This piece has been written thanks to the generosity of Impect who were kind enough to provide packing data for the Bundesliga.
In the recent past, we saw pass completion held up as an indicator of performance on the football field. A player with a high pass completion percentage was held up as an example of a good passer of the ball. While being able to complete a pass is, of course, an important trait for a player to have this does not take into account the quality or importance of that pass. In an isolated game, for example, we could have two central midfielders playing in similar roles as a part of the double pivot in a 4-2-3-1 structure. Player A could end the game with a +90% pass completion ratio while Player B had a pass completion in the low 80% range. Basing our judgement purely on this statistic we can be sure then that Player A is the better passer of the ball, right? No, Player A spent the match receiving the ball from the central defenders and then playing either backwards to the defenders or goalkeeper or sideways to the second pivot or to the near side fullback. Player B, on the other hand, was more progressive with his passing he received the ball and displayed a tendency to look forwards for opportunities to progress the ball through the thirds. His passes travelled towards the final third and broke the lines of the opposition defensive structure.
So, which of these players added more value to their team? Player A kept possession but did nothing with it while Player B gave the ball away more but created far more opportunities for his team to score a goal, by progressing the ball towards the opposition goal. Since we know that the end goal in a football match is to win by scoring more goals than your opponent we can, therefore, be confident in stating that Player B added more value to his team than Player B, despite a lower pass completion percentage.
This entire thought process led to the creation of a company in Germany called Impect. This company was created on the premise that the data used to assess and evaluate football players was geared unfairly towards attacking players who scored or assisted or midfield players who played safe rather than progressively. They, therefore, created a new metric known as packing. The premise behind packing is simple but incredibly effective. A player receives a point for every opposition player that their pass or dribble bypasses.
Take the example above. If the player in possession of the ball plays the ball along the patch marked as 1 then they receive no packing points because no opposition players were bypassed. If they take the path marked as 2, however, then they gain three packing points because the pass bypasses three opposition players and breaks the line of the opponent.
The beauty of packing, however, is that it does not purely take into account the ability of the player passing the ball. As pass, of course, needs two players to be completed. The player passing the ball and the player receiving the ball. A separate score within the packing data then gives a point to the receiving player for each player that the pass bypasses. So, back to our example above both the passer and the receiver are given a score of 3 for the action shown. The passer is given +3 for opposition bypassed and the receiving player receives +3 for the opposition bypassed received.
