Return to Top; Players. About 44 percent of Messis open (non-set piece) shots are individual plays, taken without an assist.5 This is lower than the 46 percent of unassisted shots for players overall, but Messi scores on these shots more than 23 percent of the time, compared to all players 5 percent. Despite the fact that Messi and Argentina beat France in the World Cup final, PSG fans were clearly happy to see their main man back in the squad.When his na. While Messi appears to shoot much more efficiently, thats partly because he loses the ball more during failed take-on attempts, while Ronaldo loses it more because of missed shots. If that partly due to the . Of the 13 shots, 8 shots were on target and the other 5 shots were off target. Messi and Ronaldo have been compared to each other so often by sports media and fans alike that it almost feels trite to compare them again, but it cant be helped. But it's also his drive and desire to win and love for the game that makes him so great. After an El Clasico match between Barcelona and Real Madrid in December 2017, there was widespread coverage of the fact that Messi walked 83 percent of the roughly 5 miles he covered that game. But Cristiano Ronaldo of Real Madrid which, like Barcelona, doesnt press particularly stringently in its opponents half averaged four-fifths of a mile more than Messi. If this were basketball, we might expect a negative (or at least decelerating) relationship between shot volume and shot efficiency the more shots a player takes the less efficient he is.3 But it turns out this isnt really the case in soccer: More efficient shooters tend to take more shots. Using data as a filter, is it more impressive for a striker to score 10 goals for a team battling relegation than a striker scoring 25 goals for the inevitable title winners? Bobby Gardiner is a product manager at Football Whispers. Adjustments are also made to a players defensive metrics. His touch and control dont vary whether the game is a friendly, a league match, a Champions League match or the World Cup. Messi is the only footballer on the list and he stands head and shoulders above everyone in every aspect. Minutes Per Goal. Despite dishing a large number of assists (more on that to come), Messi sometimes gets called selfish. But maybe he isnt selfish enough. queensland figure skating. Of the 29 shots, 18 shots were on target and the other 11 shots were off target. Messi had his best passing day against Real Madrid in the league over that time span, completing 51 of 56 pass attempts (91.1 percent). Hes the one. Yes, the 25-year-old Spurs striker only averages 38 touches per match, with him only getting 12 successful touches for every unsuccessful one. From the above, you might think Messi is a selfish player. All-time Stats Records Head-to-Head Player Comparison Premier League Player Stats Touches Goals Assists Clean sheets Appearances Minutes played Yellow cards Red cards Passes Touches Shots Hit woodwork Big chances missed Offsides Tackles Fouls Dispossessed Own goals Clearances Clearances off line Saves Penalties Saved High claims Punches General PIT. At the aggregate level, defenders will look to cut off the areas that are most dangerous relative to where the ball is. David de Gea ( Manchester United) - 26.8 6. Adjusting players shots per 100 touches shuffles the pack neatly. Elsewhere, you can tease out the responsibilities held by players for their respective team, with Manchester Uniteds Bruno Fernandes (24 per cent), Newcastles Allan Saint-Maximin (20 per cent), Manchester Citys Kevin De Bruyne (20 per cent) and Liverpools Trent Alexander-Arnold (19 per cent) all among the expected candidates for their teams share of creative responsibility to advance the ball into dangerous areas. The biggest stars on each club, Barcelonas Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo of Real Madrid, each scored two goals. Yet when they did have it, they were incredibly efficient. 80 touches. Only 5 percent of his kicks are strong ones (compared to 8 percent for all players), but those kicks score 36 percent of the time, and have .251 GAA each! Team Finders: Season Finder, Game Finder, Streak Finder, Span Finder, Split Finder. Show only players who played a minimum of: Copyright 2018 - 2023, Footballcritic Inc. All right reserved. He runs an average of 8'727 kilometres each game. Fulham's Joao Palhinha could be signing of the SEASON Running Backs Primed For Increased Touches (2020 Fantasy Football) Barcelona (17). The PSG and Bayern forwards could not be separated in the creative standings as the club season reached its conclusion. At least for everyone not named Lionel Messi. Because Messi takes shots that are more likely to go in, his average attempt has an expectation of .182 goals, while the average Ronaldo shot has an expectation of .124 goals so we would expect Messis shooting to be more efficient based on that alone. The three of them, in Barcelonas devastating 4-3-3, would spread out wide across the pitch, forcing defenders to follow them. But dont sleep on his right foot: When he uses it, he scores 23 percent of the time. what kind of kicks he uses to make those shots, even how his defensive playmaking compares to other high-volume shooters, How The Federal Reserve Is The Shadow Branch Of The Government, Why Original Predictions About The War In Ukraine Were So Off. Suarez is successful less than 35 percent of the time. For example, focusing solely on the Premier League, we can look at players share of team passes into the penalty area when they are on the field. They divide this space gain into two types: active, in which the player is moving at running speed, and passive, in which he is not. I think this criticism is fair and I found it intriguing enough to look into the matter myself. I treated all such shots as unassisted, even if another players assistance was noted. Ronaldo, with more than twice as many shots, ran just 5.5 goals above expectation, and no one but Messi is higher than 7.5 goals. Watch how Messi passively gains space on the right wing for Barcelona during an attack, with a dual view showing how Bornn and Fernandez dynamically value space behind the Villarreal defenders: Applying the models to data from that La Liga match between Barcelona and Villarreal in January 2017, Bornn and Fernandez found that Barcelonas most important principle space gainers were Sergio Busquets, Andres Iniesta and Messi. Kylian Mbappe-Lottin Statistics - Goals, Passes & Shots etc Even so, these stats are perfectly consistent with the argument that Messi is the best footballer on earth: That .199 GAA is better than the .175 GAA per game that Ronaldo has earned at Real Madrid since 2010. Despite this, Messi is still a trend-breaker:4. AMC AML FWR FW FWL Sub. FC Barcelona - This is how Leo Messi trains / As entrena Messi Watch on Crystal Palaces Michael Olise tops the list, scooping nearly 25 per cent of the teams open-play passes into the box when on the field. Premier League Graph Ranks Average Touches Of Strikers - SPORTbible What deals does Messi have? As the primary striker for such a juggernaut, it can be hard to detangle Messis goal-scoring prowess from Barcelonas general offensive dominance. Christian Eriksen has completed an average of 140.5 metres per minute in the three full games he has played for Totteham Hotspur. Lewandowski is still near the top, but the top 20 is filled more with out-and-out No 9s whose role is to shoot frequently with the touches they have. When I say a bad performance of Messi, that doesn't mean he's literally done not. Cristiano Ronaldos 31 touches were his fewest in a La Liga game since he had 32 against Barcelona on April 21. Lionel Messi INCREDIBLE first touch before the game vs Angers In terms of average per year, Messi gets paid $168,479,776. This is a simple example, but lets dig deeper. Argentina (25) Cristiano covers more Champions League ground than Messi - Uefa Since the 2010 World Cup, Messi has scored 19 goals and six assists for Argentina in 22 games (.9 goals per game and .3 assists per game, compared to 1.1 and .4 for Barca). Then we can do the same for all shots taken by his team without the players involvement, and compare the two. Lionel Messi Average Goals Per Game | StatMuse Between Messis shots taken and chances created, he is responsible for about 48 percent of Barcelonas regular (non-penalty, non-set play) shot attempts. Whether possession football much less the extreme form employed by Barca is even a good strategy at all is controversial. Cristiano Ronaldo | Manchester United | xG | Shot Map | Goal stats With Jamie Vardy at Leicester, his team didnt have many minutes on the ball. Lionel Messi (26) Dungoyne won the game 8-1. Mario Melchiot: Messi winning FIFA award was 'no-brainer'. 162 touches. Even while strolling, he is helping his team by holding ground in valuable areas, waiting for the ball to come to him. Lionel Messi has taken 65 shots in 20 matches so far in the Ligue 1 2022/2023 season. Extra Points Made per Game. In a seminal 1968 study, Charles Reep noted that 80 percent of goals came from possessions involving three or fewer passes, and that successfully completing a lot of passes without losing the ball was very difficult. For its data, AMK has picked the following 11 forwards from the league: While the Manchester United striker is often targeted for his poor touch, he's not the worst person on the chart. Messi is far more likely to try to advance the ball toward the goal, and far more likely to succeed: Messi makes more passes than the other forwards, with a higher percentage of those passes trying to advance the ball toward the goal, and a higher percentage of those passes finding their targets (typical Messi!). While Ronaldo currently has more goals overall, Messi has the edge in the scoring department, with a higher season average (37.9 to 35), having hit a high of 73 goals in 2011-12, though his. Its generally harder to stay valuable over a larger number of shots, and we havent yet factored in that difficulty. And thats just the stuff that made it into this article. Messi, Ronaldo make limited touches count - Stats & Info- ESPN The overall penalty conversion rate for Messi Cuccittini is 77.68%. Behind him sat players from similarly high-possession sides, with Mohamed Salah (Liverpool), Zlatan Ibrahimovic (AC Milan), Kylian Mbappe (PSG) and Karim Benzema (Real Madrid) among the prolific cohort. Warm up, 20 minutes. Our content is not intended for an audience under 18 years of age. Shots, even bad ones, are more of a limited resource in soccer than possessions. In 47 UEFA matches since 2010, Barcelona has scored 104 goals, or 1.08 goals per game more than a Spanish team comprised of a similar offensive core and using the same tiki-taka playing style, minus Lionel Messi. I didnt count missed tackles as either positive or negative, because they arent nearly as bad as a successful tackle is good. Messi had his best passing day against Real Madrid in the league over that time span, completing 51 of 56 pass attempts (91.1 percent). Now, if Messi scores with his hand or does another maze run versus England in a future World Cup, well all roll over in disbelief. Only the second of those is accounted for in shooting stats. But even when hes walking, new research suggests, hes far from idle. For this plot, Ive excluded penalty shots, shootout shots and direct free kicks. I can picture Cristiano Ronaldo at his computer typing in get touch like Messi. Kyrsten Sinema's Odds Of Reelection Don't Look Great. Assists Per Game (APG) The assists per game statistic shows, on average, how many assists a player creates during one game. Weve known this trait of Messis for quite some time: In 2014 World Cup coverage, Ken Early remarked that only Messi has figured out how to win matches by moving less than everyone else. Benjamin Morris wrote about the phenomenon for FiveThirtyEight after Argentina lost to Germany in the final. Matej Vydra (Burnley) -. This attacking performance currently places him at 15th out of 408 for Ligue 1 Players who've played at least 3 matches.This player scored a total of 12 goals so far in the season in the league, which places him at 3rd in the PSG squad's Top Scorers list. To assess all players equally, we can adjust defensive statistics by counting the number of times they make those actions for every 1,000 opponent touches rather than in total. Erling Haaland at Man City: Few touches but lots of chances as Pep Messi loves his left foot, shooting with it 78 percent of the time, and scoring 23 percent. This season in the Champions League (the only competition to release this basic running data), Messi ran comfortably less than any other elite attackers, averaging just less than 5 miles per 90 minutes. In fact, the more involved Messi is in a shot attempt, the more likely his team is to score. Now lets plot that added value against each players13 total offensive participation (the percentage of team shots hes involved with): Finally, after however many charts, we see a diminishing return.