European Championship vs. COPA America
Contrasting playstyles between the two major continental tournaments this summer
StatsBomb offers free data for various leagues and tournaments, providing comprehensive details about every event in each match. I used this to analyze 5 major facets of the game: Shooting, passing, dribbling, clearing, and fouling. I grouped data of those 5 facets by match, and conducted PCA and k-Means Clustering on every match, to see if the algorithms naturally cluster Copa America matches together and European Championship matches together.
Here are my three biggest findings regarding the differences in play between the two(three) continents:
European teams focused more on possession passing in the midfield and defense, while COPA teams focused on taking the top off the defense with long, high, over-the-top balls.
Argentina was the only COPA team to use a similar possession style passing strategy as EURO teams. They were able to do this because of creative passing defenders and midfielders such as Christian Romero, Lisandro Martinez, and Rodrigo de Paul.
European teams tend to foul when defending while COPA teams are not afraid to foul in transition, as well as on defense. This leads to many quickly played free kicks.
CONCACAF teams in COPA behaved more similarly to European teams than COMNEBOL teams did, who displayed the above characteristics most.
COPA teams have an emphasis on solo, attacking dribbles on the wings and by attacking midfielders, while European teams mainly dribbled on defense and through defensive midfielders to facilitate their passing attack.
European teams that had similar dribbling tendencies to COPA teams, such as France, Spain, Denmark, and more had star attacking midfielders and wingers/wing backs such as Mbappe, Theo Hernandez, Nico Williams, Lamine Yamal, Dani Olmo, Joakim Mæhle, and more.
COPA teams that had similar dribbling tendencies to European teams, such as Ecuador, Venezuela, and Panama had defensive midfielders and defenders that are confident on the ball such as Moises Caicedo, Ángelo Preciado, Yangel Herrera, Michael Amir Murillo, and more.
Here is a deeper dive into my three main findings:
Passing
The most noticeable clustering occurs when analyzing passing behavior between the tournaments. While we see a decent amount of overlap between the two, in the area where a majority of the Copa America matches are clustered, we do not see many Copa America matches being clustered in the area of majority European Championship matches. There are 5 Copa America matches given a positive PC1 coordinate, the same 5 Copa America matches that are clustered in Cluster 1.
By looking at the PCA loading vector and k-Means feature means, it is concluded that, a negative PC1 coordinate and cluster 0 is associated with:
More incomplete, out of bounds, and offsides passes
More long passes
More high passes
On the other hand, a positive PC1 coordinate and cluster 1 is associated with:
More total passes
More completed passes
More short and medium passes
More neutral and backwards passes
More passes by midfielders and defenders
More ground passes
More passes in the middle of the field
These two models largely agree with each other and tell us that not many Copa America teams focus on possession passing, in the back and especially the midfield. This means shorter, ground passes. Instead, they focus on taking more risks with their passing. This means playing long, high, over-the-top balls, trying to take the top off the defense.
As I previously mentioned, there were 5 COPA America games that PCA and k-Means clustered with the European Championship games:
Argentina vs Canada
Brazil vs Costa Rica
Chile vs Argentina
Argentina vs Canada
Argentina vs Columbia
Out of those 5 matches 4/6 of Argentina’s tournament matches are present. Lets look at some of Argentina’s passing habits, and how they differ from the rest of the Copa America teams:
Argentina clearly utilizes backwards and neutral passes more than other Copa teams, and run much more of their passing through their midfield.
While these two distributions are similar, you can see an increased utilization of the short and medium length pass by Argentina.
By looking at the blue sections, which represents complete passes, of the graphs, we can also see that Argentina completed a higher percentage of passes than COPA America teams on average.
Argentina’s possession styled passing can be attributed to:
Rodrigo De Paul who ranked 2nd in passes attempted and 3rd in passes completed among midfielders
Rodrigo also ranked 4th in medium length passes attempted and completed and 5th and 8th in short length passes attempted and completed, respectively, among all players
Argentina midfielder Alexis Mac Allister also ranked 7th in short passes completed among all players
Christian Romero and Lisandro Martinez who ranked 1st and 4th, respectively, in passes attempted and 1st and 2nd in passes completed among midfielders
Romero also ranked 1st in medium length passes attempted and completed among all players
Here is a passing chart, centered to an origin point, of those three players:
These three players clearly attempted a high number of passes and are completing a very high number, noted by the few number of red lines and ‘x’s. They also are moving the ball in all different directions, including parallel and backwards, at a high volume.
2. Fouls
To anybody watched Copa America, it will come as no surprise that their fouling tendencies differ drastically from the European Championships. k-Means was able to cluster these tournament matches decently well. PCA shows that there is a lot of overlap in the middle of the graph, but Copa America matches seem to cluster at the negative end of PC1 and Euro matches seem to cluster at the positive end of PC1. There are 6 Copa America matches clustered in the area of majority Euro matches, and 7 Euro matches in the area of majority Copa America matches.
By looking at the PCA loading vector, it is concludable that a negative PC1 coordinate is associated with:
More fouls with cards
More fouls by defenders
On the other hand, a positive PC1 coordinate is associated with:
More total fouls
Less fouls with cards
More fouls in early and middle game
More fouls on the wings
More quick free kicks
The 7 Euro matches that are clustered with Copa America matches are:
Serbia vs England
Austria vs France
Germany vs Hungary
Spain vs Italy
Croatia vs Italy
France vs Poland
Spain vs Germany
The 6 Copa America matches clustered with Euro matches are:
Mexico vs Jamaica
Chile vs Argentina
Canada vs Chile
Jamaica vs Venezuela
Venezuela vs Canada
Argentina vs Canada
4 out of 7 of these games were draws and all 7 had, at most, 2 goals scored. These were slower paced games featuring some of the best teams in the tournament.
CONCACAF teams are in 5/6 of these matches. Argentina also shows up multiple times, once again.
Let’s look at CONCACAF teams’ fouling tendencies vs COMNEBOL teams’ fouling tendencies at this COPA:
COMNEBOL teams clearly are more likely to foul in transition, as seen by more fouls and cards in the midfield. CONCACAF teams are more likely to foul while defending, as seen by more fouls and cards for defenders.
Once again, it is evident that CONCACAF teams are fouling more in defensive positions than COMNEBOL teams, while COMNEBOL teams are fouling more in the midfield and attacking wings than CONCACAF teams.
3. Dribbling
Again, there is a lot of overlap between the two tournaments on the positive end of PC1, but few Copa America matches, in a sea of Euro matches on the negative end of PC1. There is also a much higher density of Copa America matches than European Championship matches at the positive end of PC2.
The main differences between a negative PC1 coordinate vs a positive PC1 coordinate are:
Less dribbles attempted vs more dribbles attempted
More dribbles in the middle of the field vs more dribbles on the wings
Less dribbles by attacking players vs more dribbles by attacking players
A large positive PC2 value signifies more dribbles by attacking midfielders, specifically in the center and left wing.
This tells us that Copa America teams are more focused on individual dribbling attacks, by attacking wingers, while Euro teams are more focused on dribbling deeper and in the middle of the field to facilitate their passing.
The 3 Euro matches clustered with Copa America matches with positive PC2 are:
Croatia vs Albania
Denmark vs Serbia
Spain vs France
The 3 Copa America matches clustered with Euro matches with negative PC1 are:
Ecuador vs Venezuela
Ecuador vs Jamaica
Panama vs United States
Copa America teams that have similar dribbling tendencies to Euro teams are those with defensive midfielders and defenders that were willing to dribble.
Ecuadorian midfielder Moises Caicedo ranked 4th in dribbles attempted by midfielders and Venezuelan midfielder Yangel Herrera ranked 5th. Both of these players are defensive midfielders
Panamanian defender Michael Amir Murillo ranked 2nd in dribbles attempted by defenders and Ecuadorian defender Ángelo Preciado ranked 3th.
Lets look at the dribble maps for the 3 Euro matches that were clustered with Copa America matches:
We see a high density of dribbling in the attacking middle and left wing.
Croatia attempted 66% of dribbles in this game, players Kovacic and Kramaric led the charge in attacking dribbles on the center and left wing.
Denmark attempted 65% of dribbles in this game, Mæhle led the charge in attacking dribbles on the left wing, as well as Eriksen and Højlund through the center.
France and Spain combined for 29 dribbles, a large portion on the left attacking wing. These efforts were led by Mbappe, Nico Williams, and Dani Olmo
European teams that have dribbling tendencies similar to Copa America teams are typically those with star players on the wings and attacking midfield positions.
Nico Williams, Kylian Mbappe, and Lamine Yamal, all present in the Spain vs France match, ranked 1st, 2nd, and 4th, respectively, in dribbles attempted by all players. They also ranked 2nd, 1st, and 8th in successful dribbles among all players.
Spanish midfielder Dani Olmo ranked 2nd in successful dribbles among midfielders.
French defender Theo Hernandez and Danish defender Joakim Mæhle ranked 3rd and 6th, respectively, in dribbles attempted by defenders and 2nd and 5th, respectively in dribbles completed by defenders.
Interestingly, none of these matches are in the top 15 most dribbles attempted in the Euros, but the location of the dribbles is what causes similarities towards Copa America Matches.
