lionel messi is impossible

8/9/2019 Lionel Messi is Impossible

1/10

ttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/

Page 1 of 10 Jul 17, 2014 09:46:16AM

Ian Walton / Getty Images

Lionel Messi Is Impossible fivethirtyeight.co

For a better browsing experience, please upgrade your browser.

FiveThirtyEight

By

In theirGroup WorldCupmatchlate lasmonth,Argenti

and Iran were still deadlocked after 90 minutes. With the game in stoppage time and the score tied at 0-

Lionel Messi took the ball near the right corner of the penalty area, held it for a moment, then broke left,found his seam, took his strike and curled it in from 29 yards. What was going to be a draw was now awin, and Messi had put Argentina into the Round of 16.

It was the sort of play that inspired the phrase . But for those who only watch soccer whenMessi magicthe World Cup rolls around, this was probably only the second (or at most third) goal theyd seen from thlittle man they call (The Flea). Despite having 407 career goals in club and international playLa Pulga(including a record alone) and a record four Ballon dOr (World Player of the Year) awards,91 in 2012until this years tournament, Messi hadnt scored in a World Cup match since 2006.

Since scoring in the 2007 Copa Del Rey, Messi has constantly toan eerily familiar goal been compared

Argentine great and his former national team coach Diego Maradona. Despite his young age he turne27 on June 24 Messi has taken in Argentina and elsewhere for failing to engineer substantial criticismWorld Cup run like that of the man with the Hand of God.

To Argentina devotees, it probably doesnt help that during Messis tenure at FC Barcelona the club teamhas won two FIFA Club World Cups to go with six La Liga and three UEFA (All-European) championship

Perhaps this year will be different. Messi is finally having the kind of World Cup expected of him. He hasscored in every game so far (four goals overall), including one on a beautiful free kick against Nigeria anthe aforementioned game-winner against Iran. As of this writing, Messi and hisFiveThirtyEight givescompatriots a 16 percent chance of winning the tournament second only to host nation Brazil.

Even though national teams are patchwork and only play together for a handful of games each year, howMessi plays with Argentina relates to what is ultimately a fair criticism of his success: Most of it has comfor FC Barcelona, a free-spending virtual all-star squad, packed with many of the worlds best players.1

As the primary striker for such a juggernaut, it can be hard to Messis goal-scoring prowess frodetangleBarcelonas general offensive dominance. And the 2013-14 season hasnt helped: Battling minor injuriesand facing competition for touches from superstar arrival Neymar, Messis most recent season wasslightly below par by his standards, yet Barca finished second in La Liga. (And in the seven games Messmissed, they went 6-1.) He still scored 41 goals, but that total was less than the 60 he scored the yearbefore, and fewer than the 51 that rival Cristiano Ronaldo of Real Madrid scored en route to capturing th

Ballon dOr.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/http://fivethirtyeight.com/https://www.google.com/search?q=messi%20magichttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXrltgfrrqwhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYet49BToLwhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/european/2311407/The-greatest-goal-ever.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/08/magazine/the-burden-of-being-messi.htmlhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ccNkksrflshttp://fivethirtyeight.com/interactives/world-cup/http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-1http://skepticalsports.com/?p=478http://skepticalsports.com/?p=478http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-1http://fivethirtyeight.com/interactives/world-cup/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ccNkksrflshttp://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/08/magazine/the-burden-of-being-messi.htmlhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/european/2311407/The-greatest-goal-ever.htmlhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYet49BToLwhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXrltgfrrqwhttps://www.google.com/search?q=messi%20magichttp://fivethirtyeight.com/http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/


2/10


Page 2 of 10 Jul 17, 2014 09:46:16AM

morris-feature-messi-1

I think this criticism is fair and I found it intriguing enough to look into the matter myself. So I gatheredand organized data, crunched it, re-crunched it, and gathered more data and crunched it some more.2

By now Ive studied nearly every aspect of Messis game, down to a touch-by-touch level: his shooting; ; ;and scoring production where he shoots from how often he sets up his own shots what kind of kicks he

; ; ;uses to make those shots his ability to take on defenders how accurate his passes are the kind of; ; ;passes he makes how often he creates scoring chances how often those chances lead to goals even

.how his defensive playmaking compares to other high-volume shooters

And thats just the stuff that made it into this article. I arrived at a conclusion that I wasnt really expectingor prepared for: Lionel Messi is impossible.

Its not possible to shoot more efficiently from outside the penalty area than many players shoot inside itIts not possible to lead the world in weak-kick goals and long-range goals. Its not possible to score onunassisted plays as well as the best players in the world score on assisted ones. Its not possible to leadthe worlds forwards both in taking on defenders and in dishing the ball to others. And its certainly notpossible to do most of these things by insanely wide margins.

But Messi does all of this and more.

Scoring

I think its fair to say that goals mean more in soccer than points do in most sports. And Messi scores a l. Since the end of the 2010 World Cup, Messi has been responsible for 291 goals and assists inof them

the 201 of his games in club and national team play tracked by the sports analytics company Opta. Howdoes that compare with other soccer stars across top leagues around the world? (The Opta data setincludes 16,574 players and 24,904 games in both league and international play since the end of the 20World Cup.)

Coming in just behind Messi with 289 goals and assistssince the 2010 World Cup is Cristiano Ronaldo, Messis riv

from Real Madrid. When it comes to scoring, these twoarent just on top of the pile, theyre hang-gliding somewheway above it. Messi and Ronaldo have been compared toeach other so often by sports media and fans alike that italmost feels trite to compare them again, but it cant behelped. If we want to compare Messi to all players with aremotely similar volume of production, were left withRonaldo.

Now lets leave assists aside for a second (much more onthem later), and concentrate on Messis shooting. Like

Ronaldo, he has an enormous number of goals, but alsotakes an enormous number of shots. If this were basketbal

we might expect a negative (or at least decelerating) relationship between shot volume and shot efficien the more shots a player takes the less efficient he is. But it turns out this isnt really the case in socc3More efficient shooters tend to take more shots. Despite this, Messi is still a trend-breaker:4

Of the 866 players who qualified for that plot by playingin 50-plus games and averaging at least one shot attempper game Messi is the ninth-most efficient shooteroverall (Ronaldo is 173rd), and hes by far the mostefficient of anyone with a similar shot volume. The

highest-volume shooter who is more efficient is Mario
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-2http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#shootinghttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#shootinghttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#shotlocationhttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#unassistedhttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#kicktypehttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#kicktypehttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#takeonhttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#passaccuracyhttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#passtypehttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#passtypehttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#scorechancehttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#goalchancehttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#defensedhttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#defensedhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtC9HSglT3chttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtC9HSglT3chttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-3http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-4http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-4http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-3https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtC9HSglT3chttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtC9HSglT3chttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#defensedhttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#defensedhttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#goalchancehttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#scorechancehttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#passtypehttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#passtypehttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#passaccuracyhttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#takeonhttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#kicktypehttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#kicktypehttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#unassistedhttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#shotlocationhttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#shootinghttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#shootinghttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-2http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/


3/10


Page 3 of 10 Jul 17, 2014 09:46:16AM

morris-feature-messi-table-1


Gomez, the former Bayern Munich striker, who takes abotwo-thirds as many shots as Messi.

But in soccer, unlike in basketball, shooting efficiency isnthe the single most important stat. Since the value of apossession in soccer is much lower, so is the cost ofmissing a shot (and missed shots often have goodoutcomes as well). That said, quality shot opportunities insoccer are still a limited resource, so making the most of

them is important.

To generalize a bit, some of the value a shooter providescomes from taking more and better shots (e.g. taking thecloser to the goal, at a better angle, amid fewer defenderetc.), and some of it comes from putting in those shots

more often. For example, Messis typical regular (non-set piece) shot comes from 14.9 yards out, whileRonaldos average shot comes from 20.1 yards out. ESPN/TruMedia has a model for estimating thechances of a player making each shot he takes based on type and location (this metric is known asexpected goals). The difference between a players actual goals and his expected goals is called goalsabove average (or GAA). Because Messi takes shots that are more likely to go in, his average attempt

has an expectation of .182 goals, while the average Ronaldo shot has an expectation of .124 goals sowe would expect Messis shooting to be more efficient based on that alone. However, Messi has alsoexceeded expectation by a greater amount than Ronaldo has. Messi scored .220 goals per shotthatattempt for .038 GAA per goal. Ronaldo scored .139 goals per attempt, so he had .015 GAA per goal.

Heres a comparison of the top 20 shot-takers overall (regular shots in all games since the 2010 WorldCup):

In this group, Messi both takes the best shots does the most withandthose attempts.

If we break this down using shot-location data, its clear that Messi is

highly efficient across a wide range of distances.

The percentage of shots Messi makes from outside the penalty area isabsolutely stunning. He scores almost as often per shot from outside thepenalty area (12.1 percent) as most players do inside it (13.1 percent).

Of 8,335 players in our dataset who have taken at least one shot fromoutside the box, only 1,835 have scored from that distance at any point.There are 47 players with 50 or more attempts from outside the boxwithout a single goal, and about 500 with at least 20 attempts and nogoals. Messi leads the world with 21 goals from outside the penalty area

on just 173 shot attempts.

Ronaldo takes more than twice as many shots from this distance, but still has fewer goals overall. Messmeanwhile, scores at a remarkable rate. Adjusting for shot quality with the GAA model, Messi is running12.6 goals above expectation (based on shot-by-shot expectation, not the trend line in the chart).Ronaldo, with more than twice as many shots, ran just 5.5 goals above expectation, and no one but Mesis higher than 7.5 goals.

The 21st of those outside-the-penalty-area goals was Messis extra-time winner against Iran, which camfrom 29 yards out (33 yards to where it went in). That goal was quintessential Messi: He got the ball onthe right side of the field, held it for a few seconds, broke to the middle and in heavy traffic swervedit in on off his left foot. Plus he did it all without an assist.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/


4/10


Page 4 of 10 Jul 17, 2014 09:46:16AM


Unassisted Shooting

Despite dishing a large number of assists (more on that to come), Messi sometimes gets called selfish.But maybe he isnt selfish enough.

About 44 percent of Messis open (non-set piece) shots are individual plays, taken without an assist.5This is lower than the 46 percent of unassisted shots for players overall, but Messi scores on these shotmore than 23 percent of the time, compared to all players 5 percent. Additionally, he gains .089 goalsabove average on each unassisted shot. Ronaldo gains .023, and the average player is slightly negative

at -.004 GAA.

Lets look at how Messis assisted shooting compares to other players with 100 or more shots bothassisted and unassisted :6

Somehow, Messi has done even better when taking it on his own thanwhen somebody sets him up. Moreover, on unassisted shots he shootsnearly 10 percent and .044 GAA better than the next best player (SergiAguero for Manchester City) does, despite taking the fourth-most suchshots of the 28 players in the group.

To be clear, you could probably choose any skills for your axes andproduce a similar graph. Messi can shoot it just about any which way.Here are some miscellaneous shooting stats hes accrued at Barcelona

Messi loves his left foot, shooting with it 78 percent of the time, andscoring 23 percent. But dont sleep on his right foot: When he uses it, hscores 23 percent of the time. He shoots slightly below average on (alimited number of) headers (10 percent vs. 13 percent).

About 8 percent of his shots are weak kicks (compared to 6 percenfor all players in the data set), but he makes 27 percent of them, and does so more often than wedexpect. He has an average GAA of .026 on those kicks (all players: 5 percent shooting on weak

kicks with -.055 GAA). Only 5 percent of his kicks are strong ones (compared to 8 percent for allplayers), but those kicks score 36 percent of the time, and have .251 GAA each! All players havescored on 11 percent of their strong kick shots and have an average .051 GAA per shot.

About 12 percent of his shots have swerve on them (compared to 10 percent for all players); 3percent of those swervy kicks score, for a huge .202 GAA (all players: 8 percent, .020 GAA).

On direct free kicks (like the one he scored on against Nigeria), Messi has scored about 8 perceof the time (compared to all players 5 percent), with .021 GAA per shot (Ronaldo has scored on 7percent with an identical .021 GAA).7

Messi has scored on 86 percent of his penalty kicks, versus an average of 77 percent for allplayers. But put one check-mark in Ronaldos column, as he has scored on 93 percent of his penaattempts. Since both are the primary PK-takers for both their club and national teams, this differenc

if it held up in the long run would be worth about three-quarters of a goal per year.

To make all those unassisted shots possible, Messi has to take on a lot of defenders one on one. Therea stat for that, and in my view its one of the most revealing, reflecting both Messis skill and style, and threlationship between the two. Of all forwards in our data set whove played 100-plus games, he takes odefenders the most, and hes the most successful at it.

The only forward who takes on defenders nearly asaggressively as Messi is Luis Suarez, the Uruguayanstriker for Liverpool who is perhaps too aggressive for hisown good ( ). Suarez is successful less than 35ahem

percent of the time.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-5http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-6http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-7https://vine.co/v/MtJwm0p3Jwhhttps://vine.co/v/MtJwm0p3Jwhhttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-7http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-6http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-5http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/


5/10


Page 5 of 10 Jul 17, 2014 09:46:16AM



This may help explain how Messi gets so many bettershots, and why his unassisted shots are so good. It alsopoints to the main stylistic difference between Messi andRonaldo: Ronaldo takes more mid-range shots but missea lot of them; Messi tries to beat a lot more defenders,loses sometimes, and then makes up for it (and then somby having better assisting and shooting opportunities as aresult. Thats not to say one approach is better than theother, but note that it means that the observed shooting

gap between them is at least somewhat exaggerated.While Messi appears to shoot much more efficiently, thatpartly because he loses the ball more during failed take-oattempts, while Ronaldo loses it more because of missedshots. Only the second of those is accounted for in

shooting stats. (Ill get more into how we can account for loss of possession in the touch-by-touch analyslater.)

Passing and Assists

From the above, you might think Messi is a selfish player. Or you might assume that if Messi is so good

shooting, hed focus on it to the exclusion of other skills. But, in true -eque fashion, MessWayne Gretzkyis also one of the top assisters in our data set. Once again, that makes him a crazy outlier: No one else(aside from, yes, Ronaldo) even comes close to his combination of goals scored versus goals dished.

Not only is Messi the top game-by-game goal-scorer of thlast four years, hes the third-most productive distributor oassists, despite being the primary scorer on his own teamOnly Mesut Ozil and Franck Ribery earned more assists8than Messi, and Ozil did it on Real Madrid setting up9Cristiano Ronaldo.

But how does he do it? The biggest obstacle to evaluatingMessis passing ability is accounting for the fact that heplays for the most pass-happy team in the world. WatchinBarcelona can be a bit like watching a playground game okeep away. Barcelonas players are infamous for their

style of play, which relies on an enormous amoutiki-takaof short, high percentage passing. Above all else, they tryto maintain possession of the ball until a chance opens up

This sounds like a great strategy, but theres a reason it isnt employed universally: To make it work, ateam has to be stocked with amazing passers, and it has to have strikers capable of creating chancesagainst set defenses.10

Messi is both of those things. And whats more, his passing profile is nothing like the other Barcelonaforwards, who typically send 72 percent of their passes back or square. Messi is far more likely to try toadvance the ball toward the goal, and far more likely to succeed:

Messi makes more passes than the other forwards, with a higher percentage of those passes trying toadvance the ball toward the goal, and a higher percentage of passes finding their targets (typicalthoseMessi!). His 3,800-plus completed forward passes are nearly twice as many as any forward in our data s(Francesco Totti for FC Roma has 2,200, followed by Wayne Rooney, the English striker, with 1,800 andRonaldo with 1,500).
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=679820http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-8http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-9http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiki-takahttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-10http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-10http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiki-takahttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-9http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-8http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=679820http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/


6/10


Page 6 of 10 Jul 17, 2014 09:46:16AM




One measure of the quality of a group of passes is how many are completed successfully, but it alsomatters what happens when those passes get where theyre going. It doesnt help if a player passes 60yards to someone swarmed with defenders. So a useful metric (made possible by play-by-play data) is tpercentage of a players passes that lead to successful plays on the other end meaning the receivinplayer manages to get off a shot, or passes the ball to someone else, and so on.

As it turns out, not only does Messi pass the ball forward aggressively, he does so accurately, and theballs he delivers are successful a very high percentage of the time.

For example, lets look at Messis forward passes from the midfield area. Ive created a scatterlong ballcomparing each players completion percentage for these passes to the percentage of them that aresuccessful, and Ive shown the volume of long pass attempts for each player as bubble sizes:

Messi is among the most accurate passers for both metrics,and no one with as many attempts is more accurate. There11are players who complete a higher percentage of these passeand/or are more successful with them, but theyre typicallybeing more selective in their attempts. For example, Ronaldosuccess rate of 60 percent beats Messis 54 percent (with aslightly lower completion percentage), but Ronaldo has only 3

successful long ball passes to Messis 81.

Given that, its no surprise that Messi excels at the through-bathe delicate and gorgeous play that requires perfectcircumstances and perfect timing to be successful. Messiattempts almost twice as many of these passes as any otherforward, and still manages to beat the trend.

And then theres the bread and butter of aggressive passingmoving it toward the goal on the opponents side of the field. attacking territory, no one attacks as often as Messi does, an

no one has more success doing so.

These passesare where mosassists comefrom, and indeeMessi has themost assists pegame from theskinds of passesof any forward,

by a largemargin. Andagain, despitemaking twice amany attemptsas most people

he beats expectations.

Touch by Touch

By this point, it should be evident that Messi has at least a little bit of skill. But theres still heavy lifting todo: We have to show that he actually makes his team better.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_ballhttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-11http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-11http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_ballhttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/


7/10


Page 7 of 10 Jul 17, 2014 09:46:16AM


First, to ensure that were celebrating the greatness of Messi and not the greatness of Barcelona, we neto make sense of Messi on Barcelona. The easiest way to do that is to evaluate Barcelona without Messalso known as the Spanish national team.

The contrast between Spain in 2010 and Spain in 2014 seems huge: The 2010 team won the World Cupand the 2014 team was tied for first in the tournament to be mathematically eliminated. But lost in thisnarrative is that the 2010 championship team wasnt all that great, at least on offense. That World Cupteam scored fewer goals per game than this years: only eight goals in seven games in 2010, while thisyears group-stage dropouts scored four goals in three. (Thats 1.2 goals per game overall.) For

comparison, in the 2010-11 UEFA Champions League (the highest level of competition for European clusoccer), Barcelona scored 30 goals in 13 games. In 47 UEFA matches since 2010, Barcelona has score104 goals, or 1.08 goals per game more than a Spanish team comprised of a similar offensive core andusing the same tiki-taka playing style, minus Lionel Messi.

Perhaps thats an unfair comparison to make but its consistent with the theory that Barcelonas playkeep away until lightning strikes offense really only works when it has Messi as its striker.

Between Messis shots taken and chances created, he is responsible for about 48 percent of Barcelonaregular (non-penalty, non-set play) shot attempts. Yet he and the players he assists score about 60percent of Barcas goals.

In fact, the more involved Messi is in a shot attempt, the more likely his team is to score. He has scoredon 22.1 percent of his regular (non-set, non-penalty, non-shootout) shots for Barca himself. The people twhom hes dished assists and chances have scored on 18.1 percent of their shots. Meanwhile, Barcelonshots that didnt come from Messis foot or Messis passing scored just 12.5 percent of the time.12

Even though Barcelona is one of the best teams in the world, theres a huge difference between whenMessi is involved in creating shots and chances and when he isnt. Here are the equivalent differences fall players since 2010 with more than 100 games played and four or more shots or assist chances pergame:

Of course, these are raw shooting percentages anddont account for the types of shots each player istaking or assisting, or the number of attempts. Itsgenerally harder to stay valuable over a larger numbeof shots, and we havent yet factored in that difficulty.

For that, we turn back to the goals aboveaverage model, which compares each shot or chanceoutcome with its expectation. From this, we can tellwhether a player has exceeded expectations for all ofhis shot attempts and chances created. Then we can

do the same for all shots taken by his team without thplayers involvement, and compare the two. Forexample, if the player scored .02 goals aboveexpectation per shot attempt, and the rest of his team

scored -.01 goals less than expectation, that players value-added would be +.03 goals per shot (the valabove replacement for that player on that team). Now lets plot that added value against each players13total offensive participation (the percentage of team shots hes involved with):

Finally, after however many charts, we see a diminishinreturn. At least for everyone not named Lionel Messi. Honce again tops the field, impervious to the burden.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-12http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-13http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-13http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-12http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/


8/10


Page 8 of 10 Jul 17, 2014 09:46:16AM



But thats just what happens once the shots are lined upIf we want to explore a players efficiency, we have tolook into his touches more deeply. For this purpose, Icreated a stat called possessions used. Its a little bitanalogous to in basketball, and incorporatesusage ratethe number of touches in which a player:

Takes a shot;Passes the ball to a player who takes a shot;

Turns the ball over;Tries to pass the ball and fails;Tries to take on a defender and fails.

In other words, its a stat meant to reflect anything thatends a teams possession, whether that outcome is

positive or negative. Events that simply prolong the possession (taking on a defender and succeeding, opassing the ball to another teammate who does not take a shot) arent factored in.

Obviously passing the ball is an important skill (which I covered a bit above), but for this metric I just wanto know about the relative likelihood of good outcomes (goals, assists) to bad ones (misses, turnovers,

etc.) when the player does something possession-ending. Looking at players who use more than 1514possessions per game, we can plot possessions used against scoring and assists like so:

Cutting out all the passing that doesnt end in a shot, Mesgenerates the most points per touch of any player with asimilar usage rate. But there are a couple of otherimportant things to notice in this graph: Despite not takingas many shots, Messi uses more possessions per gamethan Ronaldo does. This is generally because Messi ismuch more likely to take on defenders, and thus is muchmore likely to lose possession of the ball or turn it over

entirely. (He is also relatively more likely to set up apotential assist.)

Importantly, turnovers in soccer arent as big of a deal asthey are in basketball or American football. Shots, evenbad ones, are more of a limited resource in soccer thanpossessions. Risking a turnover to increase your chance

of scoring a goal even by a small amount can be worth it.

Finally, Messis defense is consistent with that of a high-volume striker. That hes practically15munchkin-sized (hes only 1.69 met , excuse me 5 7 tall) seems not to matter.ahem

To look at Messis defensive skill, I combined successful tackles, interceptions and blocked shots, the16adjusted for number of opponent possessions (as I did with offense above).

There are a few lines where Messis stats areconsiderably worse than his peers (meaning RonaldosHe doesnt get a lot of clearances although this ispartly style, as Messi is more willing to pass out ofdefensive territory (or even take on defenders). And hedoesnt go for (or succeed at) a lot of aerials (50-50 bal
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/http://www.basketball-reference.com/about/glossary.htmlhttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-14http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-15http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-16http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-16http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-15http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/#fn-14http://www.basketball-reference.com/about/glossary.htmlhttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/


9/10


Page 9 of 10 Jul 17, 2014 09:46:16AM



in the air). While I havent studied this aspect of his gamin depth, soccer experts in the FiveThirtyEight officetheorize that it has something to do with his stature.

Conclusion

How should Argentina fans feel about all this, given thedisappointment theyve experienced in World Cups pasand the hopes theyve pinned on Messi this year? So fa

in the 2014 tournament, Messi has been erasingwhatever gap there was between his Barcelona stats ahis Argentina stats, with style. And that gap was neverreally as big as it appeared.

Since the 2010 World Cup, Messi has scored 19 goalsand six assists for Argentina in 22 games (.9 goals per game and .3 assists per game, compared to 1.1and .4 for Barca). For shooting/assisting efficiency, he has scored .199 GAA per game for Argentinaversus .262 for Barca. He also has better defensive stats for Argentina, so even if there are persistentdifferences, its quite possible it has to do with style and Messis role on each team rather than the qualitof his play.

And 22 games is a tiny sample. Even so, these stats are perfectly consistent with the argument that Mesis the best footballer on earth: That .199 GAA is better than the .175 GAA per game that Ronaldo hasearned at Real Madrid since 2010. This is what that .199 GAA looks like:

In other words, if Barca-Messi and Argentina-Messi weretwo different people, even based solely on the statsrecorded since 2010, theres a good chance theyd be thetwo best players in the world.

One of them is playing on Tuesday.

CORRECTION (July 1, 12:32 p.m.):The axes in an earlversion of the chart on through-balls above misstated whthey measured. The chart shows attempted through-ballsand through-ball assists, not attempted and successfulassists.

CORRECTION (July 1, 1:06 p.m.): This article originallymisstated that Cristiano Ronaldo had 289 goals since the

2010 World Cup. He had 230 goals, and 59 assists in that time, for 289 combined goals and assists.

CORRECTION (July 7, 7:29 a.m.):An earlier version of this article also incorrectly said that Ronaldohad 41 successful long ball passes when in fact he had 35.

Filed under , , , , , , ,

Benjamin Morris

Benjamin Morris researches and writes about sports for FiveThirtyEight.

273

All Benjamin Morris
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/http://fivethirtyeight.com/contributors/benjamin-morris/http://fivethirtyeight.com/contributors/benjamin-morris/http://fivethirtyeight.com/contributors/benjamin-morris/http://fivethirtyeight.com/contributors/benjamin-morris/http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/


10/10


By

World Cup

Was Lionel Messi Tired?

By

By

By

ContactESPNFiveThirtyEightRSSMasthead

Terms of Use and Privacy Policy and Safety Information/Your California Privacy Rights are applicable to you. 2014 ESPN Internet VenturAll rights reserved. Interest-Based Ads
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/http://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/world-cup/http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/was-lionel-messi-tired/http://fivethirtyeight.com/contact/http://espn.com/http://fivethirtyeight.com/http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/fear-not-readers-we-have-rss-feeds/http://fivethirtyeight.com/masthead/http://fivethirtyeight.com/masthead/http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/fear-not-readers-we-have-rss-feeds/http://fivethirtyeight.com/http://espn.com/http://fivethirtyeight.com/contact/http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/was-lionel-messi-tired/http://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/world-cup/http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/

lionel messi is impossible

Documents