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How Football Has Changed; Statistical Overview 1958-2010
Topic Started: Mar 17 2011, 12:55 PM (1,029 Views)
ursus arctos
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But a lot of long balls aren't immediately controlled by the attacking team.

Think of how often you hear Anglo commentators talking about "putting it into the mixer" or where a defender will head it away, only for the attacking team to latch onto the attempted clearance.
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Gregoriak
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Unfortunately there is no breakdown of "time from receiving the ball to passing it" for each World Cup, only the average fro 1958 to 1990 and 2002 to 2010.

One of the good things I think about FIFA giving the 2022 World Cup to Qatar is that it will be very interesting to see how much the pace of "modern" football will slow down when facing circumstances not unsimilar to Mexico 1970. Perhaps this will already be the case in Brazil 2014?

BTW, I must add that the article where I took these statistics from was really one-sided. The author and the scientists both are "modernists" and they focus almost exclusively on the pro-modernists view. For example, not a word is said about the 1974 World Cup team playing at the same pace as the 2010 team (and considerbaly higher pace than the 2006 team). They focus only on the fastest German game of the 2010 World Cup (3.6 meters per second if I recall correctly vs. Australia) and compare this to the slowest game of the 1958 and 1990 period (1.70 meters per second vs. Italy 1970) and conclude "the modernists view that modern football is played at a much higher pace than past football is affirmed in a surprisingly thorough way."

It is really a pity that the author of that article had an agenda and was not willing to interpret the numbers from a neutral point of view. Very disappointing.
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Gregoriak
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Onslow,Mar 28 2011
12:38 PM
I found this statistic Gregoriak brought up interesting and nobody has yet commented on it,

Average time a player spent from receiving the ball to passing it:

Avg. 1958-1990 4.64 seconds
Avg. 2002-2010 4.04 seconds


When my mates and I are discussing modern football and comparing it to days gone by we usually talk about how there is less one touch passing now than in the past.  But these statistics, at least pertaining to Germany at various World Cups would seem to differ with that general perception.  You would think if there was more one touch passing, the average time on the ball would decrease.  But there may be another explanation to why players from 1960-1990 held on to the ball longer than they did in the past decade's World Cups, and that is man marking is tighter now than it used to be, thus players had more time in the past to make decisions with the ball and therefore held on to it longer.


In Germany, the general view is that "one touch" passing is more common these days than in the days of old. The general consensus is that there is less time on the ball for all players and thus the need for quick passing.

However, if one listens to modernists in Germany, they usually claim some outlandish differences like "today a player has only a fraction of the time available to legends of the past". Basically meaning, back in the past, you had "all the time in the world" to receive a ball, think what to do next and then pass it while today, players have "much less" time to react which makes it all "one move" (receiving the ball, decision-making, passing it). This is one of the major arguments modernists in Germany bring forward to underline their theory that current players are "automatically" superior to past players.

The differences in the actual figures detected by the scientists do seem far less significant to me than what most modernists have stated for years.

If, say, the statistic had read:

Avg. 1958-1990 0.64 seconds
Avg. 2002-2010 0.04 seconds

...a difference of 0.60 would have been very significant.

But between 4.64 and 4.04 it is not as significant.

Of course the modernist-leaning author of the article was falling over himself in joy stating that "half a second " is a difference like between sun and moon.
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ursus arctos
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That's a good point.

Do the "modernists" really consider 1990 to be the 'tipping point"? It strikes me as a strange place to draw a line, though I think of these things much more in terms of a continuum, where any line is inherently arbitrary.

Are there particular players that are thought to be emblematic of the debate? For instance, would the Modernists argue that Michael Ballack is streets ahead of Rainer Bonhof?
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Gregoriak
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ursus arctos,Mar 29 2011
10:53 AM
That's a good point.

Do the "modernists" really consider 1990 to be the 'tipping point"?  It strikes me as a strange place to draw a line, though I think of these things much more in terms of a continuum, where any line is inherently arbitrary.

Are there particular players that are thought to be emblematic of the debate?  For instance, would the Modernists argue that Michael Ballack is streets ahead of Rainer Bonhof?


Good example. Pretty much!

Rainer Bonhof is characterised as a fighter, athlete and runner, but not so much as a fine player in terms of skill.

Yet Bonhof did have finesse skills, as one can see in this short clip from 1978:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gaUX7c78Kg
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Don Balon
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Nice pass by Bonhof with the outside of his foot on that clip you provided. I have always admired players who can pinpoint a pass that way. Curious that Bonhof is described more as a fighter than a technical player, of course in his position, defensive midfield, fighting qualities are always needed but the impression I always had of Bonhof was he was a pretty good technician for a defensive midfielder. Although Ballack is/was not a defensive midfielder my rememberances of Bonhof were that he was a more technical player than Ballack, who made a lot out of his career through power and aerial ability. In fact I recall a converstaion we had on this message board last year during the World Cup where we discussed that Germany may have benefited from Ballack's pre tournament injury because it allowed Sami Khedira, hardly a master technician, but a more dynamic and skilled player than Ballack to start in midfield.

In Spain where I live there is not so much this debate between "modernists" as Gregoriak calls them and those thinking the sport was better in the "old days." Perhaps that is because we are currently involved in the greatest generation of Spanish footballers ever. Yet stars from the 50s and 60s in particular are still idolised, it is just that rarely is there a debate about whether the game now was better than it was then or vice versa.
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valenciano
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Gregoriak,Mar 20 2011
11:45 PM
We have to differentiate between 1) the number of goal chances per game (which might have been higher in the past) and 2) the percentage of goal chances converted (which definitely was higher in the past).

1) If it was higher in the past, it might be attributed to what you said (less tight defenses back then - although back in the days of strict man-marking this is not certain)
2) But once a current player has a goal chance - and this is what is compared - he is less likely to score than a player was in the old days.

Point number 2 is an interesting one. It reminds me of this old Alsatian coach I had on an amateur club I used to play on, he used to always complain (and this was 12 years ago) about how players in the modern game always want to "kill" the ball when shooting on goal, in other words they want to hit it as hard as possible rather than looking to place their shot. We players used to dismiss his claims as those of an older man fondly remembering the past, but looking at this last statement by Gregoriak, maybe there was some truth to his statement that players in the modern game do not have the calmness in front of goal that they used to have?

That likely is not the only explanation for the lower conversion chances, defenses do mark tighter now and goalkeeping training, and equipment (remember the old days when keepers did not even wear gloves or later on when if they did use gloves they looked like the kind in your garden shed!) have improved.
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valenciano
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Don Balon,Mar 31 2011
06:24 AM
Nice pass by Bonhof with the outside of his foot on that clip you provided. I have always admired players who can pinpoint a pass that way. Curious that Bonhof is described more as a fighter than a technical player, of course in his position, defensive midfield, fighting qualities are always needed but the impression I always had of Bonhof was he was a pretty good technician for a defensive midfielder. Although Ballack is/was not a defensive midfielder my rememberances of Bonhof were that he was a more technical player than Ballack, who made a lot out of his career through power and aerial ability. In fact I recall a converstaion we had on this message board last year during the World Cup where we discussed that Germany may have benefited from Ballack's pre tournament injury because it allowed Sami Khedira, hardly a master technician, but a more dynamic and skilled player than Ballack to start in midfield.


As a valencia fan I have good memories of rainer Bonhof who spent afew years at the club in the late 70s/early 80s. In fact he and Mario Kempes were part of Valencia's 1980 European Cup Winners Cup champions, a side coache dby a fellow named DiStefano. Bonhof had a cannon of a shot and was a superb free kick taker, to this then young Valencia fan Bonhof was an excellent and more than adequately skilled player.

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In Spain where I live there is not so much this debate between "modernists" as Gregoriak calls them and those thinking the sport was better in the "old days."  Perhaps that is because we are currently involved in the greatest generation of Spanish footballers ever.  Yet stars from the 50s and 60s in particular are still idolised, it is just that rarely is there a debate about whether the game now was better than it was then or vice versa.


True Don Balon but there is discussion about the speed of the game then as compared to know, with it almost universally considered that the game is quicker now. But the point to me is good players then, if in their prime now would have been able to adjust to the present game and with modern training techniques and fitness levels, players from the 50s and 60s would do just fine if they were magically transported in their prime to the current epoch.
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Johnbuildr
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[/QUOTE]True Don Balon but there is discussion about the speed of the game then as compared to know, with it almost universally considered that the game is quicker now. But the point to me is good players then, if in their prime now would have been able to adjust to the present game and with modern training techniques and fitness levels, players from the 50s and 60s would do just fine if they were magically transported in their prime to the current epoch.[/QUOTE]

Very well said, val. Given entirely the same environment, players of any generation would likely be equal to another.
Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum



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Gregoriak
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The problem with some current football fans is that they watch footage of the past with the particular wish to find scenes which they can critizise. But not only that, if they see someone made a mistake in a game played 40 years ago, this scene is automatically considered to be representative of the level of defensive play in ca. 1970 (or any other year). It usually goes "oh look how much space he had when he scored that goal" or "what an amateur way of defending" or "that goalkeeper was such a clown" which is usually followed by the claim that "mistakes like that are unimaginable today" or such like.

What these guys forget is that mistake were always part of football and will always remain a part of football. You can see defensive blunders every weekend in countless manners in every big European league. You can see them in the Champions League, too. Mistakes are still a vital element in football and will remain so.

Imagine a guy born today watching highlight clips in 30 years of yesterday's CL game between Inter and Schalke. Would it be alright if he concluded that this game is representative of the defensive level in current football? Of course that would ridiculous. But in 2041, someone would watch the highlights and could arrive at exact that conclusion.

Or show him a highlights Champions League compilation from the following games played between 2007 and 2010:

7-1 Manchester Utd. vs. Roma
8-0 Liverpool vs. Besiktas
7-0 Arsenal vs. Slavia Praha
6-3 Villareal vs. Aalborg
3-5 Steaua vs. Lyon
7-1 Bayern vs. Sporting Lisboa
4-4 Chelsea vs. Liverpool
0-7 Zilina vs. Marseille

What will this 30 year old guy in 2041 say? He will conclude that football was indeed pretty spectacular offensively, but the defenses were utter garbage and unthinkable "in the modern game" (= 2041).

So what the current-day modernists consider the peak in football evolution will be viewed by many as a very flawed, unorganised version with plenty of room for attackers and incompetent defenses in the same way current modernists view football from 1960 or 1975.

BTW, people today argue that modern-day defenses are so much better organised than in the past and so on. It is true that zonal defending which is almost universally applied by all top teams these days is a lot more sophisticated than the man-marking defenses of old. However due to its sophistication, it is also a system which is more prone to lead to mistakes than the more simple and basic man-marking.

In line with this thinking is the following article by German weekly "Spiegel":

http://www.spiegel.de/sport/fussball...714510,00.html

"...But there’s a remarkable counter trend noticeable to this for a fairly long time, which was also noticeable in South Africa. Despite the well-organised defense units and double-DMs, the defenses of many teams are all the same astonishingly porous. On the way to the collective defensive tactic of not playing against the opponent but “against the ball”, many defenders seem to have lost some basic abilities. This is also documented by a recent sport scientific research which was conducted by a team of the German Sport University. The Cologne scientists had examined every Bundesliga game of the 2009/2010 season, looking for the actual factors which led to success and failure. One of the results was not so charming for the current generation of Bundesliga defenders.

“The majority of goals were not conceded after group-tactical errors but after individual-tactical errors”, the tactical analyst Stephan Nopp said. Meaning that the teams did not position themselves wrongly but that single players had made mistakes which only had a modicum to do with the organisation on the pitch. Especially often defenders marked the space but not their opponent, which allowed forwards to cross, pass and shoot largely without interference.

Mainly in the own penalty box such errors occurred in series, as apparently certain aspects of the defensive game have been lost. The stopper of old days may have been somewhat one-dimensional in his art, but he commanded his craft properly, he rarely let his opponents have an inch of space. Compared to that one notices a certain helplessness among current defenders when it comes to a banal duel with an opponent.

It looks like the basics of defending have to get refreshed in many places again."
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The Artful Codger
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As a codger I have seen plenty of matches over a long period and to me the sport remains essentially the same. Modern day football has different training techniques, the players are on special diets now (in the past a post training activity usually included a stop at the local pub for a pint or two, or three!) and tactically there are some newer dimensions to the game but essentially the sport to me remains the same and that is one of it's beauties. I can still recall watching Roger Hunt or Alfredo DiStefano and enjoy their play as much as I now do watching Steven Gerrard or Lionel Messi. And as somebody else previously pointed out, if players from the 1950s and 60s were subject to current training methods, and in keepers' case, equipment, then they would fit in just find if they were to play in the current era. I have never been one to really try and compare teams from one era to another, I find it more enjoyable just to sit back and enjoy the spectacle that is football.
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Onslow
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The Artful Codger,Apr 6 2011
10:37 PM
As a codger I have seen plenty of matches over a long period and to me the sport remains essentially the same.  Modern day football has different training techniques, the players are on special diets now (in the past a post training activity usually included a stop at the local pub for a pint or two, or three!) and tactically there  are some newer dimensions to the game but essentially the sport to me remains the same and that is one of it's beauties.  I can still recall watching Roger Hunt or Alfredo DiStefano and enjoy their play as much as I now do watching Steven Gerrard or Lionel Messi.  And as somebody else previously pointed out, if players from the 1950s and 60s were subject to current training methods, and in keepers' case, equipment, then they would fit in just find if they were to play in the current era.  I have never been one to really try and compare teams from one era to another, I find it more enjoyable just to sit back and enjoy the spectacle that is football.

Very well put Codger, in fact I think it is the definitive statement on the subject. Gregoriak brought up some thought provoking statistics but in the end I think many of us are in agreement that the game remains enjoyable whether it was played in the 50s and 60s or now in the present day and footballers from that era if subject to modern training and tactics would fit in just fine in a modern day side.
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Yogi
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raconteur,Mar 21 2011
07:36 AM
Mr. Pither,Mar 18 2011
09:40 AM
What I found interesting from the various statistics was the numbe rof times a player was fouled pe rmatch.  It has gone down since 2002 and that I think is a good sign.  Nobody likes matches constantly stoppe dbecause of fouls.  The sport is cleaner now than it used to be in terms of fouls committed.  Players like Claudio Gentile of Italy in the early 80s would not be able to play now as they did then.

Gregoriak, I do think it would be enlightening to read more on how the "pace" was measured in this study you cited.

And thank God for that. Romantics like to think the game was purer and better played in the past but guys like Gentile, Benetti, Goicoechea and Stiles just would not be permitted to play now the way they did from the 60s through the 80s and that to me is something to be thankful for. It is noteworthy that even with a stricter definition of what is a foul these days, fewer fouls are comitted now than in the past.


I was thinking of this discussion as I was watching the highlights of the 1983 Copa del Rey Final that Manzanares posted in the Spanish Copa del Rey thread:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKLZmb1IINM

Look at the rough treatment Diego Maradona received in that game and compare that to how fouls are called now, look at 4:15 of the video for a foul by Jose Antonio Camacho on Maradona, that would be a direct red now and Camacho was not even booked then!

I am not trying to say the game was better played in one era over another but the truth is the game is cleaner now as less fouls and less vicious fouls are committed now. And that I think is something we can all be grateful for.
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Gregoriak
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"Modernists" frequently argue that legends of the past had it easier to "become legends" precisely because" they had so much more time on the ball", which made it easier for them to perform better than today's stars. It's not just that modernists argue that players in the past had a worse fitness than today's, which can be easily refuted by stating that if past legends got the nutrition and training of today, they'd easily made up for that.

In my opinion however, the first point made by modernists is exaggerated, which I hope this thread has proved (4.64 seconds on the ball compared to 4.04 seconds today is not that big a difference as is always stated by modernists, who argued more like "7-8 seconds in the past" compared to "2-3 seconds today", only judging from their gut feeling).

Plus, as Yogi pointed out, today's stars get far more protection from referees than past stars and also, the equipment of today makes it easier for current stars than for players who plied their trade back in the 50s or 60s.
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Yogi
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Onslow,Apr 11 2011
03:54 PM
The Artful Codger,Apr 6 2011
10:37 PM
As a codger I have seen plenty of matches over a long period and to me the sport remains essentially the same.  Modern day football has different training techniques, the players are on special diets now (in the past a post training activity usually included a stop at the local pub for a pint or two, or three!) and tactically there  are some newer dimensions to the game but essentially the sport to me remains the same and that is one of it's beauties.  I can still recall watching Roger Hunt or Alfredo DiStefano and enjoy their play as much as I now do watching Steven Gerrard or Lionel Messi.  And as somebody else previously pointed out, if players from the 1950s and 60s were subject to current training methods, and in keepers' case, equipment, then they would fit in just find if they were to play in the current era.  I have never been one to really try and compare teams from one era to another, I find it more enjoyable just to sit back and enjoy the spectacle that is football.

Very well put Codger, in fact I think it is the definitive statement on the subject. Gregoriak brought up some thought provoking statistics but in the end I think many of us are in agreement that the game remains enjoyable whether it was played in the 50s and 60s or now in the present day and footballers from that era if subject to modern training and tactics would fit in just fine in a modern day side.

An interesting discussion we have had here but the bottom line to me is just what I have quoted above. The two viewpoints Gregoriak mentions, the modernists and traditionalists need to just forget about which era was better and just enjoy the game as it is played. Each era has its enjoyable qualities and I for one am capable of enjoying watching tapes of old matches while still being able to enjoy the modern game.
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