Finding the best offensive midfielders in Allsvenskan 2019 – data analysis

Football is returning, and Swedish football is no exception. Last week, head coaches and officials were discussing the schedules of Svenska Cupen and Allsvenskan. In this data analysis, we use statistics to find the best offensive midfielders in Sweden.

From an offensive aspect, we are going to measure the player in four domains by eight metrics:

1.  Dribbling data (dribbles per 90 X dribbles success %) were used to indicate the technical level of an individual.
2.  We move to a collective perspective and investigate how the candidates performed in terms of moving the ball forward, using progressive runs per 90 and progressive passes per 90 as the metrics.
3. Since it was inevitable to compare the creativity of players when discussing offensive midfielders. Smart passes per 90 and key passes per 90 were used to quantify the creative level of players.
4. By considering xG per 90 and shots per 90, we understand the shooting qualities of players.

After gathering and comparing the stats through drawing scatter diagrams, we will have a three-man shortlist who performed the best in terms of numbers. Our charts included 27 players who played more than 984 minutes in the Allsvenskan, which means at least around 1/3 of the league. The players might play in multiple positions, while all candidates had tried the role as an attacking midfielder and were identified by Wyscout.

Dribbling

Clearly, the Malmö midfielder Adi Nalić stood out in terms of the attempts of dribbling, in which he had 8.72 per game, but averaged the success rate at 50%. Two other players: Alexander Kačaniklić and Sead Hakšabanović had more dribble than average (7.05 and 5.5) but behind Nalić, their success rates were higher than most players in the chart (57.86% and 57.27%).

We would also like to point out Tobias Sana and Stefan Ishizaki since both lied in the top-left quadrant. This means they dribbled less than league average but whenever they tried, the success rates were high. Sana only had 1.84 dribbles per game, but the chance of success was very high at 77.27%  comparable to Adama Traoré in the Premier League if we excluded the differences in standards.

Subscribe To TFA To Unlock All Posts - Free 7 Day Trial

Login if you have a TFA subscription

Try TFA Free For 7 Days

Gain access to all of TFA's premium contents.
More than 12,000+ articles.

Subscribe Now