Areas of the pitch teams lost the ball during the 2022 World Cup. Does it relate to team performance?
Ball retention is an important facet of the game. The longer a team holds the ball, the lower the chances of the opponents scoring (well, unless there is an opposition player on the team).
Inevitably, the team in possession of the ball is going to lose it and the odds of conceding a goal due to conceding possession depends on a variety of factors and one of them is the area of the pitch possession was lost. Mostly, it is way better to lose the ball high up the pitch than closer to your goal as the opponent would still have a long distance to travel the ball as opposed to if a team loses the ball in their defensive third.
Well, does the stats support this generally accepted fact? Is it even a fact?
Well, let’s start from the top ie the semi-finalists, Argentina, France, Croatia and Morocco. We can easily see that they keep the ball better than average, Morocco the least though. The French team loses balls mostly in their 6-yard box which can be explained by the fact Hugo Lloris plays most of his goalkicks long.
Other teams with good ball retention such as Brazil, England, Netherlands, Portugal went deep into the tournament (quarter finals). Japan topping Spain and Germany may just be attributed to the fact they don’t misplace passes and Germany got knocked out of the group stage even with their excellent ball retention.
As mentioned before, the rate of losing the ball is not the only factor that makes a team lose or win and Germany, Belgium, Spain inspite of their superior ball retention did not perform as well Morocco.
One thing I have not mentioned yet is that, the plot was normalised using the total number of passes attempted. When Spain played Costa Rica, Spain attempted 1000+ passes and misplaced 82, Costa Rica attempted 200+ and misplaced about 60. Spain did misplace more passes and this was due to attempting more, but obviously the Costa Rican team had more tendedncy to misplace their passes and this was taken care of by the normalisation.
The plots can also show how a team plays, do the goal keepers kick it long (Cameroon) or not (Brazil)? An attacking (Germany) or defensive team (Iran)?
In conclusion, I will answer the question posed. Where a team loses the ball affects the performance or result.
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