Champions League Chalkboards, matchday four
This week’s analysis of all 16 Champions League games, courtesy of the excellent TotalFootball iPhone app.
Group A
Tottenham 3-1 Inter
No question of the main story in Spurs’ 3-1 win over the European Champions. Gareth Bale destroyed Maicon, causing havoc all night and providing two assists in the second. The Chalkboard demonstrates both Maicon’s torrid evening – one out of seven tackles successful, and the similarity of Bale’s two assists, one for Peter Crouch and one for Roman Pavlyuchenko.
Werder Bremen 0-2 Twente
There was an interesting pattern to Bremen’s crossing in this game – the left-wing crosses all arrived from deep positions, whilst right-wing crosses were played in from level with the penalty box.
Group B
Benfica 4-3 Lyon
Carlos Martins was not guaranteed of a place in the Benfica side last season, but the departure of Angel Di Maria and Ramires, and the slow start of Silvio and Nicolas Gaitan have helped him become a key figure in the side. His performance against Lyon was incredible, assisting all four goals to put Benfica 4-0 up. The late collapse occurred after he had departed.
Hapoel Tel-Aviv 0-0 Schakle
The Chalkboard here shows how reliant Schalke are on their right side for balls into the box, with the midfielders playing the ball out towards Jefferson Farfan at every opportunity. 17 of the 22 crosses were played from the right.
Group C
Valencia 3-0 Rangers
Rangers were always going to see less of the ball at the Mestalla, but they weren’t good enough when not in possession. They completed just 11 of 33 attempted tackles in their own half.
Bursaspor 0-3 Manchester United
The Turkish Champions were guilty of trying too much in this defeat, which confirmed their exit from the competition. Too often they tried dribbles in the opposition half and gave the ball away – only 6 from 19 were successful.
Group D
Copenhagen 1-1 Barcelona
Barcelona may have failed to win in Denmark, but Xavi’s passing Chalkboard is still a thing of beauty. 98 from 103 passes completed – the only time he plays an unsuccessful pass is when trying to play the killer ball in the final third.
Rubin Kazan 0-0 Panathinaikos
A second goalless draw between these sides was characterized by poor final balls. Rubin left-back Cristian Ansaldi was one of the guilty players – being unsuccessful with every difficult pass he attempted in the final third.
Group E
Basel 2-3 Roma
A strange contrast in the shooting between these two sides – Roma triumphed despite having 20 fewer shots.
Cluj 0-4 Bayern
Mario Gomez recorded a hattrick in Bayern’s impressive win. He had four chances, put all four on target, and found the net with three.
Group F
Chelsea 4-1 Spartak
Chelsea took a while to get going in this fixture – without Florent Malouda and Frank Lampard they missed a link between midfield and attack. A lot of long balls were hit towards Didier Drogba – the Chalkboard of his received passes demonstrates how many were longer passes. One of these resulted in Drogba going into the box and winning a penalty which he converted.
Zilina 0-7 Marseille
A crazy scoreline and a crazy shooting Chalkboard. Zilina failed to get a single shot on target from 12 attempts, whilst Marseille had eleven shots on target, and seven goals.
Group G
Auxerre 2-1 Ajax
Auxerre kept their Champions League campaign alive with a crucial win over Ajax. The French side lack real technical quality in the final third, but they are one of the most disciplined teams in the competition. This shows how organised their defensive performance was, with almost all the interceptions midway in their own half, 25-35 yards from goal.
Milan 2-2 Real Madrid
The battle of the World Cup-winning deep-lying playmakers, Andrea Pirlo v Xabi Alonso. Real used Mesut Oezil to track Pirlo, whilst Milan didn’t have a central attacking midfielder, giving Alonso time and space on the ball. Consequently, Alonso completed over twice as many passes as Pirlo, and Real had the better of the game.
Group H
Braga 1-0 Partizan Belgrade
After seeming one of the weakest sides in the competition after two games, two wins from the subsequent two means Braga now have a chance of qualification. Their defensive display and 1-0 win was more reminiscent of last season’s form when they took the league to the final day – 14 out of 17 attempted tackles were successful.
Shakhtar 2-1 Arsenal
Andriy Pyatov was forced into seven saves after Theo Walcott’s opener, but Arsenal made life easy for him – all of the seven shots were straight at the Shakhtar goalkeeper.
Just wanted to say that the chalkboards are a real winner!
Werder Bremen has no real (left) winger (or attacking left full back). That’s not a new problem. Werder signed Silvestre, who was unemployed, to help out but he was not a big help. In fact, Schaaf left him out of the first team against Twente because the ’supporters’ were booing him out of the stadium in the last league game. (But Silvestre was not the only player in Bremen to blame, take a look at the holding midfielders: http://werder-fussball-blog.net/2010/11/werder-vs-nurnberg-wie-kettet-man-einen-lutscher-an-das-12/ )
Werder’s problems are the lack of a good left winger (Marin is not increasing in terms of using his brain on the field), the lack of good defenders on the bench and some underperforming veterans (or ‘your time is over’ veterans…).
Schaaf is changing his squad nearly every week and due to the injuries in the defence and because he never found his first choice system. midfielders like Wesley and slow-man Frings have to play in the back four. of course that has a negative effects on the midfield.
Who did Inter have at right back against Bale in the first match?
It was Maicon as well. Is anyone else impressed that all of the long passes to Drogba were actually successful? That man is a beast, strong in the air and powerful on the ball. Also, is there a similar application on the internet for Champions League chalkboards? Sucks to be one of the few people without an iPhone. D:
Passes *received*. It doesn’t show the uncompleted passes.
Ah, my bad. I assumed the 32/32 was successful over total.
Where does the info come from on the Total Football App? I’m assuming they are aggregating data from another source and representing it graphically in the app….or are the creators of the app actually inputting their own data from watching the games?
edit…I see the data comes from Opta–nice!
Tottenham 3-1 Inter:
what in the world happened to Maicon since the WC2010?? Bale has been in good form, looks increasingly fit and sharp. i just worry he’s not using his full potential, as all 3 goals and 2 assists against Inter seem to be very similar. if it’s not broken, go ahead and break it! he should either improve his defending or try playing on the right just to improve his tactical and positional knowledge…but who’s got time to experiment these days?
Valencia 3-0 Rangers:
early threatening chances aside, Rangers put themselves down against a less than convincing Valencia. 5-4-1 sounds desperate, especially when they seemed clueless in possesion at times. good to see Banega back in his best position, and Aduriz is proving he’s not just a “Crouch” (good feet for a big guy), he’s actually superb tactically
Milan 2-2 Real Madrid:
talk about a “Jose Mourinho team”, fighting till the dying minutes. and of all players, Pedro Leon (who was supposed to be “dead” along with Benzema) to be the last minute hero. Milan put themslves down by being very passive in the last minutes. that one counter-attack when Zlatan stopped and passed back because no-one bothered to cross the half-way line! pathetic
Shakhtar 2-1 Arsenal:
i love watching those Brazilians in Shakhtar, so talented yet under-rated. Jadson is a maestro, Willian and Douglas a joy to watch. Arsenal looked dangerous but only in patches. i think they needed to control the game better and see the ball more. much has been said about Walcott’s improvement since the WC2010 omission. maybe it’s just me, but i still see the same mistakes
great analysis as usual ZM, a good balance between reading games and reading statistics. a preview of the upcoming Euro derbies?
Hapoel Tel-Aviv 0-0 Schakle
I guess the Germans were aptly named for this game…
(OK, no-one likes a smart-arse, I know.)
This site is excellent.
Some people in Germany call Schalke ‘Schlacke’ (bed ash). Supporters of Borussia Dortmund call Schalke ‘Herne-West’, and the Schalke supporters call Dortmund ‘Lüdenscheid-Nord’. both sides don’t take the rival’s name in their mouth.
I think Farfan is the man to stop at Schalke. Yesterday, they won their first home match. Raul was ‘asked’ to play more in the box and he scored two goals.
Nice, you’re on the NY Times Soccer blog too. Taking over the USA..
I think it is interesting to note that whilst most of Bremen’s crosses from the left were from deep and most from the right were closer to the byline… The successful ones from the left were all closer to the byline and all the successful ones from the right were from deeper.
I think the word for Maicon is supposed to be “horrid”, not “torrid”. “Torrid” means hot, or passionate.
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