By the end of Sunday, Dec. 19, 111 teams had played 3,902 games across Europe's Big Five leagues in 2021. Within those 3,902 matches, according to Stats Perform's army of game coders, there have been 1,663,433 touches. Of those 1,663,433 touches, 1,161,551 were passes. Of those 1,161,551 passes, 30,365 of them immediately led to shots. Of those 30,365 shots, 11,238 were on goal. And of those 11,238 shots on goal, 3,704 actually ended up in the goal.
If you've watched all of those goals, good for you. It's doable, though doubtful. Say each goal takes about 15 seconds, on average, from start to finish. If you watched just the goals, it'd take you about 15 hours over the course of a year. During your 15 hours of tape-grinding, no one goal would have stood out. Of course, Robert Lewandowski would've scored the most goals, would have flickered onto your screen most often, but he still accounted for only 0.7% of all the goals scored across Europe this season.
There are too many goals -- and way too many shots, passes that led directly to shots, passes in general, and simple touches of the ball -- for anyone to make sense of it all, but some simple math suggests some patterns.
About 70% of all the defined touches in a game come from passes, but just about 3% of the passes directly lead to a shot. And as for the shots themselves -- you know, the theoretical finish line every possession is heading for -- they make up just about 2% of all the touches in a given match. For shots preceded by a pass, about 37% found the goal frame, but just about 10% turned into goals. Put another way, less than one-half of 1% of all the recorded actions that took place at the highest level of the most popular sport in the world this season resulted in a point being scored. We are gluttons for failure.
Of course, some players fail less than others, and that's what greatness in this game is: being bad, just not as often as everyone else. So, if we wanted to create the play-by-play for an imaginary possession that had the best chance at success by ending in a goal, what would it have looked like in 2021, and which players would have been involved?
All graphics courtesy of Stats Perform
"And Neuer gathers the ball..."
Stats Perform defines a possession as such: "... one or more sequences in a row belonging to the same team. A possession is ended by the opposition gaining control of the ball." Flipped inside out, a team begins a possession by regaining control of the ball. And in 2021, no single player began more possessions that led to a goal than Bayern Munich's Manuel Neuer, who did it 16 times.
Although he's now into the latter half of his 30s, Neuer remains as aggressive as ever. Per the site FBref, he makes 1.5 defensive actions outside the penalty area per game, which puts him in the 99th percentile among all goalkeepers. And on average, all of his defensive actions occur 19.1 yards from his goal -- the highest mark for any keeper in Europe and way above the continental average of 14.6 yards.
While his shot-stopping has tailed off over the past 365 days -- based on the quality of the shots he has faced, he's conceded an average number of goals -- Neuer breaking up an opposing counterattack or making a save and immediately flipping the action the other way was the best single way to start a possession in 2021.
"... rolls it out to Alexander-Arnold... "
So the ball's in the defensive third. Next step: get it into the attacking third. Which player was involved in the most possessions that ended in the attacking third in 2021? Liverpool's right-back-slash-free-eight-slash-number-10-slash-these-positional-designations-are-completely-useless-for-this-guy, Trent Alexander-Arnold.
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TAA took part in 1,106 possessions in 2021 that finished somewhere in the opposition's defensive third.
Where exactly he belongs in our idealized possession chain is a tricky question. Since Jan. 1, he's in the top five for both passes into the attacking third and passes into the attacking penalty area -- but he doesn't lead the way for either one. He's just... everywhere:
We want the ball to move upfield, we want it to reach the penalty area, we want it to end up in the goal, so we want Trent Alexander-Arnold involved.
" ...looks up field, but instead cuts it into Busquets... "
Death, taxes, and Sergio Busquets establishing Barcelona's possession in the final third. While he seems to lose more and more physical range with each passing season, there's still no one better than the gangly 33-year-old at sniffing out a pocket of space in the center, turning his hips through pressure, and finding a midfield-splitting pass into the feet of an attacker. Just look at this thing:
That, my friends, is a man who knows who he is. Taking a touch outside the width of the penalty area? Couldn't be me. The highest concentration of touches come on both sides of the center circle.
You can picture it in your head, too: the opposing team crowds out the center, so he shifts out to one of the sides, perhaps even temporarily taking up the positioning of an outside center-back in a back three. Wherever the space is, he finds it, gets the ball, and pushes it into the final third whenever he's ready.
In 2021, Busquets played 430 passes into the attacking third -- more than any other outfield player.
"... finds Mbappe on the left wing... "
Anyone can watch Kylian Mbappe play soccer and understand that he's special. He moves with a unique kind of explosive fluidity that's impossible to ignore or contain. And well, he puts the ball into the back of the net -- 116 goals and 45 assists in Ligue 1 -- and he turned 23 this week. Theoretically, he's not even in his prime yet. Yeesh.
But what allows Mbappe to do all that damage and what makes him one of the best all-around attackers in the world -- and not just one of the best goal-scorers -- is his ability to find space, both in the final-third and in the attacking penalty area. His athleticism has something of a compounding effect here, as it allows him to reach certain spaces that other players couldn't even think of occupying, but there have been plenty of other uber-athletic prospects who never really figured out how to move through the most crowded areas of the field. Mbappe already has mastered it.
Only one other player received more passes into the final third than his 361. Oh, and while we're here, a quick shoutout to Jordi Alba, who is, of course, a 32-year-old left-back. Only five other players received more passes into the final third than he did, and among the top 20, he's the only player who isn't an attacker.
"... slides it to Messi in the center... "
Sure, it seems like Lionel Messi is basically a full-time Argentina player and PSG freelancer at this point. Even Ballon d'Or winners partake in the gig economy, I guess. But despite starting only nine Ligue 1 matches this season, Messi was still better than everyone else at one of the many things he has always been better than everyone else at: passing the ball into the penalty area.
After a decade-plus of ever-presence, it sort of feels as if Messi currently doesn't exist. He's playing in Paris for a team that's way better and way richer than all of its competitors, and he just hasn't been on the field that often. But despite all the outrage over his sixth Ballon d'Or award, he's still probably better than every other soccer player in the world whenever he actually is on the field. He's the only player in Europe who completed over 100 passes into the penalty area in 2021.
"... finds Salah streaking into the box... "
There's only player in Europe who has received more passes into the attacking third and taken more touches in the penalty area than Kylian Mbappe: Liverpool's Mohamed Salah. He has recorded 368 touches in the box in 2021 -- 50 more than Mbappe, and 100 more than any other player outside of Atalanta's Duvan Zapata and Salah's Liverpool teammate, Sadio Mane.
The value of getting on the ball in the penalty area is obvious: It's closer to the goal, and the defense suddenly has to behave differently lest they concede a penalty.
One of the defining images of Liverpool's year is Salah skittering into the box and driving the defense toward a nervous breakdown. You can't let him cut in on his left foot; that's a goal. But as Manchester City and Watford found out in consecutive weeks, you also can't overplay to the left, because then he'll just cut it onto his right and rip it past your keeper. Get too close to him? You won't be able to knock him off the ball, and you might commit a foul. Send over a second defender, and then there's Mane and Diogo Jota crashing in at the far post.
Everyone knows this is what Liverpool is going to do and in 2021, nobody was able to stop it.
"... cuts it back to Muller... "
Remember when it seemed like Thomas Muller might have been fading? In 2018-19, the Bayern Munich forward scored six goals and added just nine assists. Pretty good numbers for most players in Europe, but the first time he'd dipped below 0.6 non-penalty goals+assists per 90 minutes (0.57) since 2011-12, the last time Bayern didn't win the Bundesliga. He was 28 at the time, right around when the average attacker ages out his prime.
Given that he'd been starting for Bayern since he was a teenager, there was a legitimate question over whether or not Radio Muller should still be an automatic starter for a club that wants to win the Champions League every season.
Those were simpler times, huh?
Along with Messi, Muller led all players in assists in 2019-20 with 21. Then, last season, he led the way by himself with 19. This season, he's already up to 13, while no-one else in Europe is north of nine. For the calendar year, he has hit 24, five more than any other player.
"... oh, and it's that man again, Lewandowski!"
This is what goal-scoring greatness looks like. It's all shots inside the box, mainly from the penalty spot and in, mostly near the top of the six-yard box.
In domestic play, Robert Lewandowski has scored 43 goals in 2021 -- a whopping 10 more than anyone else. Want to take the penalties out? Fine, he's still first, with 34, eight more than the next best. One of those underlying-number obsessives who's more concerned with process than outcome? He's got you, too, generating 34.67 expected goals, 10 more than the guy in second place. Need minute-by-minute efficiency? Among players to play at least 400 minutes in 2021, he's leading 'em all in non-penalty goals per 90 minutes (1.05), as well.
No matter how you slice it, no-one had a better year than Robert Lewandowski.