A while ago (a month maybe) I read an article that analyzed how possession affected winning games. Does anyone have a link to that article?
Is Google not your friend? Anyway, maybe you meant this: http://www.soccerstatistically.com/blog/2011/7/27/does-more-possessionmore-wins-in-the-mls.html
http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/article/2012/04/03/central-winger-why-possession-stats-are-misleading http://thepowerofgoals.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/time-of-possession.html possession without context is a poor stat.
in the past ... twice Barca lost to Chelsea (2005 and 2012) despite of holding >70% possessions over 2 legs ... In EPL, most teams had less shots vs possessions ... is that weird?
Great article. I think having more possession of the ball will make the other team frustrate and you can create your chances for a goal.
It is all about the game your playing. How long you hold the ball some say the longer you have the ball the less time the opponent has to score against you. I think the best game to play is win the ball then try to counter before the opponent can get into their defensive shape. You have three passes to do that. If you can't start it by the third pass then you play a possession game. So you should be able to play both. Only problem is the team has to be togethers for years to be able to be great at both.
I was schoked with some informations that i found on ONCE fotball app on my ipad (http://www.once.de), about Barcelona- Chelsea semi-final Champions Leuage match. Peter Cech had 30% off possession for his team. And yet, Chelsea managet to go to final.
Possession doesn't count for much unless you finish your chances. Yes, if you have more possession the more chance you have of scoring but it all comes down to who scores when they get the chance. I have just stated the obvious but whatever.
possession. is a biased stat. it isn't a number. it is a word spoken by a critic. it is a bad stat. goals are absolute. points are absolute. away goals or wins is a number. possession doesn't "count".
Expertly put, a great team regards their level, could be an amateur, semi pro or professional side must have the ability to understand the game situation but playing on the same wave length with each other. That doesnt just require 1 or 2 players, not even 5 or 6, it requires every player including the subs to understand how to react as a team. Having this complete understanding is the key but rarely do you see it apart from the elite sides of course. A few weeks ago I did though, I had no game so decided to travel to watch a team I had heard wonders about. Simply the best amateur team I have ever seen, totally in sync with each other, they won 16-0 in a cup game and were relentless for 90 mins. This team could easily step up to a higher level as they pick out the weakness of a side and then pray on them. One week to the next they can play different styles depending on the game, a sign of a great team. They would beat our team easily and we play semi-pro.
It's quite simple really, the more possession you have, the more chances to bury the ball into the back of the net of the opposing time while also preventing them to do the same thing to you. Possession is 99% of football!
But how do you measure "possession"? One guy with a stop watch? One guy counting passes? Possession doesn't accurately gauge anything except bias.
You measure possession by subtracting the fullmatch time from the total time that you/your team was in control of the ball and converting it to percentage for an easier understanding by the fans. How a team chooses to proceed w/ their possession is called tactics.
Nowadays, possession is derived from the total amount of completed passes in a game, back in the days it was measured by chess clocks. Possession does accurately gauge which team had more completed passes. There are many valid strategies in soccer revolving around the principle of letting the opponent have possession.
Whichever way you measure it, counting possession in soccer is like counting errors in baseball, simply one man's opinion.
What about when the ball goes out? Or a player is injured? From what I've read, possession is nothing more than counting total passes completed, which is meaningless since the focus is so narrow. A bogus stat that means nothing important at all.
Possession is clearly not judged the way it used to be. Now possession stats are inaccurate, and do not reflect the reality of the game. For example, in one FC Barcelona game, they completed way more passes than their opponent, and were awarded about 70% possession, but they only possessed the ball for about half of the time. This is in no way hating on Barca, but it is a good example of how and why this useless stat does not truly reflect the reality of gameplay.
Possession % is misleading in many cases. Take Barca, most opponents will let them have the ball and not try to pressure them therefore increasing the amount of time they have the ball against little resistance. But this strategy works or doesn't work depending on the opponent—it's worked for Inter and Chelsea. Is a high percentage of possession mean anything against little resistance? Say a team chooses to play Barca really conservatively and "escape" with a 0-1 loss to Barca but Barca had 80%. Compare to a team that tries to play openly against Barca and losses 3-0 but Barca only have 60% of the possession. Just looking at possession percentage would lead people to believe that less possession is MORE effective when it really is an irrelevant stat in this regard.
Very good point ... however STATISTICALLY speaking (in a normal world) more possession increase your likely hood of scoring goals (or win game) if we take thousands of thousands games as samples Barca, Inter or CHELSEA (especially) were special cases ... or like Italy 1982 WC winner is the same. They GAVE up possession to play "efficient counter attack". In a game they did not care how many times opponent toucheed tha ball , but they only need a FEW GOOD counter to win the game - Like the classic game won o0ver Brazil that year
Letting them and not being able to win the ball back are two different things. People usually forget what Barcelona does after they lose the ball, they pressure the shit out of the other teams and force them to give the ball back, that allows Barca to keep the ball for most of the game.
Sure. But whether you sit back to let them have the ball or sit back because you don't want to lose shape—the effect is the same, Barca have the lion's share of possession.
Correct but I doubt that all European coaches got together and decided that the best game plan vs. Barca is to let them have the ball 60% of the time in something like 80% of the games. There got to be a reason why Barcelona went something like 60+ games with out losing the possession battle. Especially vs. teams like Arsenal that are also teams that like to keep possession of the ball.
Got together? No. But it's common knowledge that if you give them too much space between your defenders and behind your backline they will pick you apart and penetrate at will. It's all in the effectiveness of the counter attack—like Arsenal, like Chelsea, like PSG, like Milan, like Inter. By saying these things, I'm not taking anything away from Barcelona. Xavi, in a interview with The Guardian, implied that they pass around a lot BECAUSE teams congest Barca/Spain's attacking third. Given the opportunity, Barca, love to attack on the break and they are really good at it.
No, it isn't. Finishing is much more important than possession. As above posters said, using possession to judge a team is wrong and ridiculous. You judge teams by the ability to convert their chances, you judge them by the final score. That is what matters. Unfortunately, there are ignorant fans who try to use possession stats to prove their team was "better", which is ludicrous. The point of the game is not to outpossess. It is to outscore. People who say "the score did not reflect the game" don't know what they are talking about. Possession is important, but it is far from the be all end all. But sore losers will pretend it is.
