The Playing styles in Europe’s best teams

In PlaymakerTV that you can access on our Youtube Channel you will find content where our senior data analyst, Jesper Haglöf and women’s football writer and analyst, Mia Eriksson speak about the women’s game using data from PlaymakerAI’s platform. This article is describing bits of the last episode where Jesper and Mia summed up the European Football League’s season 2022/23.

PlaymakerAI’s team spiders

There is no surprise to anyone that teams play differently if you compare them with each other. It will all come down to how the coach wants the team to play, what players the coach needs to execute their plan or what players the coach has from the beginning. It can also be influenced on the culture of football in a certain league or country such as what type of football a coach thinks is necessary to play in order to win matches and in the end the titles in a specific league or country. 

With data and statistics from our platform, we can help to visualise your team’s playing style and how well your team is doing across different metrics and KPI that is important for you. In this article we are going to take a look at the top two teams in some of the biggest European leagues in the women’s game at the moment and compare their team spiders with each other. Team spiders are missing from Liga F in Spain due to the lack of consistent data and content from videos from the Spanish league.

England & the Women’s Super League

Champions of England Chelsea FC compared to 2nd placed Manchester United FC

The top teams in England have many different skills and it can be shown in the respective team’s spiders. Chelsea winning the Women’s Super League for the fourth year in a row stands out in especially the metrics of carries/dribbles, offense and efficiency compared to Manchester United that stands out in possession, goalkeeping, defense and pressing. To just give a quick analysis when looking at that you might think that for Chelsea it’s not important to always hold on to the possession of the ball during a game as it is to Manchester United. The differences are that when Chelsea wins the ball they take care of the time they have it and are efficient. Important to point out here is that the metric of goalkeeping just contains data of pure shot stopping.

Germany & The Frauen Bundesliga

Champions of Germany FC Bayern München compared to 2nd placed Vfl Wolfsburg

One of the most ‘complete’ team spiders from the season is the one from Bayern München. While goalkeeping and efficiency might have been lacking for Wolfsburg the league winners looks to have been better in both. 

The other standout metrics for the German Champions are possession, defense, ball recoveries and set pieces. Set pieces in this case are measured from an offensive point of view. Every throw-in that goes up the pitch, free kicks, corner kicks and so on. 

Wolfsburg’s best abilities as a team lie within passing, carries/dribbles, offense and pressing. Safe to say that it would have been interesting to see what would have happened in the Frauen Bundesliga if the green Wolves had been more efficient.

France & D1 Arkema

The Champions of France, Olympique Lyonnais and 2nd placed Paris Saint-Germain

It’s interesting that two teams in a league can look so similar as these two and that the French league, D1Arkema, has a league winner that has lacked in efficiency a lot throughout the season. 

Lyon’s efficiency must be able to be explained with the fact that they have been missing a striker or that their head coach, Sonia Bompastor, has chosen to not play with a striker in the absence of Ada Hegerberg. Lyon has had the option to play Denmark international Signe Bruun as the replacement for Hegerberg but that has not been the case. In the reversed fixture against Paris SG, that clearly decided the outcome of the league, Bruun was subbed in and headed the league title home (literally) to Lyon. 

Otherwise these two teams are very good at what they do but, the lack of strikers (Marie-Antoinette Katoto injured for Paris SG as well) probably influenced the season more than they might be willing to admit.

Italy & Serie A

Champions of Italy AS Roma and 2nd placed Juventus FC

In Italy Roma was able to push down multiple league winners of the italian scudetto from the throne. 

And one has to admit, the spider from Roma is beautiful. Both these teams are below average in goalkeeping in shot stopping but what separates them is probably more the answer to which one of them won the title in the end. 

Roma has been impressive in their defensive and offensive display such as pressing, passing and possession while Juventus has had the efficiency, ball recoveries and carries/dribbles. This would leave Juventus’ head coach Joe Montemurro a couple of things to think about ahead of the next season while Alessandro Spugna probably can rest peacefully through his summer vacation.