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2010-11 UEFA Champions League Analysis
Prozone’s Performance Analysis Centre looks in depth at the 2010-11 Champions League performance trends to give you an insight into national dominance and comparisons with European domestic football leagues.
As the 2nd leg of the Champions League Quarter Finals kick-off, the competitions 8 quarter finalists make up 5 of the 18 different nations originally represented at the beginning of the group stage of the competition.
The competition now finds itself heavily represented by teams from what are considered the ‘best’ leagues in the world, with 3 representatives from the English Premier League, 2 from Spain’s La Liga, and a single team from Germany, Italy and the Ukraine. Since the formation of the Champions League in the 1992-93 season there have only been 2 winners from outside the ‘Big Five’ leagues in Europe [England, Spain, Italy, Germany and France].
Looking at the 2010-11 Champions League the teams from these 'Big Five' Leagues have often dominated the matches in their style of play.
Averaging more goals per game than any other team Ukraine’s Shakhtar Donetsk are the upset to the trend. However the 'Big Five' nations, specifically the English and Spanish team’s dominance of the competition is clear as they score considerably more than the tournament average of 1.3 goals per game.
As the debate continues whether winning the Champions League is now a priority to teams over the domestic title, and whether indeed success in the Champions League can be reflected in league form or in fact the extra games are at the detriment to domestic titles, Prozone have compared the styles of play and level of performance of teams competing for both trophies.
When comparing average performance outputs in the Champions League to respective domestic leagues for the nations as a whole, there is a trend across a number of performance variables in the improvement of German and French teams in the Champions League. Contrary, the Italian teams appear to perform to a higher standard in their respective domestic league than in Europe.
Looking at teams altering their style of play for European games, again the number of shots per nation would support the trend that the German teams tend to see an increased performance in Europe, and contrastingly the Italian teams produce on average 4 shots more per game in Serie A than their Champions League matches.
Essentially on a game by game basis what does an increased level performance within the competition mean in terms of results? It is German teams, as suggested, and also English teams that have a better win percentage within the Champions League than their respective domestic competitions. This may be expected with the success of both German and English clubs historically in the competition.
Despite the success of Spanish clubs within Europe, and an increased level of performance , there is still a 15% increase in win rate domestically demonstrating the challenge of the Champions League and perhaps highlighting differences in the competitive balance found between the European domestic football leagues.
Our unrivalled global coverage at club & international level provides a comprehensive performance database and is used for a variety of research projects as well as feeding our core recruitment solutions.
For further information email insight@prozonesports.com
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