There is no doubt that the Eredivisie is a two-faced league in which the traditional ‘Big Three’ has an enormous advantage in silverware, power, and financial possibilities, compared to the rest of the league. The hegemony of Ajax Amsterdam, PSV Eindhoven, and Feyenoord Rotterdam is represented by 73 Dutch championship titles (from the 130 available), 57 of which since 1956, from when the domestic league is called Eredivisie – this latter means an overwhelming 92% winning rate from the Big Three. This is why AZ Alkmaar’s great performance from the previous season was a breath of fresh air and possibly a sign that the task of outperforming the giants is incredibly difficult but by no means impossible.
Many of the smaller (or less privileged) Dutch clubs follow the same philosophy as AZ Alkmaar but FC Utrecht seems to be in the most advanced position. Since the 2015/16 season, they are a constant top-6 side and this year, they even reached the Dutch cup final which was sadly voided because of the known reasons. No question that Utrecht’s progress is the outcome of a well-thought and consistent strategy which is still far from concluded. In this tactical analysis, we will investigate the club’s performance both from a statistical and tactical point of view, while paying extra attention to the quality of the squad and the status of the youth development in general.
1) Statistical performance
First, let’s put the Utrecht players’ performance into context by comparing their figures to the Eredivisie average. For this, we will take a look at the figures of those with at least 600 minutes played in the 2019/20 Eredivisie season, and we compare all squad members to their opponents in the same positions.
As Utrecht used a 4-2-3-1 formation in 43.9% of the domestic league games (frequently forming into a 4-1-4-1 or a 4-4-2, or even a 4-3-3 in the last few matches), we calculated with three attacking and two more defensive-minded midfielders when doing the comparison. In all cases, we used the ten most significant statistics that determine the overall performance of the given position the most. Obviously, as we have already mentioned in the very beginning of this analysis, the Eredivisie is a ‘top-heavy’ league in which the averages are therefore heavily distorted by the best performing teams – nevertheless, this is a good indicator of Utrecht’s general strengths and weaknesses throughout a whole season.
