The Football Front: League Dominance in Euro 2012

Themba Sweet is back with a statistical review of the Euro’s for The Football Front, based entirely on where the players ply their trade. The first attempt at this really didn’t have the right grading tools. I’ve added & subtracted some attributes & also changed the weighting of these attributes. But first, let’s recap what the intention of this little project is:

We grouped players who play their club football in the same league and gave them points for the goals they scored, assists & performances they made. So Nasri, Rooney, Torres & RVP all scored points for the EPL as long as they featured, scored or assisted.

I’ve done this to help add some flavour to the Euro’s, generate debate and, see which league carried their average form into the Euro’s. As stated before I've also changed the grading system now, so here it is:

1 point per shot on target
3 points per assist
5 points per goal
5 points per MOM
6 points for Team of the Tournament

So there have been 295 shots on target, 76 goals, 65 assists, 31 Man of the Match's & 15 top players.....let's see where they came from, and we'll take a little look at the top performing clubs. We're expecting the EPL to do well since they have the largest contingent at Euro 2012. Were they the top performing league though?

Let's start with the obvious - Goals:

While there were 6 players who shared the top goal-scorer title, 2 of them came from the EPL (Torres & Balotelli) & 2 came from the Bundesliga (Mandzukic & Gomez). 2 other EPL players managed to score more than once - Bendtner & Silva. In total there were 16 goals scored by players currently in the EPL. Only 9 scored by players from La Liga & Bundesliga (Bundesliga players totalled 14 goals from their 9 players). So the EPL based players, scoring 22 goals, were nearly twice as successful at scoring a goal than their Bundesliga & La Liga counterparts.

You may have not spotted this but there were 76 goals scored in Euro 2012 (excluding penalty shoot-outs). The reason there are 75 in the table above is because Glen Johnson scored an own goal & this doesn't count towards any league.

Assists:

There were 65 assists throughout Euro 2012. Once again our expectations that the EPL, by sheer number of participants, has contributed the most assists during the competition. 16 assists for EPL based players puts the EPL ahead of La Liga. This strange way of looking at the Euro's his highlighted in the finale when Torres set up Juan Mata. Although the Spanish team-mates scored for Spain, Torres' assist was the EPL's 15th of the tournament, and Mata's goal was the EPL's 22nd of Euro 2012. Obviously, since they don't play in La Liga, their goals counted for the EPL. Currently it appears as if the EPL is running away with these stats, but that's about to change. Firstly, see the assists chart below with an impressive appearance by the Ukranian Premier League.

Shots on Target:

Ronaldo has to be mentioned when looking at Shots on Target. He had the most in the tournament – 15. Iniesta was only 1 shot off target, with 14 on target (yet no goal), and Benzema also making double figures. It is not the easiest feat in the world to get a shot on target, but with this weighting, 5 shots on target is equivalent to 1 goal. With this grading system, 2 goals earn you a solid 10 points. A player from a league would have to take 10 shots on target to match this score, which is unlikely since the most shots on target by 1 player was 15. We also only took into account players with 3 or more shots on target.

Carlsberg Man of the Match:

We used the Carlsberg Man of the Match winners since this is a neutral selection & doesn't favour any league in particular. Using a grading system of 5 points for every MOM, we see that La Liga clearly dominate this category. In fact, only 3 EPL players earned themselves MOM awards (Gerrard, Nasri & Torres). 4 layers earned the MOM award more than once during this tournament: Pirlo (Serie A) & Iniesta (La Liga) earned 3 Man of the Match awards, while Ronaldo (La Liga) & Ozil (La Liga) each earned 2 Man of the Match awards.

Top 15 players of Euro 2012:

On UEFA.com you can find a write up on how the Castrol Edge rankings work. It basically tracks everything a player does. Xavi won Player of the Tournament in 2008 nad that was entirely based on the Castrol Edge rankings. The Top 15 Players has the highest weight and for good reason. This isn’t the Best Starting XI of Euro 2012, simply the 15 best players:

Overall:

Taking all of the above into account and remembering the grading system, below is the overall table which should reflect which league dominated Euro 2012. Our winner is La Liga which ended a clear 40 points ahead of the EPL. Although more goals & assists came from the EPL, La Liga players had more Man of the Match performances & 11 of the top 15 players come from La Liga.

When looking at the actual table, it may not be a surprise to see which leagues make up the top 5: La Liga, EPL, Bundesliga, Serie A & the Russian Premier League:

Another point to take note of is the minor influence of the Eredivisie. The truth is that very few players were picked from this league & those that were chosen had very little to do with the outcomes during Euro 2012.

I’ve thrown in a bonus chart using the above scoring system, but one that looks at the actual club instead of the league. Remembering that Ronaldo would score points for Real Madrid, and that a goal is worth 5 points, take a look at the below table and see if it’s something you expected:

Club	Score
Real Madrid	179
Barcelona	88
Man City	83
Bayern	62
Juventus	51
Arsenal	50
Wolfsburg	46
AC Milan	44
Dortmund	41
Chelsea	38
CSKA Moscow	26
Brondby	22
Dynamo Kyiv	22
Liverpool	19
Man United	19
Olympiacos	16
PAOK	16
Plzen	15
Sunderland	15
Cologne	14
Valencia	14
Zenit	14
Udinese	13
FC Porto	11
Lazio	11
Newcastle	10
Panathinaikos	10
Dnipro	9
Munchengladbach	9
PSG	9
Bologna	8
Everton	8
Lokomotiv Moscow	8
Sevilla	8
Tottenham	8
Fiorentina	7
Inter Milan	7
Bordeaux	6
Shakhtar	6
Celtic	5
Leicester City	5
Leverkusen	5
Samsunspor	5
Zaragoza	5
West Brom	4
Ajax	3
Al-Hilal	3
Club Brugge	3
FC Copenhagen	3
Galatasaray	3
Istanbul BB	3
Liberec	3
Lyon	3
Mainz	3
Marseille	3
Roma	3
Spartak Moscow	3
Sporting Lisbon	3
Grand Total	1110