Round and round
Round and round
‘Possession’ doesn’t capture how well Spain pass the football. Here are some numbers which do
Welcome to the 31st edition of Plot the Ball for 2023.
If you missed the previous edition, you can read it here:
I’ve been writing a lot more about the NBA recently — and will actually be at Barclays Center in Brooklyn tomorrow to watch the Nets play the Orlando Magic. This weekend, though, I’ll also be checking back in on the Spanish national football team — who I caught in action during the group stages of Euro 2022 in London.
‘Possession’ doesn’t capture how well Spain pass the football. Here are some numbers which do
No matter how much sport you watch on TV, every now and then it’s worth going and seeing the real thing in person — and coming face to face with just how vast the gulf in skill level between professional athletes and the rest of us really is.
I had that sort of experience last July, watching the Spanish national football team fizz passes around the Brentford Community Stadium in their Euro 2022 group-stage match against Germany.
That game didn’t end too well for Spain — despite, characteristically, having more of the ball, and the better share of the game’s chances1.
And the first goal they conceded was the worst nightmare of a team intent on keeping the ball and playing out from the back: opposing forward Klara Bühl calmly finishing past Sandra Paños, seconds after the Spanish keeper had misplaced a pass straight to her.
But it’s important to remember that watching live sport can be dangerous, too. It’s tempting to draw firmer, more vivid conclusions2 about specific teams and players when you’re watching them from close proximity — but, really, your presence doesn’t make those moments any more more meaningful as competitive encounters3 than others you could watch from the comfort of your sofa.
Writing Spain off based on that brief sequence — even just in that tournament, let alone tournaments to come — would have been foolish.
And, of course, they went on to win a World Cup this past summer while remaining utterly committed to holding on to the ball at almost any cost.
During that tournament, we briefly examined just how distinctive their style is compared to other top international teams.
Looking at the percentage of possession a team has in their games doesn’t really capture their passing execution well, though; it’s more accurate to say that it simply reflects the particular tactical choices they have made while on the pitch.
But with some more advanced data which StatsBomb have released for free on their website, we can now begin to answer some more interesting questions about how Spain’s passing skills shape up against their peers’.
StatsBomb have released a complete set of free event data for each of the last two World Cups4, as well as Euro 2022.
And, in comparing the eight European teams5 who have competed in all three of these tournaments, it starts to emerge where the Spanish stand out.
One of the most notable features of StatsBomb’s football event data — at least compared to other providers — is that they attempt to capture the effect of defenders closing down players on the attacking team when they’re on the ball.
Passes attempted in such circumstances — which are said to be ‘under pressure’ — are, in general, completed at a lower rate6 than those attempted without the close attention of the nearest defender.
But Spain do their best to buck this trend, completing considerably more of their passes under pressure than any of the other European teams under discussion here7.
And it’s when those passes are attempted in positions of more significant jeopardy — inside the team’s own half — that they truly set themselves apart.
They complete 76% of their pass attempts under pressure on their own side of the field — much higher than England, who are second-best in this group with 72%8 — and attempt more of them per 90 minutes than any other team.
The margin between Spain and their peers in this facet of the game is stark — and exists regardless of any poor mistakes I saw with my own eyes that Tuesday night in West London.
It’s fair to say that a lot has changed for the team since that group-stage setback against Germany almost 18 months ago.
And — from the perspective of the players’ own welfare — it’s promising that some steps have been taken to further improve their working conditions after the World Cup exposed just how toxic an environment they were having to operate in under former head coach Jorge Villa and federation president Luis Rubiales.
On the field, though, it seems9 to have been business as usual.
Ahead of their penultimate group-stage fixture tonight, they have won all four of their games so far in the 2023-24 UEFA Women’s Nations League by a combined margin of 16 goals to 310.
Spain are well on their way, once again, to the knockout stages of an international tournament — and, if you catch them on TV either this weekend or in February, you can expect to see them walking the tightrope with the ball in their own half with more precision than anyone else in Europe.
If you can, though, I’d recommend trying to get to see it in person. There’s nothing quite like watching live sport.
You can find the code for this piece on GitHub here
They did go down 0-2 in the first half, so game state was a factor in these stats being skewed in their favour.
StatsBomb founder Ted Knutson is convincing, in my view, on this: “by not sending scouts to watch live matches, we cut out an enormous source of cognitive bias”.
Another cautionary tale, from personal experience: in Los Angeles in 2018, I watched Diana Taurasi — the leading scorer in WNBA history — have an underwhelming 11-point night for the Phoenix Mercury against the Sparks.
England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Sweden; these teams are all also back in competitive action this weekend in the final group-stage round of the UEFA Women’s Nations League. (The competition will also determine which European teams advance to the Olympics.)
Across the three tournaments discussed here, unpressured pass attempts were completed 76% of the time, and pressured pass attempts were completed 68% of the time.
They have completed 76% of their pressured passes in these three tournaments; out of their European peers, England are next highest with 73%. Among the other teams which have competed in these tournaments, both Japan and Scotland have completed a slightly higher percentage of their pressured passes than Spain — but across a smaller sample of games (9 and 3 respectively, compared to Spain’s 15).
Scotland again perform well among other teams, recording a rate of 78% in the 3 games they have played in this dataset; Canada (7 games played) and Japan also rank between Spain and England.
Although it’s hard to say definitively, as data on all levels of the women’s game remains much more sparse than on the men’s side.
Possession stats aren’t available, but a combined total of 67 shots taken and 17 conceded suggests that they’re dominating the ball as usual.