Finding the best defensive midfielders of Austria – data analysis

This will be the third piece of my series in which I use data to find the best Austrian players for several positions. In the last two articles, the topic was the back four as I looked at the centre-backs and full-backs respectively. In this data analysis, we’ll go further up the pitch and find the best defensive midfielders for the Austrian national team by using data and statistics.

Within the last two pieces of the series, we found, beside the players who are the regular starters in the Austrian national team, young talents with solid metrics who could become relevant for Franco Foda within the upcoming months and years. Both times, the talents (Johannes Handl and Lukas Prokop) were players of Austria Vienna II. Considering this, it will also be interesting if we find one or two players of the second squad of Austria Vienna for the defensive midfielders as well. All statistics which are used in this data analysis are the average values per 90 minutes.

Comparison

Before we look at a few key values for defensive midfielders, I need to mention the filters to understand which players will show up in the graphs. The three central filters were that the players need to be Austrians and have played at least 998 minutes as a defensive or central midfielder in this season for their respective clubs. Furthermore, all men who play in Austria’s second division and are not 22 years old or younger got taken out of the pool of central and defensive midfielders since a player who is that old and still in the second division isn’t and won’t be interesting for Foda within the upcoming months and years.

The German head coach of Austria mainly lines his team up in a 4-2-3-1 formation with two defensive midfielders and the basic tactics are a dominant and possession-based style of play combined with a high and aggressive pressing and counter-pressing.

Before we look at the statistics which will be important to find players who are comfortable on the ball which they need to be as they have a central role during the build-up, we will use data to find the defensively strongest players. For this, we’ll use the stats for their successful defensive actions per 90 minutes and their average success rate in defensive dues (in %) which are visualised in the graph below.

Nico Seiwald and Philipp Offenthaler are the two players who stand out in these categories as Seiwald wins the most of his defensive duels (71.52%) and Offenthaler makes the most successful defensive actions per game with 13.05. However, at this point, I need to note that both play in Austrias second division, but both are still young. Especially Seiwald (18 years old) who is a promising talent of RB Salzburg’s second team, FC Liefering. Offenthaler is 22 and one of the most important players of Amstetten but clearly needs to join a team in the Austrian Bundesliga as soon as possible to showcase his abilities on a higher level.

Next, we will look at the statistics of the Austrian players which should indicate if they are important for the build-up at their respective clubs since the defensive midfielders in Austria’s 4-2-3-1 should be able to organise the progression of the ball together with the central defenders. The two statistics which we look at will be the average number of passes per 90 minutes and additionally the success rate of these to see how well they do when it comes to passing the ball. The results can be seen in the image below.