Enjoy the madness

In the eight UEFA Champions League group stage matches that took place last night, there were 35 goals. It was an evening not necessarily out of kilter with the theme of recent Champions League campaigns.

Attacking and proactive football whereby complex patterns of play are worked on and insisted upon, especially at the highest level, have meant that goal fests, at any stage of the tournament, have become common place. 

For the purpose of restricting the article to modern day football where certain key rules have changed, as well as advancements in professionalism, the article will look at the UEFA Champions League era of the major European cup; which is the 1992-93 season onwards.

The facts and figures

The 2021-22 edition of the UEFA Champions League is the 30th since UEFA rebranded the competition. The 2019-20 campaign was the highest scoring season with an average of 3.24 goals per game. The 2021-22 season, albeit still in the relatively early stages of the group stage, is currently averaging 3.03 goals per game.

From the 2016-17 season onwards, those six campaigns make up the top seven of the most prolific campaigns in the Champions League era with just the 2012-13 from outside 2016-present in that top seven.

Of the bottom five seasons in the goals per game ranking, four of them came in the early-to-mid noughties. The 2005-06 campaign featured just 2.8 goals per game on average throughout that season. 

There is a clear statistical distinction and deviation between the 2000’s and the 2010’s, into the 2020’s. 

There are lots of arguments and reasons for this. One would be to suggest that attacking football isn’t as important as expected and there are just a lot more hammerings in the earlier stages of the competition nowadays. A way of disproving this hypothesis would be to look at the scores from the  latter stages of the competition from each era to contrast and compare.

The random samples for this will be the 2003-04, 2004-05 and 2005-06 seasons from the heart of the early-to-mid noughties era with 2018-19, 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons from the late 2010’s into the 20’s era. 

Between 2003-04 and 2005-06, there were 12 semi-finals (six two-legged affairs) that featured 18 goals (an average of 1.5 goals per game). A third of the 12 matches finished goalless with a further third of the matches finishing 1-0. 

Between 2018-19 and 2020-21, there were 10 semi-finals (four two-legged affairs and two one-off semi-finals during the COVID-19 season of 19-20) that featured 28 goals (an average of 2.8 goals per game). None of these matches finished goalless and only one game featured a single goal. 

©Getty / Alex Morton

This is reflective of the fact that the increase in goals in recent seasons is not necessarily just because of higher-scoring group matches but more indicative of a tactical shift and evolution that has occurred throughout the sport, and especially at the very highest level. 

The attacking efficiency

One of the main arguments as to why the goals have flowed a lot more throughout all stages of the UEFA Champions League in recent seasons would be the intent to attack a lot more.

©Catarina Morais / Kapta +

In between these two era’s that have been discussed so far, football went through one of its biggest tactical innovations and evolutions: Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona. Fundamentally the principles of Johan Cruyff and Marcelo Bielsa merged together and implemented in a way that created a Barca team that was, arguably, the greatest side of all time. 

Now, whilst Cruyff and Bielsa are ideologue’s on what they believe to be the most attractive and best way to play football, Guardiola matched this up with a relentless intensity and aggression that would also make it the most effective.

Juego de posicion; the idea that certain patterns of play and certain movements from players are pre-determined based on the position of where the ball is on the pitch. This, when coached and performed well, leads to a relentless maintaining of possession and, as a result, an almost formulaic consistency to creating chances. It is too easy on the eye to be described as monotonous but it can often feel like that for the opposition. 

Despite being, arguably, the best football to watch, it is arguably, simply, a form of pragmatism. It is a philosophy that is underlined by “what is the best way to win a football match” rather than “what is the most entertaining style of football we could play”. Once this effectiveness, especially in an era trying to counter-act ‘deep blocks’ and overtly defensive play, becomes apparent, it leads to people copying it, simply because it is the most effective way to play.

The aggressive counter-press has become a trait to try and defend, and attack, against this attacking principle. Whilst being a defensive philosophy at its core, it is also a proactive way of relentlessly hitting teams, either on the break, or in transition. Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool is the most breath-taking and exhilarating example of this. 

Control had been the way of the early-to-mid noughties with the likes of AC Milan, Juventus, Rafa Benitez and Jose Mourinho ensuring that they would control the play by owning their own territory as well as the speed of the game. Whilst effective, it was slower and more rigid. 

Guardiola’s style is also about control but when it is controlling in a proactive sense (i.e, with the ball and attempting to control the opposition’s territory) it leads to high-scoring matches. 

Defending is harder

Now, that leads us to the second reason as to why the UEFA Champions League is producing more goals: the difficulty of defending.

When a team has evolved into a style never seen before in terms of how complete it is in possession such as Barcelona of the late noughties and early 2010’s, it becomes incredibly difficult to defend against. Concentration must never fade and the mental and physical intensity required is astonishing.

When you then add into the fact that defenders now have extra roles to play in the build-up of their own team’s play when counter-acting the opposition that is seeking to control the game, it is even harder.

Football has never been at such a high quality, played at such a high speed with such incredibly sophisticated and complex patterns of play. To have to defend against something that relentless and also focus on being able to bring the ball out from the back, and play the diagonal forward passes to the full-back can lead to genuine lapses in concentration – as well as being naturally caught out because, as football isn’t a computer game, teams can lose possession.

This is even tougher on full-backs who are now relied upon to offer attacking thrust to sides that seek to counter-press with their attacking wide players pushed inside on the centre-backs as the centre-forward drops deep to deal with the first ball out of the midfield from the opposition. 

Defending, as evidenced by the goals per game averages, has simply never been tougher. Especially ‘defending’ is just half the job of a ‘defender’.

Football is a cyclical game. Big, almost untouchable clubs can fade away for a few years. Small clubs from small towns can rise to the top, but it won’t be forever. It is an unpredictable sport whereby fine margins decide major happenings. 

In ten years’ time, the goals may dry up as tactical innovations are brought in that focus on better defensive efficiency. Until that point, though, let’s enjoy the madness.