Stylistic Family Tree of Passing Defenses

This builds on my previous post about passing offenses family trees. Now we look at defenses, I enjoy doing these exercises despite simple groupings like this not really establishing value of a defense or offense because it can give you an idea of what a team wants to do and can uncover some interesting teams and managers. The first time I did this, long, long ago at a place called StatsBomb, I wrote this:

It's turned out pretty well. I also became an enormous fan of Ralph Hasenhüttl, when he had his Ingolstadt sides defending like European elite. Despite Ralph being jobless, I remain one of the top 11-13 members of his SE USA fan club. We meet fortnightly, over Skype. And talk about pressing and Tobias Levels.

Anyway, enough fluff, to the clustering. As per the last article, this simply looks at where a defense allows passes (what % of passes against are in each zone) and how opponents pass through the zones (what % of passes are attempted to a forward zone) and that's it. Converting passing to shots, converting passes to completions, dribbles, set pieces, none of that's here. This is simply looking how opposing offenses attempt to move the ball around against defenses. These clusters are not value judgments, lots can separate one defense from the other in same group, they are simply how opponents try to pass against them. I'm not sure this is as telling as the offensive one, as I think offenses have more control of the game, leaving this one much more up to the vagaries of schedule strength so far. It's more of a fun thing to scan than to take as gospel and base analysis on this early in the year, in my opinion. As a reminder, the zones are below:

Interesting Clusters

The Pinned All The Way Back And Opponents Are Deliberating group.

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I've decided to introduce these cheesy looking gauges at the risk of associating red=bad (or good) in your mind as to avoid having to think of many different ways of slightly differentiating degrees of forward play and field tilt. These defenses are pushed all the way back (field tilt=100) and opponents rarely try to progress zones (forward play=20, percentile-ish). I know I said these are not value judgments, but you don't really want to see your team here. Typical team:

Parma

Others: Levante, Real Sociedad, Leganes, Brighton

The Open To Successful, Aggressive Passing group is next.

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Opponents of these teams are constantly trying forward passes and wind up playing a high% of their passes in front of these defenses goals. Typical team:

Arsenal

Others: Manchester United, Fulham, Hertha Berlin, Southampton, West Ham, Genoa, Getafe, Fulham

Juventus and Valencia are together in a Never Forward group. They are the two teams allowing the lowest share of attempted forward progressions of passes as a whole. From Zone 7/8, Valencia allow just 45% of passes to be attempted forward a zone, lowest in the big 4 leagues. From Zones 1 and 2, Juventus see just 22% attempted forward, again lowest among Big 4 leagues. All along the way, in every zone except zone 4 for some reason, these 2 teams are among the top 12 lowest % of passes going forward.

The Push Them Back And Keep Them Back group share some clear characteristics but play quite differently: they force opponents to pass sideways and backwards a lot, a really lot in their "Own Zones (5 through 8)", once opponents get to 4 or maybe 3 though they pass forward at above average rates. Teams often don't get to these Danger Zones, all these teams are top 20% of lowest share of passes allowed in the Danger Zone. I don't want to say "typical team" here because they defend so differently but the passing results wind up looking oddly similar

Manchester City, Napoli, Roma, Borussia Dortmund, Augsburg, Inter

Now you know why that mysterious picture of what looked to be a guy who loves wordy rap and knows a overpriced but good breakfast place in multiple continents was the header image. It's Augsburg manager Manuel Baum and he seems to be doing at least something right defensively.

The kind of mirror image of the above group comes in this next group, which allows high rates of forward passing from Opponent Zones (5 and higher) but then opponents start passing sideways and backwards a lot in Zones 4 and lower. They allow opponents to spend a huge % of their time in Zones 3 and 4 but not necessarily a lot of passes into Zones 1 or 2.

Atletico Madrid, Athletic Bilbao, Huddersfield, Bologna, Frosinone, Newcastle. In years past I don't think Atletico would be here, I talked briefly about them here and they had a brutal defensive performance at the weekend, allowing 18 shots, 11 in the box, and 3 big chances to Villarreal, a team who now has 7 goals on the season.

A few teams are so unique, that they got their own cluster: Barcelona, Bayern and Eibar. Only Manchester United see a higher proportion of passes played forward a zone than Eibar, and Eibar hold opponents way back into their own territory. Of course, Bayern and Barcelona do that as well, territory-wise but don't quite have the same forward-funnel. Those two could probably be in the same group, if I'd run it 2% differently, they might have been.

A couple of German teams with fascinating defenses are grouped together. Schalke and RB Leipzig allow the lowest % of total opposition passes that go into zones 2-4:

Not sure if you can see the teams at the top there: Bayern, Napoli, Eibar, Barcelona, Man City, Inter and Dortmund follow. That seems like a good list!

Other groups

Liverpool/Werder Bremen/Mainz: sort of similar to the Man City group where teams start playing forward in midfield after passing sideways and backwards up top but opponents get further upfield against these three than against that previous group.

Real Betis, Celta Vigo, Empoli, Stuttgart, Espanyol, Bournemouth: Opponents generally pass forward a lot up the field until zones 1-3, kind of the "Bend But Don't Break" defense I outlined in my Bournemouth article.

Hannover/Hoffenheim/Leicester/Wolves

Lazio/Nürnberg

Villarreal/Sassuolo/Gladbach/Leverkusen/Chievo/Cardiff

Wolfsburg/Chelsea/Tottenham: Teams play forward a huge amount but don't get far up the pitch at all.

Real Madrid/SPAL/Sampdoria/Atalanta/Eintracht Frankfurt

Rayo Vallecano/Torino/Freiburg/Fiorentina/Cagliari

Düsseldorf/Huesca/Girona

AC Milan/Sevilla/Udinese/Alaves

Everton/Crystal Palace/Burnley/Watford