Finding the best centre-backs in La Liga B sides

Before getting into the data analysis itself, its worth having a look at the Segunda B division in Spain. It’s the third division, but it’s not officially professional though almost all its teams are anyway. It’s formed by four groups of 20 teams each, divided in regions and with B teams allowed to participate and even get promoted to Segunda División.

The huge amount of teams and players make Segunda B a difficult competition to scout, so data analysis is a great tool to get an idea of who the best players are. In this series we will analyze the players of La Liga B sides who are currently playing in Segunda B. These teams are Alavés, Athletic Club, Atlético, Barcelona, Celta, Espanyol, Getafe, Granada, Levante, Osasuna, Real Betis, Real Madrid, Real Sociedad, Sevilla, Valencia, Valladolid, and Villareal. Only Eibar, Leganés, and Mallorca have their B sides playing below the third division, and theres almost no data for those leagues. For this analysis, we are taking only U23 players who have played at least 900 minutes this season.

In this first part, we will be having a look at central defenders. The centre-back position is probably the one that takes longer to develop, apart from the goalkeeper one. Young centre-backs who dominate the game are rare as the position requires much more consistency than others and any mistake can be match-defining. There are 48 centre-backs in Segunda B who play for a B side and have been on the pitch for more than 900 minutes, and we will try to highlight the best of them using statistics.

Winning duels

The first thing we are looking at in this analysis is the centre-backs’ ability to win duels, both in the air and on the ground. The advantage of these metrics is that they are not directly affected by the team playing style, so they are more useful to compare between very different tactics. For extra context, total successful defensive actions per 90 are represented by the colour, with green meaning it’s above average and red the opposite.

We highlighted the players who win more duels than the average both on the ground and in the air. 21-year-old Ronald Araújo from Barcelona B stands out from the rest being the number one in both metrics, winning 73.47% of the aerial duels and 79.31% of the ground duels. Barcelona B’s attacking style means he’s involved in less defensive actions, so his total successful defensive actions are below average

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