Going Clustering: Home vs Away effect and Bundesliga/CL Goodies

Nov 19, 2024

Skip the Lights Fantastic at Christmastime! — Bee Better Naturally with Helen Yoest

The process: every CL/PL/Bundesliga open play pass is clustered on start and endpoint. There are 80 clusters, this number has been chosen through trial and error over the years…arguably it’s a bit too low as you do get some odd passes slipping into clusters but it gets a decent enough sample size. We then look at how teams vary from the average in how they pass.

Home v Away Passing Breakdown

Home teams play 10% more passes than away teams at even game states. Home teams tilt the field much more forward than away teams in terms of what types of passes they play:

Home teams complete 82.7% of their passes while away teams complete 82%. The broad expected pass completions are that away teams “should” complete 82.5% of their passes while home teams complete 82.5%, so the gap is

Home: +0.3% above expected

Away: -0.5% below expected

A buildup score per pass (rough way of factoring how often passes lead to threat) for away passes is .045 buildups per pass, home teams are 19% higher at .053. The expected buildup per pass is actually notably different at .047 and .051, that makes up about half of the actual difference.

So the summary of this is:

home teams broadly complete more of every type of pass and thus tilt the field forward on away teams and play way more passes in away teams territory

away teams do not counter that by being more dangerous per pass somehow, they in fact do not play more aggressive passes and they do not turn passes into threat at a higher rate. Home teams broadly turn own half passes into threat at a much higher rate than away teams, suggesting to me it’s possible these are leading to less contested progression.

Why this happens remains quite fascinating.

Bundesliga Notables

This pretty much sums up the Sahin struggle at times. Dortmund are great on the counter, devastating even, but in settled possession they often look really short of ideas. Like the one idea is able to get the ball to this harmless spot.

The give Marmoush and Ekitike maximum space in transition strategy means the core of your team looks pretty weak.

Really left-side dominant this year with Wirtz having the ball so much and probably also wit the right 10 and Frimpong struggling to make big impacts.

What is noticeable here is just how normal it looks, particularly compared to Bayern.

The lack right side has been massively underrepresented in attack as LB Maximilian Mittelstädt has been a massive part of the attack while at RB Vagnoman has not at all.