Guardiola's favorite, not the fans'

Preface

I already erased a long introduction starting from Dunga World cup 1994 to Zanetti to prove my case showing that the player who is less twinkling in the game, is not necessarily the less important, public opinion is created through a vast of catchy slogans and emotional judgments, which turn to be considered as facts for the fans, but not necessarily for the team coach. To save space on the article I will only paste the following about Dunga in the World cup 1994 where he was not even considered as a football player by the majority of Brazil fans but ended up being the key factor for winning the world cup:

“He would be consistently targeted by Brazilian press due to his supposedly thuggish style of playing. This period in Brazil's football history was called "Era Dunga", as according to fans and journalists he symbolized the less than thrilling, slow and defensive style of the team. In spite of that, Brazil's new coach Carlos Alberto Parreira kept Dunga as one of the starting eleven throughout the 1994 World Cup Qualifiers and Finals.”

“Raí actually started the 1994 World Cup as Brazilian captain but after a series of poor performances he was dropped altogether for Mazinho. Dunga took the captaincy and went on to lift the trophy. Dunga had redeemed himself in the eyes of the press and fans alike, and ever since has been considered a symbol of heart and determination.” (source: Wikipedia)

How often does it happen? All the fans all over the world believe in something, and feel it’s too obvious, and then get shocked that the coach does something else! How stupid is he? We all saw it! Hm…Really?

I believe the reason why fans can’t see things the same way coaches do is a result of the different criteria and situation each of the two parties come from while making an evaluation, and knowing that we are all fans here, lets try to figure out what make us get mislead while evaluating a team, a match, or a player performance:


1) We evaluate players performance in a game comparing them to each other and applying the same criteria (passes/goals/tackles…); we put Messi in one palm and Abidal in the other and start to make our evaluation comparing the performance of the two guys the way we see it, Xavi and Gudjhonsen, Puyol and Alves, and so on…But how often do we try to figure out the tactical role of each player and evaluate him based exclusively on how successful he was implementing what the coach selected him to do in the game, believe me we get a different impression when we do so, try it! If it’s all about “hey you Messi, attack! You Yaya, Defend!” then we can all turn to become coaches, piece of cake! But we all know that the devil hides in details, so aside of the obvious, do we really try to go in depth?

2) We get more influenced by players’ names than players form: We have the right to do so, simply because we only watch the players during the games, when they play or even playED before a sequence of good games then that’s it for us! This is our man, and he has to be a starter, but who know how this guy performance, form, moral and fitness level was during a week separating two games? Who know the progress of the alternatives that can play in this player position? The answer is simple, it’s the coach.

3) Again, we are so statistical oriented, whether we notice or we don’t, we hold a pen and paper and start taking notes: good pass, bad pass, goal! Missed! He earns this grade then! And even though I consider statistical data as a factor in building performance evaluation and decision making, but its only one factor of many forming that evaluation, so we cant consider Statistical numbers as a stand alone evaluation, its not that simple, we cant judge players only as individuals, a player does an assist successfully when a mate run to the right space, but not only that, also the other team mates move correctly to open space, make opponents busy and so on. While rating players we either give grade to the assist maker only or to the one who turn the assist to goal also, but where do we give the credit for those who are not visible on the Cam, without their moves this assist would have turned to become a failed attempt.

4) We exclusively focus on our team and ignore the opponent, and the most recent example is the game against Sevilla, it will be a reference in this article, I read a lot of evaluations about Alves performance for example, it was all based on him and ignoring the players he was playing against, you can't really evaluate his performance without taking in consideration the whole situation including opponents, he played against his former team, and that alone need an extreme mental strength – now if someone will throw the “he is professional” slogan on my face, I will hit back reminding that “he is a human” who will argue that? – we must not under estimate this factor both mentally and even football wise, those guys in Sevilla trained with him for years and know all the tricks. he also faced Adriano, one of the most dynamic wingers in la liga, then after Adriano it was Capel, still he managed to perform decently in the first half and perfectly in the second – I will come back to that later. So for me, this was one of the best performances of Alves wearing the Catalan shirt, if not absolutely the best, unlike the general opinion.


TO THE POINT!
It was important to clarify the mentioned points before heading to the objective of this article, “the mystery of the third midfielder”.

When we analyze Barcelona midfield, we don’t need more than a second to understand Yaya/Busquets role as a Defensive midfielder and Xavi as a midfield maestro and ball distributor, then…we arrive to the third position in the midfield and we start scratching our head, who is playing there? And what exactly does he do?

I think its there where the unfair criticism of the players taking that seat start, in our subconscious Yaya role is to crush opponents, every time he do so we rub our palms with excitement and hail the guy.

The same goes for Xavi, the moment he gets the ball we know he will run the show, and it turns to become easy for us to evaluate how good he is doing so in a specific game.

But when it comes to the third midfielder, we stand in the dark cloud of confusion, how can we judge a guy based on his role if we don’t know exactly that role? So we start evaluating him compared to Xavi (the best when it come to ball distrebution and dectating tempo) and conclude that the third midfielder was out of the game, or we compare him to Yaya and of course the third midfieldewr was not as good as Yaya gaining the ball back, meaning, the third midfielder was a waste of space.

My question is, if we followed the same method and compared Xavi to Yaya regarding physical presence how will we rate him, the same as for Yaya ability to orchastrate the game compared to Xavi, will that be fair for any of them? Then how come it is fair for the third midfielder?

It was noticed since the beginning of the season that this is going to be the unlucky, unpopular guy, and after the Sevilla game it was too obvious to ignore, specially that the guy who took that seat was Keita, one of the best additions to Barcelona squad for this season, I know now you already feel upset of me for saying that, but I hope you give this a chance and that we all be open to seek the facts out of fakes, I already faced lot of criticism while handling sensitive Barcelona cases on this blog, starting with Iniesta on the wing, Abidal, Valdes, Henry, and some other cases, and I know this will be no different, but I prefer to be honest than popular.

Sevilla - Barcelona Game and a genius called Guardiola!
I still stand faithful to my early opinion, I will not evaluate Guardiola era before giving it enough time to mature, but if Sevilla game is a sample of what will follow then, I am more excited than ever been with this new project! What Guardiola and the tactical staff did in that game was something to be proud of, finally and after years of waiting it happened, we have on the bench the staff needed to turn a football game to a chess Battle!

I did no report after Sevilla game, and this article was one of the reasons, I will not do one now, I will only mention what I need in this article.

Two things won us that game more than anything else! Pre-season preparation and tactical brilliance, and it’s so strange that the two factors were ignored in all the evaluations I read after that game.

Pre-season preparations include smart signing that serve the project, and physical preparations that turned our ultra technical players to fitness monsters, if the first half scenario happened last season we would have definitely lost the game in the second half, a Titanic physical battle where bones crushed on bones while the two teams continuously blocked hits and hit back, as if the loser dies and the victorious will be crowned ruling the universe, this first half sucked lot of energy, and here the pre-season preparations, beside ROTATION, played a deciding role in the second half.

Now talking about our unfortunate guy – Keita- who played that doomed third midfielder role, his tactical role in the first half was to make sure Sevilla right winger loses the path of the right flank, so Puyol can focus covering Pique and Marquez in their battle against Kanoute and Fabiano, this is something Puyol couldnt do if De Mul bothered him continuously from the right flank. It’s a shame De mul may not play against Real Madrid now that Navas is ready, but keep following Sevilla and track this guy performance so you know later how lucky we are that Keita dominated this guy permanently in the first half, and forced Sevilla to forget about this flank and limiting Puyol contribution defensively as a left Back while acting as a third central back. Beside, and as a secondary role, Keita got involved shrinking the spaces so the ball holder get smashed on Yaya towers , slowing down Sevilla counter attacks both from the middle and on the right.

With Alves penetrating on the right, pique inability to cover behind him because he had to deal with his own mess (remember I told you before the game if Adriano succeeded to go forward don’t curse Pique after the game? You cursed him, but I will not comment on that now though its not only his fault being shaky), Yaya had to carry more than one melon in each hand, Keita moving forward when the team attack, Messi being forced to get involved in the physical battle he doesn’t like, Eto’o and Henry sprinting back and forth to help earning the ball then moving to the box, and Xavi getting hooked in the traffic jam tackling and distributing balls under pressure, it was a game of harmonic tide and current, where Sevilla were physically ready for this battle, sharing dominance, hitting back and causing threat.

And here is my favorite part, the tactical staff made their magical touch between the two halves, they created what I like to call "The Hammers and the Anvil" structure, and that’s how they squeezed Sevilla and crushed their hopes!

In the second half, the three central backs structure became permanent, then in front of defense (and here the piece of art show its face) Pep and co formed the Anvil creating a second line of Alves on the right, Yaya in the middle and Keita on the left-where Alves and Keita got the instructions to limit their offense doze for the defense favor, Xavi played in front of the Anvil while Messi, Eto’o and Henry switched the offence triangle, planting Messi as a striker, and behind him Eto’o and Henry who both have the physical structure needed to hit shoulders and chests against Sevilla players taking that mission of Messi shoulders, and so the second half started…

The line of communication between Kanoute / Fabiano and the rest of the Sevilla players was terminated. While the central backs trio contained the two strikers, the Sevilla midfielders were running for their lives, being crushed between the Anvil mentioned above and the hammers called Eto’o and Henry contributing with General Xavi.

With Keita-Yaya-Alves forming a solid wall, Sevilla counter attacks became history, spaces vanished and Sevilla found it impossible to see what lies behind that wall, they collapsed mentally and physically, and felt their weakness and lack of options in front of their opponents, that’s how the game was won.

Yes Keita was not the guy who scored, neither the guy who took the distribution role, but without his presence, things would have been totally deferent, which means in another words, he made a difference, though it was not seen or appreciated.

The Third Midfielder mystery of invisible impact:
The third midfielder is actually Pep Guardiola magical card, and he signed the right players to play that card as needed. Keita, Hleb, and Gudjhonsen are the players for various missions, if he needed a player for more physical dominance he picks Keita, if he wanted a distributing assistant he picks Hleb, while if he wanted a midfielder to penetrate to the box and score goals, thats Gudjhonsen. Things still need time to mature, and we already predicted that, Keep in mind that the three players are new signings, including Gudjhonsen who for the first time feels being valued and valuable, so I consider him a new signing.

We say it needs time for the third midfielder options to find their steps and roles in the team, but are they bad at the moment? Again, I think that’s not accurate, but another elusion we have, based on the previous reasons mentioned that make the fans get mislead by players performance, added to the fact that journalists themselves are more being fans than professionals, when it comes to favorite a player over another, which effect their judgments no matter how they try to cover it, and also they fail to see what’s beneath the surface, and when a Journalist in Sport.es for example, or on goal.com make an evaluation, it turns to become permanent and unquestionable, specially when it meets the emotional taste of the fans, and may be they do it – journalists - for that purpose, again appealing, catchy evaluations is a must in the media, and it tops any other priority you may think about.

I decided to tackle this issue –the third midfielder impact- from various levels, Mixing football concepts with statistical data to create a complete figure, keeping in mind that the more we feel our permanent judgment is drifting radically toward numbers it means we are getting more theoretical and less realistic, the same as the more our evaluation is numbers/data free and only conceptual the more we need to doubt our objectivity, balance is the key for perfection, and that’s what I seek here, football concepts supported by Statistical Data, and i wish if Stigsby was here to help me in this.

When Pep Guardiola signed as a Barcelona manager, he was fully aware of the lessons provided last season, he was so clear about what he wanted to improve and the defects that prevented this quality squad from hitting the highest level, and for the midfield this is a bunch of points taken in consideration:

1. Lack of physical presence.
2. Fruitless possession with no direct touches and threat on goal (midfielders).
3. Lack of scoring in the midfield and being over dependent on the strikers to score goals – he even mentioned that openly in an interview.
4. Being more a team based on the quality of individuals rather than the performance of the group based on tactical skeleton and interrelated tasks for the players on the field.

In the tables below I posted the stats of six players, and I will build the statistical analysis part of the case on it before discussing the case from a pure football concept.

It’s important to mention the following before discussing the tables below:

1. The tables below included the midfielders of the team plus Henry. Why Henry? Because The third midfielder usually play on the left of Xavi, the closest player to that midfielder on the flank is the left wing – Henry for now- knowing that there is no permanent left back to include and usually our left back acts as a central back, so Henry is the guy who contributes most with the third midfielder in the operations of the left midfield space of the field, Hleb was excluded because he didn’t play enough as a midfielder but more as a wing, so his data is not reliable to be taken as a midfielder.

2. Having Henry in the table offer us the chance to evaluate the third midfielder contribution defensively and in the midfield operation compared to the other midfielders, but also offensively compared to a forward who play on the third midfielder flank and face the same deffenders/midfielders while going forward, and the same midfielders/full backs while doing a deffensive job.

3. Another reason for including Henry is a belief that is promoted recently that aside of Yaya and Xavi, its Henry who is bouncing back on the left midfield to contribute in earning possession back and dominating the midfield while the third midfielder is usually inactive, so let’s see what the numbers tell about that.

4. I considered the Minutes played from the start as a focal coefficient for all players rather than the minutes played in general, it will not change the rates much but I thought this is more appropriate taking in consideration that the starters played at least 75% of their games before being substitutes, so the substitute enters after Barcelona already finish most of their games in the first half then things go easy, so the substitutes were more to finish the game, not to earn it, because it was by then mission accomplished.

5. The data are from Barcelona official website.

6. I am aware that its still early to take the numbers as accurate indications and that it will become more certain after the team plays twenty games or so, but aren’t we already judging the players worth in the club based entirely on emotional reactions even when it is masked by numbers we create to serve our point? Then it’s fair enough to take the numbers of Barcelona website seriously as it is more reliable than any numbers we may create or find somewhere else.
First this is a general table of the data used in the following two tables, I will not use it directly so if it is confusing jump over the first table to what follows.

MP: Minutes played, MS: Minutes as a starter, SP: shots on post, SG: Shots on goal, FC: Fouls Committed, FR: fouls received, BW: Balls won, BL: Balls Lost.

And here the rates per game (90 minutes) - Offense, based on the previous Table

SP: shots on post, SG: Shots on goal, %SG: Is the percentage of successful shots between the posts out of shooting attempts.

"The 3rd midfielder" come up from the fact that gudi and keita never played together in the midfield, they were rotating on the same position, so creating a record for the third midfielder position as a combination of both keita and Gudjhonsen rates seems to be a must for a wider scope of evaluation.

GOALS per game: As you notice, Offensively Keita and Gudjhonsen scored more goals than any other midfielder; Gudjhonsen rate ,up till now, is even higher than Henry, the forward, while the combination (third midfielder position) is almost the same as Henry.

ASSISTS per game: aside of Xavi, the master of assists worldwide, we cant consider the third midfielder assist rate as a defect, specially Keita, who made more assists than Henry per game, and as a combination of “third midfielder” this position comes naturally and as expected slightly above the defensive midfielders assists rate, now we can admit it can go higher and it must, but is it bad at the moment?

SHOTS on Goal: Keita and Gudjhonsen are making more shooting attempts than the rest of midfielders in the team, but what’s more important is that the shots on goal percentage is pretty high, which means its not true that keita for example shoot more wide balls than acceptable, his rate (46.18 %successful shots-on goal) is close to Henry (49.86%) while Gudjhonsen percentage is even better (50%), so the Third midfielder took more attempts to shot on goal (an average of three successful shots per game) and have the highest percentage of successful shots (47.65%)

So regarding the offense output, Xavi is the Assists generator, while the third midfielder is the scoring addition to the Mix.

And here the rates per game (90 minutes) – Defense and Possession.

FC: Fouls Committed, FR: fouls received, FR-FC: fouls committed per every foul received, BW: Balls won, BL: Balls Lost, BW-BL: Balls lost per every ball won.

Defensively: it needs no discussion to confirm that Yaya and Busquets are the kings of winning balls, though yaya game is still more clean with less fouls committed, Xavi numbers are also interesting, and the third midfielders (keita Gudjhonsen) even though not impressive in that part, but not as far as some people may think they are. I demand more improvement on this part and I think it will happen, now that we are playing against strong opponents, more defensive instructions will be given for the Third midfielder while Xavi keeps his role, and same does Yaya/Busquets.

Ball possession: the numbers above reveal lot of signs regarding ball possession, which is the corner stone in Barcelona style, dominance, and efficiency. It is simple, when you commit a foul there is a chance that your team lose the ball (if your team has the ball already), the opposite happen when you receive a foul, you earn the ball if it is between your opponent legs. But that’s not really the most important factor in ball possession.

The most significant factor is Ball Won (BW), the more you win balls for your team, the better possession your team enjoy, under one condition that you don’t lose much more balls than you earn, and for that I added a column (BW-BL) and it shows for every ball won, how many balls were lost by a player in return.

Again, Yaya is the key earning back possession, wining back 7.22 balls per match (as an average) and losing only 4.90, Xavi and Keita are almost equal in that part Gudjhonsen come little bit behind while Henry actually suffer on this level. And Based on that, I think its safe to say statistically what I believe in based on tracking performance that the saying "Henry is playing a better role in getting back the ball and earning possession than the third midfielder" is a myth, for every ball he earns back he lose possession almost six times in return, with an average of twelve times per game, even Messi who is always accused to lose the ball too often while dribbling lose 8.34 balls per match, so as a side note I say, Henry REALLY need to improve this to have a better role and less passive impact on ball possession and team performance as a whole, without denying that his runs and challenges specially lately are serving the team, mainly against strong opponents, but without having a left midfielder who slow down the opponent counter attacks, Henry would have no chance to follow the ball holder and tackle him, or the ball.

Now reading that on the left flank, even though Henry play a more positive role defensively as well as offensively than his critics admit, but still not the role imagined by his die hard fans, and adding to the fact that the left back usually play a third center defender role when things get serious, the question is how come the opponents find it easier to go forward through Barcelona Right flank than left? They try to get advantage of Alves forward runs? But it was the same thing when we played in Lisbon and Sylvinho was our left back, the only answer I have is the role of the left midfielder (third midfielder) blocking that path.

Removing the third midfielder and installing Iniesta in his place for example, and if you monitor the tables above, this will increase the ball distribution, guarantee more possession but at the same time the threat on goal coming from the midfield will decline, less shooting attempts, less goals (how often will Iniesta penetrate to the far post to meet a cross and head it to the net?), it remind me of a scenario I have seen before –fruitless possession, yea now I remember! Last season!

This season is different? Well I don’t know if it’s just a coincident that the only game we lost this season was that game against Numancia when we had Iniesta and Xavi together as midfielders.

A very important point is that both Keita and Hleb are new signings who also got a knock by getting injured, so they are still not offering their best and their numbers will improve, may be the same for Gudjhonsen who is more a new born player, while aside of Busquets the rest of players listed in the tables are playing for the team since at least a year already, so the numbers and rates give a more accurate idea about their performance for the rest of the season, it will be more stable while the third midfielder rates will most probably improve.

I think with a structure of a Defensive midfielder and a tactical midfielder, Xavi is freer to do his ball distribution job moving around without being hooked by tons of tactical instructions, now that the team has a guy who carry those responsibility acting as a third midfielder.

Though the numbers say something but you only believe what your eyes see, and you can’t see the third midfielder that efficient when you watch a game, Is it all confusing?

If you think those numbers above say nothing serious then even though I can clarify it more using the football concepts away from stats and numbers, but then it will be more as if we are writing a book, not a long article, so there is nothing more in this article I can do to shed a light on the third midfielder performance.

If you feel it may be true but you will wait to notice it while watching a game, well my friend that’s another story, so may be together in another article we discuss the techniques that help us noticing what the cam don’t show during the game, because it is exclusively tracking the ball and the ball holder, while the serious business is whats happening behind the curtains.

Ramzi Tanani