Perusing World Cup Passing Data: Germany, Nigeria, and Colombia
This will be hopefully an ongoing series where I look through the World Cup data to try and find some interesting patterns of open play passing (no headers, free kicks or corners) from the past World Cup. I know everyone has moved on to the leagues but I love the World Cup and it has the benefit of being finished, more interesting because it has a wider variety of players/teams and is reasonably accessible to video, so this is the project I am oh-so-tentatively taking on. As I've done in past I grouped all WC passes into different "types" by using a very rough k-means clustering. It's something I come back to over and over because I believe it's a very powerful tool to look at how teams are passing and progressing the ball. I chose 30 types for the WC because it's a small tournament basically. Probably not that rigorous, I know, but that's what you get on SaturdaysOnCouch blog instead of StatsBomb, sorry.
Germany's Right Side Clog
Germany went out in the Group Stages of the World Cup. Remember that? That didn't stop the Germans from playing more of the types of passes seen above than any other team, including those with much longer runs. The next 4 teams in most of these passes played were Belgium (358), England (331), Croatia (311) and France (302). Germany played 421. That long cross from close to the touchline: Germany played more of them than any other team in the World Cup, and completed lower than the WC average. Only 46% of their 138 right-side crosses found their target, tournament average was 48%. This is with countries like Iran, Panama and Tunisia going 7/33 to drag down averages. It doesn't really make sense that Germany should ever be below-average in a World Cup at basically any completion statistic. Basically this is Kimmich territory, he played more than twice as many of the passes seen above as the second most common German name (Ozil) and he played 58 of their 138 crosses, again leading the entire World Cup in just three games.
All of Germany's passing percentages were higher when playing down the left side, they just didn't do it nearly as much. The mirror-image passes to the 3 types above were played only ~65% as often. This could be because they didn't have a talent comparable to Kimmich at left-back and it was up to Kroos to lead the way out left as Hector and Plattenhardt weren't as aggressive at getting forward in the attack. This leaves just more bodies over on the right. Whatever the reason, being forced into so many right-sided crosses was a dead-end for the German attack.
Nigeria's Problem At the Back
Nice and simple passes around the back, keep possession, draw the defense in, get re-organized, whatever. That's what those passes above generally are. They were completed at a 92% rate in the World Cup. The worst team at these passes was unsurprisingly Iran, a team who even in Asian Qualifiers, was one of the bottom of barrel when it comes to passing %. The next worst team was a team with basically no excuse based on the talent level they have access to in Nigeria. Nigeria lost the ball attempting one of these passes 26 times in their 3 games, only Belgium, Croatia and France lost it more and they all played at least 212 more of these types of passes. Nigeria lost the ball 8 more times than England did even though England played 415 more passes. This was a team effort: goalie Uzoho missed 4 passes, Leon Balogun 4, William Troost-Ekong 3, and leading the way were Kenneth Omeruo and Brian Idowu who went a combined 13 for 23 (56.5%) on the seemingly simplest of passes. Let's take a look at the video to see what went wrong.
[vimeo 283793953 w=640 h=360] <p><a href="https://vimeo.com/283793953">nigeria1</a>
Basically what you expected. Defenders and goalies who don't look comfortable at all. Nigeria was a big mess at the World Cup, there was no visible plan for essentially the entire time, a big way to move forward would be to get some defenders and goalies who won't give the ball away so much in such dangerous positions. Offensively and defensively they are a big risk.
Colombia's Lack of Left Hand
Colombia had no left side. They simply didn't get the ball into dangerous zones from the left side of their attack: they played 37 total of these type passes in 4 games and completed just 16: only Iran and Tunisia completed fewer. Not good neighbors for a side with serious thoughts about semi-finals or more. Mojica the left back played 15 of these passes which ranked 15th among the Round of 16 losers. Ricardo Rodriguez of Switzerland played 33, his teammate Steven Zuber played 23 in ~250 minutes, Raphael Guerreiro of Portugal played 35, Yuto Nagotomo of Japan played 20, etc, etc among other left backs for comparison. But the real deficit for Portugal came because no advanced players would move left to create a threat out wide. The next player after Mojica was Falcao who played 5 (competing 4 which led the team), Quintero played 4, Bacca 3. Of Portugal's midfield 3, all seemed to want to drift right. Quintero, Cuadrado and James played 48 combined passes from the "mirror spots" on the right side while playing just 7 total from the left. Right back Arias chipped in similar numbers to Mojica on the left, there was just no balance from the attacking midfielders.
Hopefully I can get to more topics and some more video soon.