Eight Stats That Explain the Champions League

The one number you need to know for all the teams that play this week

After a week that’s been about the corrupting power global hyper-capitalism has on the Beautiful Game, what better way to cleanse the palate than ... to celebrate that ultra concentration of resources made flesh! The Champions League is back, and from a pure viewing perspective, it is the best annual competition in all of sports. (Yes, I realize I am biased and that I also benefit from pushing this opinion! I still believe it to be true!) Why that is has a lot to do with the growing inequalities across the game. Title races have, for the most part, lost their excitement since only a handful of teams -- and often not even enough teams to fill the tiniest of hands! -- have a chance of claiming a domestic title at the beginning of each season. Paris Saint-Germain, Bayern, Barcelona, and Juventus have won so many domestic titles recently that they’ve almost rendered the achievement meaningless, as it’s now overshadowed every season by what happens in the random chaos of the Champions League knockout rounds. On top of that, the gross financial inequality has also concentrated the world’s best players and managerial talents into a tiny group of teams, typically the ones who earn a place in the tournament’s Round of 16.

So, what we’re left with: An incredibly unpredictable, short-lived, but-still-legacy-defining tournament between the greatest collection of soccer talent we’ve ever seen. That’s not to say that the corrosive structures that brought us here were worth it, but rather that it’s possible to be aware of them while also enjoying the soccer.

Let’s get to the soccer, then. I wrote a big preview piece for ESPN that went up over the weekend. In it, I looked at the statistical profiles of the past nine Champions League winners, and then compared them to the 16 teams left in this competition. Today, we’ll spend some more time on each team, and I’m gonna give you one stat you need to know about the eight clubs competing this week. Next Tuesday, I’ll do the same thing with the eight other teams.

Atletico Madrid

-Chances of advancing to the quarterfinals, per FiveThirtyEight: 18 percent
-Chances of winning it all: 1 percent
-Stat you need to know: 1.04 goals per game

There was plenty of talk over the summer about how this might be a new-look version of Atletico Madrid. Diego Godin and Antoine Griezmann -- the two defining players on the front and back ends of Diego Simeone’s machine -- both left the club, and in came Joao Felix, the Portuguese uber-prospect. Atletico spent €126 million on Felix, the third-highest fee ever spent on a player. He’s an attacker! Were we seeing Atletico’s ascent into a new tier, a realm in which the team could play a more dominant, front-foot style of football?

Heh, not quite. Among all 16 teams remaining, Atletico have -- by far -- the competition’s most meager attack. They’ve scored just 25 goals in 24 La Liga games. Now, some of that is underperformance. Per FBRef, they’ve registered 31 expected goals -- and almost all of the slack sits at the feet of their strikers. Alvaro Morata, Diego Costa, and Felix have scored a combined 11 goals on a combined 16.9 xG. But even if you ignore the conversion of shots into goals -- and we shouldn’t do that, especially since Simeone’s reign has been characterized by his team’s ability to shirk traditional conversion rates -- the attack still looks like one of the worst in the competition.

Liverpool

-Chances of advancing: 82 percent
-Chances of winning it all: 23 percent
-Stat you need to know: 0.58 goals allowed per game

I’m not sure there’s a worse match-up for Atletico. Crazy thing to say about the defending Champions League champs who haven’t lost a league game since Judas kissed Jesus, right? Well, Atletico might have the worst attack in the tournament and Liverpool might have the best defense, and it’s pretty hard to see a way around that for Simeone and Co.

In some ways, actually, Liverpool have become a bigger, faster, stronger, better version of Atletico. Jurgen Klopp has built a great defense that limits the quality of opposing chances, and even when someone slips through the cracks, they’ve still gotta get the ball past perhaps the best keeper in the world. No one in the competition has allowed fewer goals in doemstic play: just six! Throw a game-changing fullback and the sport’s best attacking trio on top of that rearguard, and well, you get a team with 25 wins and one draw through 26 Premier League games.

Borussia Dortmund

-Chances of advancing: 35 percent
-Chances of winning it all: 2 percent
-Stat you need to know: 2.36 non-penalty goals per 90 minutes

Check out the Bundesliga goal leaderboard, from FBRef. Fourteen players have scored at least eight goals this season. See if you can figure out which one of these things is not like the others:

No one would deny that Serge Gnabry is having a great season; he’s been good enough to start for Bayern Munich, one of the tournament’s true title contenders. He also only has one more goal than Erling Braut Haaland despite playing ONE THOUSAND EXTRA MINUTES. EBH is currently at 2.36 non-penalty goals per 90 minutes. Among players with at least 100 minutes of game time in Europe’s Big Five Leagues this year, no one else is above 1.07, which is where Manchester City’s Sergio Aguero sits. Over a full season, Lionel Messi has never been above 1.43. Hell, Cristiano Ronaldo, who’s gonna go down as one of the best goal-scorers of all time, has only broken 1.00 once (1.11) in his entire career!

While there’s no way he keeps that pace up -- [looks up his Austrian and Champions League stats, sees that they’re almost just as good, takes a long bath] right? -- Dortmund are gonna need plenty more of his goals against PSG. They’re scoring more per game than anyone in the tournament, but they’re allowing more (1.45) than anyone else, too.

Paris Saint-Germain

-Chances of advancing: 65 percent
-Chances of winning it all: 8 percent
-Stat you need to know: 0.15 xG per shot

Spoiler: For the ESPN article, I looked at 20 different stats. PSG fit the title-winner profile in ... all 20 of the stats. As is the case every year, we have to wait until February to see how that dominance translates from their weaker-than-the-other-four domestic league. We’ve seen them dominate huge clubs in the group stages, sure, but it’s yet to amount to any knockout round result that wasn’t completely embarrassing for one reason or another. And as is the case every year, we still might not know the answer to how good this team truly is, unless they win the whole freaking thing.

In France, though, Thomas Tuchel (and the Qatari sovereign wealth fund) have essentially created the perfect soccer team. There are no tradeoffs: They press aggressively but don’t give up good chances. They possess aggressively, complete an absurd percentage of passes, but also create high-quality shots. I’ve heard StatsBomb’s Mike Goodman refer to their attack as a Rube Goldberg machine: they create and complete simple tasks in the most complicated way. The combinations and movements throughout midfield are so hard to follow -- five passes up-and-back, and then oh, there’s Neymar dribbling through a press, and wait, how is their left back dribbling in on goal with no opponents in sight? -- and they create the easiest-to-convert opportunities of any team left in the field. Despite averaging around 65 percent of the ball, PSG are creating better chances, on average, than any team in Europe. Light a candle for that Dortmund defense.

Atalanta

-Chances of advancing: 74 percent
-Chances of winning it all: 3 percent
-Stat you need to know: 19.92 shots per game

Here’s your darkhorse, people. Despite sitting in fourth place, Atalanta have the best xG differential in Serie A, and it’s not close. They’re at plus-30.8, while Lazio are all the way down at plus-19.3. In fact, only Manchester City, Bayern Munich, and PSG have better per-game xGDs than Gian Piero Gasperini’s side. The comparisons across leagues aren’t one-to-one, of course, but that’s seriously the kind of company this team is keeping.

Where they stand out, especially, is in how many chances they generate per game. No one else left in the tournament is taking more shots, and Manchester City are the only other team above 19 attempts. Among players with at least 800 minutes of game time, there are 20 guys in Europe’s Big Five leagues who take more than four shots per 90 minutes. A whopping four of them play for Atalanta: Luis Muriel, Josip Illicic, Duvan Zapata, and Ruslan Malinovskyi. Put another way: a quarter of Atalanta players are taking more shots per game than Mohamed Salah, who’s leading Liverpool at that same metric.

Valencia

-Chances of advancing: 26 percent
-Chances of winning it all: less-than-one percent
-Stat you need to know: 15.2 shots allowed per game

Valencia rank 17th in terms of shot allowed per game. Huh, but there are only 16 teams left in the Champions League, you might be thinking. Let me rephrase: There are only 16 teams in Europe’s Big Five leagues that allow more shots per game than Valencia. Combine that with everything you just read about Atalanta, and uh, this could get ugly.

Los Che profile more, at best, as a low-end Europa League side, rather than a last-16-of-the-Champions-League competitor. Their goal differential in La Liga is plus-one, and their xG differential is minus-7. Per FiveThirtyEight’s rankings, they’re the 53rd-best team in the world -- one spot below Shakhtar Donetsk, and one spot above Burnley. The Elo ratings like them a bit better -- 17th, while Atalanta are down in 23rd -- but that has more to do with a handful of nice group-stage results and their results before this season, under a different manager. Valencia might advance past Atalanta because shit happens all the time in knockout soccer, but they’re just so mediocre -- and I can’t remember the last time you could say that about a team that’s made it this far in the competition.

Tottenham

-Chances of advancing: 34 percent
-Chances of winning it all: 1 percent
-Stat you need to know: 40.6 meters from goal

This chart, which shows how far from their own goal the team regains possession on average, pretty much tells the story of Tottenham’s press since the beginning of the Mauricio Pochettino era.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the team’s success tracks pretty tightly with the height of the press. They flattered to deceive in Poch’s first year, then landed in the top four in 15-16, flirted with first in 16-17, finished third in 17-18, fortunately only fell to fourth in 18-19, and then plummeted to the bottom half of the table before parting ways with Pochettino back in November. While the press has continued to ease up under Jose Mourinho, the correlation between results and defensive aggression has finally been severed. Spurs have the fourth-best goal differential in England, and they’ve shot up to fifth, just a point back of Chelsea, who they play this weekend.

But it’s not like Mourinho has Spurs playing like a Champions League contender, either. Per the site Understat, they have just the eighth-best expected-goal differential in England since the coaching switch. In fact, they look like ... the worst team in the competition not named Valencia. Passes completed, shots, shots allowed, shot differential, passes completed into the penalty area, distance from goal on regains -- among CL teams, only Valencia rates worse in all of those categories than Spurs do under Mourinho.

RB Leipzig

-Chances of advancing: 66 percent
-Chances of winning it all: 4 percent
-Stat you need to know: 8.7 seconds

Unlike their Round of 16 opponents, Leipzig do look like a Champions League contender in a lot of ways. They don’t score an absurd number of goals or allow a minute amount, but they rate well enough on both ends of the field that they’re tied with Dortmund for the sixth-best goal differential in Europe’s Big Five leagues. Plus, only Atalanta, City, Bayern, and PSG have better xG differentials.

They seem pretty balanced, and that has typically been a recipe for success in a tournament that tends to throw a number of different situations and game types at you. If you’re good at everything, you’ll never really be out of your comfort zone. What’s not to like, then?

Well, the way they achieve that balance isn’t that, well, balanced. Opta tracks a stat called sequences -- basically, an uninterrupted possession -- and the average sequence time of the previous nine winners is about 11 seconds. Leipzig, however, clock in at just 8.7 seconds per sequence. Only two of the last nine winners have been below 10 seconds, and neither of them -- 11-12 Chelsea and 13-14 Real Madrid -- were below 9.6. On top of that, only Atletico and Valencia allow more passes to be completed against them per match. None of this is to say that they can’t make a run and win a couple games, but the teams that have actually won this tournament? They’ve always been able to exert more control than Leipzig typically do.