frankly not bothering to attack when they don’t.
Bayern’s dominance is possibly even greater than you might expect, with their defenders and central midfielders completing the most passes, and every Bayern player (aside from the goalkeeper and Ivica Olic) completing more passes than every Inter player. The Olic statistic indicates how rarely Bayern managed to involve him in their build-up play.
Starting players only. Substituted players are denoted with an asterisk.
These graphs show which players combined the most during the game:
Again, whilst the Bayern dominance is clear, it’s interesting that Inter’s striker, Diego Milito, completed as many passes to Wesley Sneijder as Ivica Olic, Bayern’s striker, completed to anyone.
All stats from UEFA.com
Inter v Bayern: passing statistics
These stats are astonishing every time. It says a fair bit about Inter’s style.
Looking at some of the other stats Inter’s pass completion percentages were as much as 20% worse than Bayern.
Team Statistics: -
http://www.uefa.com/newsfiles/ucl/2010/2000488_ts.pdf
For once, stats say all. The Bayern pass pattern is an inverted pyramid, the more attacking the player, the less balls played and less passes completed. Inter is opposite, with few passes, but often to attacking players. Thinking about stopping watching games, I only need to wait for ZM analysis…
This just shows some things.
1) Is isn’t enough with having the ball possession, you should also know what to do with it.
2) Passing is pointless if it doesn’t accomplishes anything. So, Bayern, Barça (and probably Chelsea) completed way more passes than Inter… and what did they get with that?
3) To defeat defensive style of playing you surely won’t need strikers like Olic and Ibrahimovic. You need offensive players that also create game play.
generally you are right. but the purpose of the Dutch (or van Gaal) philisophy of possession and of passing is not only waiting for failures and creating scoring chances, it’s about let the opposing players run (and make them tired) and about ‘as long as i controll the ball the opponent can’t make a goal’. This strategy worked very well the last month in the Bundelsliga, the DFB Pokal, and the Champions League.
as we all know this strategy didn’t work the whole game and Bayern had problems in what you call ‘accomplish anything’. Inter has a great positional play and as soon as they scored, they had no reason to run. Inter’s counterattack strategy was decisive, not only yesterday. But the game could have ended 0:0 or 1:1 after 90 minutes and we would have a different discussion today. We can’t buy anything with all this IFs and WHENs …
I think Olic is always good for a goal, but with two or three central backs around, his energy was not enough. Klose and Gomez were not playing that great when they got their chance.
It says a lot that Bayern’s most used pass was Badstuber back to Schweinsteiger.
back?
Surprised to see Robben so high on the pass list. Many of his were unproductive or else, too hopeful. Robbem is excellent but rather one dimensional, as in his Chelsea days. You know what you’ll get but Ribery’s movement and, more importantly, the attention the Inter defence would have to expend on him, may have led to Robben being more effective. He was their only out. Altintop, though a good player, was handled rather easily.
What would be interesting (not that this isn’t) would be a simlilar graphic but only up until Inter scored their 1st goal. Are Inter really happy to give up possession throughout or only after they have taken the lead?
fwiw, possession was 67-33 in the first half, compared to 69-31 in the second. so not much difference in that way. also, inter attempted slightly fewer passes in the second half (160 to 129) and completed a lower percentage (66% to 55%). all taken from the uefa stats rocco posted.
Oh for chalkboards!
Quite!
I was hoping I would see one of them, to illustrate the huge numbers of passing done by the Bayern midfield, over and back across the field.