Charting Champions: Unveiling the data all-stars of UWCL group stages 2023/24 – data analysis

The 2023-24 UEFA Womens Champions League group stage has now come to an end, with several groups coming down to the wire.

New faces such as Brann, Häcken, Ajax, and Benfica are making the quarter-final stages for some exciting clashes to come.

However, this data analysis will look at some of the data and statistics that will provide a nice summary of the top performers from this seasons group stages. We will break this down into four key areas: defending, ball progression, creativity and goal scoring, in order to cover a wide range of players across the board.

Defending

In this section, we will outline some of the standout performers on the defensive end of the ball this season.

In this first graph, we have outlined the total interceptions against the proportion of the teams interceptions. The purpose of this graph is to not only shine a light on those players who are leading the competition in interceptions, such as those indicated by the pink dots, but also to identify some players who are performing above their teammates but potentially in a side that is more dominant such as Barcelona or Lyon who aren’t required to defend for as long and as a result should have lower defensive numbers on average, these players have been indicated by a yellow circle as opposed to a dot.

Now, to pick out some key performers in terms of players dominating the rest in interceptions per 90, you have Benfica defender Christy Ucheibe, who leads the way with an average of 9.75 interceptions per 90, followed closely by Paris FC defender Célina Ould Hocine on 9.27.