Finding the best offensive midfielders of Austria – data analysis

This is the fourth data analysis of my series in which I look at the best Austrian players in the respective positions. We already looked at the centre-backs, full-backs, and defensive midfielders. In this analysis, we will use data and statistics to find the best offensive midfielders of Austria. Within the last three data analyses, we found young interesting players besides the ones who are already an important part of the Austrian national team.

In this data analysis, we will use stats to find the best, current offensive midfielders of Austria and additionally we’ll probably find promising talents who will become solid number 10s in the upcoming months and years. All statistics in this data analysis are the average values per 90 minutes.

Comparison

Before we look at several statistics to find the best offensive midfielders of Austria, we will again shortly talk about the filters which were used to find the pool of players with which we will work. Firstly, all of the following players are logically Austrians who can or could play for the Austrian national team. Furthermore, to only get the players who get enough minutes at their club, the second filter will be only the players must have played 1015 minutes in the season 2019/20.

Additionally, the ones who play in Austria’s second division and are 23 years old or older won’t be included in the data analysis since these men won’t be interesting for Franco Foda within the upcoming seasons. Due to that, all players in this data analysis who play in Austria’s second division, are 22 years old or younger.

Since Foda mainly uses a 4-2-3-1 formation in the Austrian national team, there is place for only one offensive midfielder and Marcel Sabitzer is indeed his first-choice player in this position.

Since there are so many different types of players in the role as a number 10 and some of them play as a central midfielder (slightly deeper), we will use quite a few statistics to find with the aid of the data, the most interesting Austrians in these positions (central or offensive midfielder). Dribbles and passes are two of the first actions which come to your mind when you think about these players. Because of that, we will look at the values for these two abilities at the beginning. In the graph below, we look at the number of passes per 90 minutes as well as the accuracy.

Aleksandar Jukic of Austria Vienna II is the player who stands out in this graph as he has the highest success rate (87.23%) while Michael Liendl is the one with the most-attempted passes per game (54.93). That’s not such a huge surprise when you know how important the 34-year-old is for Wolfsberger AC. Sabitzer also has decent values as he plays on average 49.02 passes per game with a success rate of 76.86%.

In any case, you need to consider here and in the rest of this analysis, that these men play in different leagues and that’s important when you look at their data. While Jukic plays in Austria’s second division and Liendl in the Austrian Bundesliga, Sabitzer is the one of these three who plays in the most competitive league of these three: the German Bundesliga. Due to that, his values are even more amazing.