Which league is dominating Euro 2012?

Themba Sweet analyses the first 8 games of Euro 2012 to see which league is dominating the Euros.

Round 1 or the Euro’s is complete and we’ve had 8 games to weigh up the teams. We decided that, at the end of each round, we’ll see how the players from each league are doing and, possibly, compare the top European leagues against each other. If you weren’t previously aware, the Barclays Premier League has the biggest contingency at the Euro’s (72 players, worth about $1406 million), followed by the Bundesliga (45 players, worth about $835 million) and in 3^rd place, La Liga (33 players, worth about $1105 million). So we know that the EPL is a popular league where many of the European stars can be found or where they head to, but…are their players performing well in the Euro’s? Comparing the leagues based on goals and assists alone is not enough so there are other factors we’ve reviewed to give a holistic view of the performances in Euro 2012. Are you still lost? Well let’s get started, it’ll all make sense quite soon:

Goals:

There have been 20 goals scored at the end of Round 1. 5 goals have been scored by players who are currently playing for a Bundesliga team i.e.

Mandzukic x2 (Hamburg), Lewandowski (Dortmund),  Pilar (Wolfsburg) & Gomez (Bayern) = 5 goals for Bundesliga.

Here’s the table so far:

League	Total
Bundesliga	5
EPL	4
Russian Premier League	3
Serie A	2
Ukranian Premier League	2
Danish Superliga	1
English Championship	1
Greek Super League	1
La Liga	1
Grand Total	20

Assists:

There have been 17 assists towards those 20 goals. 5 of those assist have come from players currently in the English Premier League:

League	Total
EPL	5
Bundesliga	3
Ukranian Premier League	3
Ligue 1	2
Russian Premier League	2
La Liga	1
Serie A	1
Danish Superliga	0
English Championship	0
Greek Super League	0
Grand Total	17

Combined:

Let’s combine these charts to see who’s really dominating based purely on goals & assists:

League	Total
EPL	9
Bundesliga	8
Russian Premier League	5
Ukranian Premier League	5
Serie A	3
La Liga	2
Ligue 1	2
Danish Superliga	1
English Championship	1
Greek Super League	1
Grand Total	37

Well that’s the straight forward answer, but it doesn’t tell you who have been the danger-men, who’s making this a tournament to remember and who is proving to be a good reflection of their league. We’re mainly focusing on attacking since the stats can be easily compared & measured. To get a real idea of which players are dominating the Euro’s we’ll need to take this into account also:

Shots on target:

Who’s been taking shots on target? If it wasn’t for either the post or rather good goalkeeping, these shots could be. We’ve only taken players who have had 3 or more shots on target into account. The English Premier League players are clearly the more accurate strikers so far:

League	Total
La Liga	15
EPL	11
Bundesliga	4
Danish Superliga	3
Ukranian Premier League	3
Grand Total	36

Shots off target:

Although not a vital stat, it shows attacking intent & since we’re only taking players with 3 or more shots, you can see who’s the more trigger-happy players. They’re also the players lighting up the tournament:

League	Total
La Liga	11
Bundesliga	9
EPL	9
Russian Premier League	6
Ukranian Premier League	5
Danish Superliga	0
Grand Total	40

Castrol Man of the Match:

This is quite an important factor. Castrol are monitoring every player in every game of the tournament and use technology to analyse and grade players’ performances. They track every pass, save, shot, tackle, interception & even the blocked shots. Based on this, they basically have a “Man of the Match” for every game. Here they are broken down per league.

League	Total
Bundesliga	3
Greek Super League	1
Ligue 1	1
Russian Premier League	1
Serie A	1
Ukranian Premier League	1
Grand Total	8

Top Castrol players per position:

Castrol stats publish their ratings for the players in the tournament. From this they can award the overall Player of the Tournament once the Euro’s are complete. From this list, we’ve taken the best players in each position - GK, DF, MF, FW.

We’ve taken the top 2 GK, 5 DF, 5 MF and 3 FW to make a team of 15.

League	Total
Bundesliga	6
Russian Premier League	2
EPL	2
La Liga	2
Ligue 1	1
Serie A	1
Ukranian Premier League	1
Greek Super League	0
Grand Total	15

So above are the various areas where we’ve graded the players. We’ve allocated a point for a goal & a point for a shot off target which some might feel is unfair. This completely misses the thought behind all of this though. The idea is not to state the obvious – that a goal is obviously the most important stat – but rather to gauge which leagues are being represented well, which leagues are making the Euro’s great, who’s bringing the excitement & who has the biggest influence on the Euro’s. After adding all of these stats together, it’s quite clear (and expected) that the top 3 European leagues are dominating the Euro’s. So although Spain only had 1 goal, their players have done many other impressive feats and, remember, that not all La Liga players come from Spain. As we discussed in the beginning, the EPL has the largest contingency at Euro 2012 – 72 players. Only 23 of the 72 make up the English national team. Therefore it’s not surprising to see them top after round 1. Here is the overall league dominance of Euro 2012 (after round 1):

League	Total
EPL	31
Bundesliga	30
La Liga	30
Ukranian Premier League	15
Russian Premier League	14
Serie A	5
Danish Superliga	4
Ligue 1	4
Greek Super League	2
English Championship	1
Grand Total	136

Author: Themba Sweet

Twitter: @thembasweet

Site: http://footiecall.blogspot.com/