Big win against Lyon

My tone in these first few blurbs I've written has been generally negative. After all, I started this blog at a point where all of the Portuguese football world has been comparing last year's Benfica with the current version. Despite Lyon's 3 goals in the last few minutes of Tuesday's match, my overall tone this time around will be very positive.

I'd like to point out that the last two points that I mentioned in my last blog entry were very pertinent in the game against Lyon. 

First, to my surprise, Jorge Jesus started the game with Fabio Coentrao playing behind Cesar Peixoto for the first time this season when these have been the 2 players to commandeer the left flank. With Fabio's legs at LB, he can participate in offensive incursions while having the capacity to recover his defensive position, something Cesar can only dream of doing. As I've beaten to death before, this is by far the best setup and only after Benfica's second goal did we see these two players occasionally switch positions. The switching at this point makes more sense, allowing for Fabio to pressure the ball carrier further up the field with a 2 goal lead.

Second, the first-touch passing increased, though not dramatically. A Champions League game against Lyon is much different than a league game against Pacos de Ferreira, which makes the slight increase more understandable. 

Though Benfica controlled the first 75 minutes, they spent great periods of time managing the game defensively rather than with possession. In this area, defensive organization, Benfica played 75 "perfect" minutes, as Jorge Jesus would say. Defining your team's identity is crucial in obtaining positive results. Benfica isn't a possession team against the bigger clubs (and arguably against the smaller clubs, since the Portuguese champs seem to have quite a bit of difficulty in games where they're expected to control ball possession). Defensive organization followed by quick attacking breaks, with first-touch passing as the centerpiece, is the trademark of this team against the likes of Lyon and is what allowed us to score 4 goals before we fell asleep.

After Lyon's first goal...well, I don't want to talk about it. ;)

An alarming statistic

Coming off a win against Pacos de Ferreira, Benfica now plays a critical match tomorrow night in dictating their future in the Champions League. Though "our" side's superiority this past weekend should be uncontested, there's no doubt that the pace of play is nowhere near what it was last season. Other than Aimar's genius play in creating the first goal, as well as the final score, there's little to praise in Benfica's performance.

Though football isn't considered to be a statistical game, and rightfully so since team mentality trumps any sort of mathematical figures one can conjure up, statistics can give us a general idea of how a team is performing. Pace really is a big issue which we can dissect with a quick statistic.

In the game against Pacos de Ferreira, Benfica performed a meager 42 first touch passes, meaning only 42 times did the player not receive the ball before passing it. I didn't consider headers or passes back to the goalkeeper in this statistical analysis. Benfica's passing game consisted almost exclusively of stop and go passing. Receive the ball, pass the ball. "Stop and go," rather than "go and go." This kind of predictable pace benefits the opponent's defensive positioning and eliminates offensive fluidity. The opposition is able to anticipate your play.

Benfica had 61% possession and 43 attacks, according to SportTV. If we consider that a reasonable amount of first touch passes per offensive play should be in the 2-4 range, we can conclude that a team should strive for around 100 per game, more than double the 42 performed through the whole game. Furthermore, 10 of these were bad passes (not reaching their destination) and 11 of them were back passes. Only 22 of the first touch passes actually promoted forward progress. It also means Benfica resorted many times to first touch passing in a pressed situation.

When an offensive-minded team complains about their opposition playing too closed up and inside their own box (something that didn't even happen in Pacos' case), they're really complaining about their own inability to play quick enough to bypass the other team's defensive mentality.

That being said, I'll leave this post with two quick predictions. First, if Benfica doesn't double their number of first touch passes, they will not win against Lyon. Second (and this is semi-unrelated), if Cesar Peixoto plays left back instead of Fabio Coentrao, Benfica will also not win against Lyon. Cesar Peixoto and Maxi Pereira at wing backs is suicide. In games where the left side options are Cesar Peixoto and Fabio Coentrao, Cesar must be the player in the midfield with Fabio playing behind him.

Just a couple of thoughts...