Barca Relying Too Much on Messi Whilst Madrid Share Attacking Load
While Levante’s extraordinary fairy tale season continued on Sunday evening with a 3-0 win at Villarreal leaving them top of La Liga, Real Madrid sneaked past Barcelona to sit just one point off the summit. A last minute penalty miss from Lionel Messi leaves the champions just two points behind Levante after an unexpected goalless draw at the Nou Camp, but a look at Barca’s last four games shows they’ve been far from the rampant attacking force we’ve come to expect in recent league games.
Barca have found the net 9 times, with their defensive record of keeping clean sheets in all four perhaps the most impressive aspect of this run of matches. Compare this to Jose Mourinho’s Real, who have scored 18 goals in their last four league matches, conceding 3 in response, and it’s fair to say that Madrid are starting to stake a strong claim as the entertainers in Spain’s top-flight right now. Indeed, Madrid have scored 4 or more in six of their eight matches now - it’s clear they are becoming a far more fluent attacking proposition in The Special One’s second season.
WhoScored analyses the draw with Sevilla and looks at both Real and Barca so far, comparing both sides as attacking forces:
Barcelona 0 Sevilla 0
Barca once again played in a 3-4-3 formation, with David Villa wide left, Andres Iniesta wide right and Lionel Messi through the middle. Analysing the stats, it was a typical home performance bar one thing - goals. Much of this was down to Sevilla keeper Javi Varas - it just seemed to be one of those days where nothing Messi & co tried went right. Varas made 8 saves and even when Iniesta beat him, the ball hit the woodwork.
Guardiola’s side dominated possession (74%), with Xavi pulling the strings with 133 passes, and the champions fired off a total of 21 shots without success. What was obvious in the game, though, is Barca were perhaps more overly reliant on Messi to find the net than usual, and when he had an (very rare) off day, they were unable to call upon a match-winner from somewhere else in the side. Messi tormented Sevilla with 7 successful dribbles and had 8 goal attempts (more than his average 5.8) but only 2 – including the penalty - were on target.
Granted, Iniesta was unlucky - he had 5 shots, with 3 on target, but the performance of David Villa will be a worry - he managed just 1 shot over the entire 90 minutes, surely unacceptable for a member of Barcelona’s attacking three. Pedro came on as a sub with half an hour to go and also had just 1 shot but to no avail.
Team Attacking Stats
With Barcelona’s incredible average of 74% possession and opponents sitting so deep due to Barca’s ball retention, the stats show there is little variation in the types of goal they score. They’ve scored 23 of their 26 goals from open play, with just 1 coming from a fast break and 2 by means of an own goal.
While Madrid still dominate matches with an average 61% possession, there is far more variety to how they find the net. Only 15 have been scored from open play but, stopping opponents attacks and breaking quickly, they‘ve scored 7 times, using the lightning speed of the likes of Ronaldo, Ozil and Di Maria to devastating effect. An ability to mix it up and find the net from set-pieces has succeeded 3 times and Mourinho’s side have scored 3 spot-kicks already, too.
Top Five Attackers Shooting Stats
A comparison of the top five attacking players for each side, according to shots per game, is revealing. While both Messi and Ronaldo have grabbed 10 goals each already this season (and coincidentally, 5 assists) Messi has been the better finisher of the duo, needing just 46 shots to obtain his tally, compared to Ronaldo’s 56. This means Messi has scored with 21.7% of his shots, while Ronaldo has found the net with 17.8% of his efforts. At present though, looking at the rest of each sides’ main attackers, it seems Barca are relying more on Messi than Real are on Ronaldo.
David Villa and Gonzalo Higuain’s stats are particularly intriguing. Their stats are identical apart from one key area - shot conversion. They’ve played same number of games (8), had the same number of shots (22), but while Villa has scored 3 times for Barca, Higuain has netted 9 times for Real. It’s a substantial difference between Villa’s 13.6% conversion to Higuain’s 40.9% and shows that, when their star players are having an off day, Real have Higuain to fall back on with a far greater level of reliance than Villa does for Barca.
Andres Iniesta and Angel Di Maria have both yet to find the net so far, with the Real player, in particular, demonstrating some poor finishing; he’s had 16 shots, double Iniesta’s 8, without scoring. He has, however, produced 5 assists in comparison to Iniesta’s 2. Pedro and Karim Benzema have both had 12 shots at goal and again, the Real player fares better here, scoring 3 times to Pedro’s 1.
The return from injury of Cesc Fabregas looks significant to Barca. Cesc has fitted in seamlessly since his return to the Nou Camp this summer and has shown that he’s more than capable of bringing plenty of goals to the side. He had scored 4 goals and produced 4 assists in 5 starts before succumbing to a hamstring problem but came off the bench as a sub last weekend. Fabregas grabbed his 4 goals from just 9 shots - Kaka has scored twice from the same number of attempts for Madrid.
