Quote:
Originally Posted by Dagger
No it doesn't. Argentina had the same possession advantage against the Germans as the Spaniards did against the Dutch and they lost 4-0. England held the possession advantage against the Germans and lost by 3.
Spain killed the Swiss in possession with a 63-37% advantage, and they lost.
It doesn't mean everything, far from it. A tactically astute manager such as Low can murder possession style teams with a sly counter attack.
The Dutch had the winning formula yesterday. Spain wasn't going to be dominated in the possession column, and we already saw the Swiss beat the Spaniards in a similar fashion. I'd argue that if Robben barried either of the breakaways he had(or was rightfully awarded a dangerous FK, with Puyol being sent off) then we would be christening Van Marwijk's brilliance.
Spain is always going to win the possession battle, the Oranje were skilled enough to play a possession game with them, but rightfully tried to play a counter attacking style. Imagine the Dutch playing possession game with the speed of Villa, Navas/Pedro,Iniesta and Ramos charging up the right with the passing range of Alonso and Xavi behind them. The second they make a poor pass they're dead. Matijsen, Heitinga and Van Bronckhorst are all slow. Van Der Wiel would be the only with the pace to keep up but Ramos and Navas/Pedro played on the right flank as opposed to Van Der Wiel's left. I can assure you this game would have looked a lot more like Portugal-North Korea than the close game it was had they played the way you suggested.
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Good analysis.
The way I see it, possession has a very small correlation to winning in low scoring types of games (hockey, soccer), but much more in high scoring games like basketball or lacrosse.
When 99% of your possessions result in no goals (soccer), having a 53-47 possession advantage means that you score an average of 0.06 goals more than the other team per 100 possessions. Over a long season, that minor differential might translate into more wins, but in an elimination style tourney, the variance is high enough that it doesn't matter.
On the other hand, a game like football or basketball where the percentage is much higher, holding onto possession via field control in football, or creating turnovers/2nd chances in basketball become absolutely vital.
However, there aren't that many interesting stats to keep in soccer. I doubt they want to see a "passes to the goalie from the attacking zone" stat or "# of dives called/failed" stat.
Another interesting comparison would be the shots on goal stat in hockey. A team like Detroit is designed to shoot from everywhere, and they end up with 40 shots a game. Other teams shoot only from good positions, and end up with 20 goals a game. I do remember seeing a chart trying to correlate SOG/game to wins and it just didn't happen.