How to get into football analysis

I started Twitter to talk about football and improve my English but with lockdown, it quickly became something I took more seriously and it has been over a year since I wrote my first article (who was quite frankly not really good but better than expected for a first article). I have changed my opinions quite a lot over the past year, sometimes because of player or team development but also because I watched more and more football over the past 12 months. I’m probably at around 10 to 12 games watched a week and I don’t even want to talk about all the weekly highlights I watch to look at goals scored during the past week in Europe’s top 5 leagues. I am nobody to give you advice about football analysis but as many of you asked about it, I will tell you what I look out for in a game and I am sure I can give you advice about how to get into this world as I experienced it over the past couple of years.

What do I look out for when I watch the game?

What I will tell you below is not something I have immediately looked out for when watching a football game. It has been a process. In the first place, when you watch a game, start with general things:

• Don’t look at the ball because you can’t see the most important things such as movements and rotations which are the most important things in football.
• Focus solely on the team you are analyzing, you can do both teams once you are more experienced. If I have a team to suggest to you other than your favorite team (which is good because your brain will not focus on dumb things like knowing all players that play for the team you are analyzing as you already know them), 2017/18 Manchester City is the move. I learned a lot from Guardiola and it’s the first team that comes into my mind as they are the closest I can think of to a ‘complete’ team (Conte’s Inter and Tuchel’s Chelsea not bad as well).

Now, let’s move to what you should look at:

• Do they start from the back? By that, I mean, is there an emphasis to play with the goalkeeper and be patient to find space higher up the pitch? Do they play out the back without being patient? Do they immediately go long? Etc…
• When they are higher up the pitch, how are the players positioned? A lot of players in the middle of the pitch with no width, extreme width provided by two players close to each other on the same side with only one on the opposite side of the ball, good enough width. Players in the middle positioned between the defensive and midfield line, players asking short, 2/3/4 players in the first phase, etc…
• Does the positioning of the players allow them to be reactive to the loss? If yes, why? If not, why not?

This was the first part of your analysis. By that, I mean it’s the part where you will need some days or some weeks to see everything. Once you have done that, you can start asking yourself the main question after seeing what is going on: what is the purpose (the why) and which advantage does it give? This is the second part of your analysis and this is where you will need to pause and rewind passages of play more because you will have to look at the opposition as well. Let me take an example.

Here you can see a picture of Chelsea’s first phase (I still call it first phase because centre-backs have the ball even though it’s in a more advanced position than when they are close to the goalkeeper).

You see that Chelsea have the overload in buildup by being with three centre-backs against two strikers. There is no why here because Chelsea start with three centre-backs. If it was a team like Manchester United where Matic drops to form a back three then there would be a why (why being the overload in buildup). Thus, the Chelsea centre-backs have more time on the ball (this is the second part of the analysis i.e. the advantage that it gives to the team you analyze).

But this is only one thing we can see on this picture. We can see Eze closing down inside, which is good because it would’ve allowed Mason Mount to receive free. However, it opens up the space for Hudson-Odoi to receive free with the Palace left-back jumping on him. Now that you have seen this, you need to understand why Odoi and Mount are positioned like this. Well, I already told you, it’s because it forced Eze to stay inside to free Odoi. But what I haven’t told you is the effect of this positioning. Once Odoi receives the ball, it creates a two against one situation with Mount and the Palace left-back. And this was the whole point of the five Chelsea attackers against the four Palace defenders. This happened on the other side too and brought the second Chelsea goal of the game.

And then, once you have done that, you will pick up on more and more things. And to be complete, reading other people’s work could be great. At the end of this long journey, you should be able to pick up a lot of things and you could be helped by this complete guide from Carlon:

My shares of advice

1. My first advice would be to watch as many football games as you can and preferably from interesting teams tactically. I would say Manchester City, Tuchel’s Chelsea, Inter, Leicester , Lazio and Leipzig (in order) are those you should definitely look into. You need to get as many football concepts as possible, which will then allow you to comprehens teams at any possible tactical level.
2. Follow Carl Capenter on Twitter. He is by far the best analyst I’ve seen on this platform. Genuinely never seen him get something wrong. His videos are always informative. Here is his Twitter.
3. With this being said, you should NOT force yourself to watch football games. Do it if you really want to. I love watching Leicester but I don’t watch them much because of the lack of time but I don’t force myself to watch them. Same for Leipzig.
4. Never EVER take for granted what other people say. You don’t know the amount of bad takes I see on Twitter, whether it is from people who actually watch the teams they talk about or from people that waffle and pretend they watch these teams. There is a quote I really like: Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see. Let me add something to this: believe none of what you hear and read but always keep what you found interesting somewhere, it might be of use later on if you come across a different scenario.
5. Remember that you are human. If you watch a game and find something interesting then write it down somewhere and take screenshots or videos. I have around 10 GB of videos, writings and screenshots on my phone that are solely about football. This way, you don’t overload your brain with football concepts.
6. I personally don’t like to read other people’s work anymore because I want to make my own opinion before looking at others’ but it’s a good way to start understanding football. However, watching football is still the best means to learn. If you want to read, the best thing is to read about a team and then look at games of this said team to see if you can spot the same thing.
7. Always watch football with an open mind. Nothing is black or white. Everyone has his bias but you can still like the principles of a coach that doesn’t suit the way you think about football. My example would be Antonio Conte. I hate the way he thinks about football as it is too defensive for me but the way his team is set up is a massive source of knowledge. I like his principles (patterns, etc…) but I still don’t like watching Inter if that makes sense. Still, always have an open mind.
8. Learning about football is not as easy as you could think. I know 200% more about football from a tactical point of view than 2 years ago but I still don’t know everything about it (would say I’m at least over 60%) but I don’t know more than 20% about football because there’s so many things that nobody without true dedication can know (mental part is one of the few examples).
9. If you really want to improve, the best thing is to focus on one tactical concept (541 from a defensive point of view for instance), but this should be done once you are a bit better at picking up tactical concepts by doing the first thing I told you to do.
10. Then, you always have to ask yourself why. Why is it happening? Is this something due to the players or is it a specific instruction from the manager? Is it a repeatable pattern during the game? @FussballHussain gives you some tips here: I think the most important thing is to always ask why. why is a team doing this and playing this way. there is no trick to football analytics. there’s 22 men and a ball, everything is in front of your eyes, whether it is shape or patterns, you just need to learn to spot them. to do that you need to know what they are and be aware of what you’re looking for.
11. People working in football make mistakes and so do you. Everyone makes mistakes. Pep Guardiola, the GOAT manager in my opinion, proves it every two years or so in the Champions League. Nobody is perfect and everyone started somewhere. If you really want to make it your professional work (that is NOT my goal as I want to keep it a passion for now) then always seek to improve and remember that all the greatest managers in the world started like you, from the bottom. Pep Guardiola said that his coaching badges taught him almost nothing compared to all the games he has watched.
12. Tactics are NOT everything in football and managers can compete without being the best in this department.
13. At last but not least, do NOT watch football from a tactical point of view if you want to keep your fan’s soul. I lost it when it comes to United and this is unfortunate. I know more than I ever had but I wish I could still be the same passionate fan that I once was.

I will let you with some of my best work then I will show you some content from other people and finally, I will drop you links to some work I found interesting.

Some concepts I made myself and from others:

Horizontal cover is the most important thing when it comes to football when you don’t have the ball. I will let you learn about it by yourself but here is something about it.

Two big basketball principles (I played basketball for 10 years, hence my interest)

I believe this was the head of analysis at DundeeUnited that made that. I never used it but I feel it’s quite interesting for a beginner.

USEFUL LINKS:

Here is a piece about @mezzala8 on Twitter, probably my favorite account on the bird app and one of the most interesting concepts in football is talked about below:

Tactical Analysis: Backwards To Go Forward

I guess you all know Marco Rose, Mönchengladbach’s coach. Here are the articles of his assistant René Marić. This is rather hard to understand if you just start but once you have followed my first instructions above then you should be able to understand it pretty easily.

" RM

I made my own drive with some tactical videos:

Videos - Google Drive

Dom is working with football clubs and I love his work, he doesn’t share as much as one could wish but he is always a nice talk in group chats:

DomC0801 - Medium

This should only be open once you want to learn more about set-pieces. Cam is the best in the business. Dom that I just talked about is good as well:

Cam Meighan (@cam_meighan) - Wakelet

My favorite video from a coach is below:

Here is a tutorial from Jamie about his methods for tactical analysis. You should give it a read and follow him.

Some accounts that I haven’t mentioned yet:

@YoussFootball / @TyLevinsohn / @HS are some of the best accounts if you want a chat about Premier League teams.

Some advice about data analysis

The best way to begin with data analysis is to read Statsbomb articles. If you want to read about scouting and you include data into it, «Statsbomb scouting [position you want to look at]» in Google is the best way to find useful articles on the matter. Example:

How do you scout for centre-backs statistically? | StatsBomb

I already told you to follow him but @DomC0801 and @topimpact are the best accounts for data viz in my opinion. Definitely people you should look up to.

I use two websites for data, Fbref and Wyscout. For Fbref, I use the website but for Wyscout, I use the phone app, which is free.

I have learned something about data over the past year. Data should never be used as a claimer but more so as a disclaimer and not all stats are good to use. What I mean by that is you should only look at certain stats (you will learn which one to use by making mistakes and watching games) and within those stats, you can’t say this guy is good because he has good stats. You need to watch him to apply context. Always the eye test first and data is only here to challenge or back up what you see.

Something about xG:

xG Explained | FBref.com

This is a really good article to explain what is xG but I will add my advice to this. Firstly, always use Statsbomb’s xG model that is provided by Fbref. It’s available the day after a game but it’s the most trustworthy free xG model I’ve seen. But as always with data, don’t use xG to make conclusions on a game you haven’t watched. I will take two examples that I remember pretty well but there are so many games like this. The first one will be the first game of the season between Manchester City and West Bromwich. City dominated the game, did shoot more at goal and had a better xG yet they drew. But if you have watched the game you would see that bar the last two chances of the game (one of which could’ve ended up in a goal), City created very little good chances. Another example is the Chelsea game against Spurs on Thursday. Chelsea dominated Spurs throughout the game and got an xG over 2 while only scoring one goal. Their forwards weren’t clinical and it was pretty easy to see but more importantly, there were times where they didn’t shoot at goal because they did not make the right decisions. This won’t be seen by xG but you could see it if you watch the game.

I also came across this good article from Twenty3Sport that you can read here. Keep it close until this becomes instinctive.

Scouting and some advice from my own experience

Firstly, give a follow to @TargetScouting or at least go to their website because they are genuine quality scouts and some even work at clubs like Luke. Read their work as it can give you the most important things to look at when scouting players.

Now, onto the couple of advice I can give you. The best way to know how to scout a certain position is to scout as many players as possible in this said position as it can then give you ways to compare them to the one you already scouted while also giving you the most important assets when looking at a specific position.

Conclusion

I truly hope this article will help you start in football analysis. It has been a pleasure to tweet in English about the beautiful game. Follow me here if you want to see more of my work.