Austria 2019/20: Finding the best centre-backs – data analysis

Within the last couple of years, RB Salzburg made a name for themselves as they sold several talents to clubs across Europe. However, the most people just recognize or remember the offensive players like Takumi Minamino who joined Jürgen Klopp at Liverpool, Erling Haaland who moved to Borussia Dortmund or Valentino Lazaro who currently plays for Newcastle United in the Premier League.

However, Salzburg and the other clubs of the Austrian Bundesliga produced also some great young centre-backs like Martin Hinteregger, Aleksandar Dragović or Dario Maresic within the last years who then moved to other clubs in Europe. Considering this, we can see that within the last seasons the talents in Austria got more and more and the number of young players who want to play for the Austrian national team grows. Besides, some older players already have played at a high level within the last few years. Because of that, Austrias head coach Franco Foda has often a hard choice which players he should nominate for the international games as there are several good players for each position.

Due to that, this will be the first data analysis of a series in which we use data to find the best Austrian players for several positions. Since data cant tell you that much about goalkeepers and the two best Austrians are currently clearly Alexander Schlager and Cican Stankovic, the first data analysis will be on the centre-backs and we skip the keepers. In light of this, well use data in this analysis to find the best centre-backs for the Austrian national team. Also, all statistics which are used in this data analysis are the average values per 90 minutes.

Comparison

Before we look at the graphs and metrics, I have to make clear which filters I used. First of all, I looked for all Austrian players who primarily play as a centre-back at their club and were in this season at least 916 minutes on the pitch. With that, we just get players who show decent performances on a regular basis.

Since then we also get a lot of central defenders from Austrias second division, I picked from this league just U23 players. The reason for that is that a centre-back who plays, for example, at the age of 25 still in the second division of Austria wont be interesting for Foda within the next few years. However, a young talent which is in this league to gain experience will definitely have a real chance to be part of Austrias national team within the upcoming years.

Considering these aspects, well get in the graphs all Austrian centre-backs who play regularly for their clubs as central defenders and additionally the talents who play in Austrias second division. To close the topic of the filters, I want to add as the last point that I didnt include David Alaba even though he played in this season often enough as centre-back for Bayern Munich. The reason for that is that in Austrias national team he plays under Foda only as a left-winger.

With the first metrics at which we look, we want to find the players with the best defensive abilities. For that, we take the success rate in defensive duels in % of the players and the successful defensive actions per game as we can see in the first graph of this data analysis below.

Already in the first graph which is the most important one as the defensive abilities are vital for a centre-back, we can see that there is a huge number of good Austrian centre-backs and there is not much do divide them. The 21-years-old central defender of Austria Vienna II Johannes Handl stands out as he has for both metrics solid values. The 22-years-old Philipp Schmiedl of Altach has the best value for successful defensive actions per 90 minutes with 13.68.

Next, we will look at their abilities in the air. To do so, we take their success rate in % for aerial duels and additionally look in how many aerial duels they are involved per 90 minutes.