There’s pretty much a Johan Cruyff quote for everything. For today’s purposes, we’ll start with this one:
“Football is a sport that you play with your brain. You have to be in the right place at the right moment: not too early, not too late.”
And then we’ll expand on that idea with this one:
“It is statistically proven that players actually have the ball for three minutes on average. So, the most important thing is: What do you do during those 87 minutes when you do not have the ball? That is what determines whether you’re a good player or not.”
He’s right, of course, and it speaks to the challenge of the world’s most popular sport: Everyone’s eyes are on the ball, but almost everything that happens in a game is happening somewhere else. This makes scouting incredibly hard, from both a video and data perspective. We naturally remember what the player with the ball did, and that gets anchored in our minds. You have to make an active effort to pay attention to what the players off the ball are doing.
And unless you’re at the stadium, you often can’t see all of those players. This poses a problem for data collection, but the bigger issue with the numbers we use to summarize games is that they’re almost all tied to the ball: who wins it, who shoots it, who dribbles it, who heads it, who passes it. Millions of data points are collected every match, and they’re still missing most of what’s happening in those 87 other minutes.
Today, though, we’re going to shift the focus, move the spotlight to the rest of the field, and put the ball in the shadows. Who are the best players in the world without the ball this season? Introducing your Off-Ball Best XI.
GOALKEEPER
We’ll start with the hardest one. What is a goalkeeper, if not a player who interacts directly with the ball? His job: stop the ball, whether with a save, a punch, a claim or even a dangerous sprint outside of his penalty area.
But while all of this off-ball stuff is important, it’s only important in how it affects the ball. A fullback can sprint up and down the sideline while the ball is on the other end of the field and it won’t accomplish anything, but an off-ball run by a striker, one that opens up space for a winger to run into and receive a through ball, is as good as it gets.
So, although we’re using on-ball event data for this piece, we can still catch echoes of off-ball movement by looking at things like the quantity and quality of passes a player receives. It’s recorded only because the player got the ball, but one of the main reasons the pass happened is because the player found the space to receive the pass in the first place.
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With goalkeepers, one type of off-ball movement comes from anticipation: to know when to sprint out of your box to corral a through ball before an opponent runs onto it. That ability, in turn, lets your team play more aggressively out of possession.
This season, Barcelona’s Iñaki Peña has made 88 actions outside of his penalty area — 43 more than any other player. He’s averaging 6.51 said actions per 90 minutes this season. And yet, last season, he averaged … 0.5 across his 10 starts. We call this the Hansi Flick Effect.
However, since Pena’s numbers are almost purely influenced by tactics, we’re discarding him. And we’re going to look at another aspect of off-ball keeper play: the ability to read and react to crosses. So far this season, there’s only one goalkeeper in Europe who is averaging two-plus actions outside the penalty area and claiming more than 10% of crosses: Chelsea’s Robert Sánchez.
Unfortunately, Sanchez is a below-average shot stopper across his professional career. But maybe Chelsea feel he makes up for it with everything else he does.
FULLBACKS
On the right, this might be the easiest pick on the list. Every season, Paris Saint-Germain’s Achraf Hakimi puts up numbers that make him look like a wingback. He receives a ton of progressive passes, and he takes a ton of touches inside the penalty area. When you have three center backs covering you instead of two, you’re able to storm forward without much risk.
Achraf Hakimi continues to be unmatched as a smart off-the-ball player for PSG. Aurelien Meunier – PSG/PSG via Getty Images
The players who tend to stand out in these numbers are guys like the Bayer Leverkusen pair of Alex Grimaldo and Jeremie Frimpong, and Inter Milan’s Federico Dimarco — or the guys who play for one of the few top-10 teams in the world that use wingbacks. Hakimi, though, is right there with them every season, despite playing in a back four since moving to France.
If we look at all defenders who have received at least six progressive passes per game this season per the site FBref, Hakimi leads all of them with more than 12, but he’s also fifth in penalty-area touches and second in interceptions, which I think is a decent proxy for off-ball savvy on the defensive end.
First among this cohort in interceptions is our choice on the other side: Fulham’s Antonee Robinson. Despite playing for a mid-ish-table Premier League team that uses a back four, Robinson receives a ton of progressive passes and breaks into the box a good amount, in addition to putting in a ton of work on the other side of the ball.
Take a look at this goal:
That’s how elite off-ball movement can translate into progressive passes received, touches in the box and even assists.
CENTER BACKS
One of the other easy choices: Liverpool’s Virgil van Dijk. He’s one of the best defenders in the history of the sport despite rarely defending; that is, defending in the traditional sense (making tackles, blocking shots). Rather, his athleticism and game-reading ability mean he rarely has to actually engage with the ball, controlling play with his positioning and presence. Since joining Liverpool, he never has attempted more than 40 tackles in a single season. Across the Big Five leagues, 52 players have already attempted 40 tackles — this season.
To balance out our center back pair, let’s look for someone whose off-ball ability shines when his team is in possession: Inter Milan’s Alessandro Bastoni.
Now, Bastoni does play in a back three, so he’s given a lot more freedom than your average center back, but he does lead all players at his position with 40 progressive passes received so far this season. And, if you watch Inter play, so many of their best possession moves come from Bastoni sneaking into an unexpected position off a midfielder’s shoulder or into a gap between a fullback and a midfielder. He receives a pass where no one on the other team expects him to be, and boom: Inter suddenly have a head of steam and are barreling into the attacking third.
It’s not like Bastoni is a converted fullback or midfielder, either. He’s not someone who has familiarity with these back-to-goal or back-to-the-sideline positions. No, the guy is 6-foot-3 and 185 pounds.
MIDFIELDERS
One of the landmark papers about off-ball value was written in 2018 by Luke Bornn, co-owner of AC Milan and co-founder of the analytics company Zelus, and Javier Fernandez, who used to work for FC Barcelona but now works with Bornn at Zelus. They acquired tracking data for a single Barcelona match and created a model to see who was creating valuable space for others and which players frequently occupied valuable space themselves.
Their paper famously discovered that Lionel Messi typically occupies valuable space by walking. However, it also found that Sergio Busquets stood out in his ability to occupy, manipulate and create space. He was the only player who occupied a ton of high-value space, created a ton of high-value space and also exchanged space with every other outfield player on the team.
We don’t have access to this kind of data today, but maybe we can use some on-ball data to find a Busquets-like player for the base of our midfield. And perhaps he’s producing these numbers due to a similar level of off-ball spatial understanding.
Not many people will be familiar with Nicolo Rovella’s game in Serie A, but his stats profile most closely with those of peak Sergio Busquets, who was long considered one of the smartest in the game. Marco Rosi – SS Lazio/Getty Images
The player with the most similar touch profile to Busquets is Lazio’s Nicolo Rovella. Compared with the Busquets from the 2016-17 season, which is when the data in the study comes from, Rovella takes about the same number of touches per match (81 to 83 for Busquets), and those touches are distributed across the three thirds of the field — about 65% in the midfield third, then a few more in the defensive third than in the attacking third — in the same way.
Rovella and Busquets win possession in the defensive and midfielders’ third at similar rates, and maybe most importantly for our purposes, they both receive roughly the same number of passes per game. Much like Busquets, Rovella has thrived in a deeper midfield role despite not having the normal physical qualities of a deep-midfield destroyer.
In front of Rovella, we’ll add Newcastle’s Joelinton. One of the tricky things with a list like this is that if you’re great off the ball but subpar with it at your feet, then, well, it doesn’t really matter. Your coach probably isn’t going to play you, or your teammates aren’t going to pass you the ball. Every other outfield player we’ve mentioned is great with the ball, too.
But allow me to buck that trend by introducing you to Joelinton. The data company Soccerment and its xvalue.ai software track a stat called “expected threat,” which awards players for moving the ball into areas from which their team is more likely to score. However, the software can also calculate which players receive the most expected threat.
Which players are constantly receiving the passes that turn settled possession into something more dangerous? Presumably, a lot of this would come from said player’s ability to identify and then occupy high-value spaces.
So far this season, Joelinton has received more expected threat than any other midfielder in Europe. Although high-value spaces are concentrated around the box, he has received as much xT as Leicester’s Jamie Vardy and more than Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka.
At the same time, he’s quite poor on the ball. You don’t need stats for this; just go watch a given Newcastle game. You don’t want Joelinton passing the ball around the midfield or trying to play through a press. He’s well below average for passes attempted, percentage of passes completed and progressive passes completed.
Had I written this piece last season, the Real Madrid pair of Federico Valverde and Jude Bellingham, along with Manchester City’s duo of Ilkay Gündogan and Bernardo Silva, would’ve been heavy contenders for one of these spots. But the former two haven’t been at their best this season, while the latter two have played lots of minutes for a Manchester City team that’s cratering.
Other names that come to mind: Conor Gallagher, who does all of the things that a midfielder isn’t supposed to do and not the one thing that a midfielder is supposed to do (pass). Curtis Jones’ positional savvy has made Liverpool better whenever he has played over the past few years, while his counterpart, Dominik Szoboszlai, might cover more ground on a weekly basis than any other player at his position in the world.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you know what: Scott McTominay has been pretty effective for Napoli this season by just sprinting up and down the field and barely ever touching the ball outside of the opposition penalty area.
I want to cheat and give the spot to both Jones and Szoboszlai, but we’ll settle for Szoboszlai since he has played more minutes and his off-ball output on both sides of the ball is world-class. Liverpool are the best team in the world right now, and the system doesn’t work without someone like Szoboszlai filling all of the gaps.
FORWARDSplay
2:17
Is Mohamed Salah’s value increasing with his Liverpool performances?
Craig Burley believes that Mohamed Salah’s value is only increasing with his performances for Liverpool this season.
Spoiler alert: most of the best forwards in the world are also among the best off-ball players in the world. The best scorers get most of their goals because of anticipatory skills that allow them to take tons of shots from the highest-value areas of the field. In a way, a stat like expected goals is an off-ball stat: most shots don’t come after long dribbles, so you accrue most of your xG from your ability to see and time your runs into the penalty area.
Despite recent struggles, we still have to include Erling Haaland. We can all agree that he doesn’t really contribute much to buildup play, and per the site FBref, 98% of all forwards in Europe attempt more passes than he does despite the fact that he plays for Manchester freaking City, who pass the ball as much as anyone. So, we have two facts: (1) Haaland really isn’t very good or impactful on the ball, and (2) he’s the best goal scorer in the world. Therefore, Haaland’s off-ball abilities must be among the best in the world, too. If not, how would he ever score?
Per Soccerment, Haaland has received 12-plus expected assists’ worth of passes this season, while no one else is even in double digits.
On the left wing, we’ll go with Barcelona’s Raphinha. Per Soccerment, maybe we should be going with Kylian Mbappé, who despite a disappointing start to his Madrid career leads all players in xT received from passes. The problem: He’s active off the ball only when his team is in possession. Sure, the threat of him on the counter means opponents have to adjust the way they attack in case they lose the ball, but otherwise, Mbappe is one of the worst under-30 defensive attackers I’ve ever seen.
Raphinha, meanwhile, was a fantastic presser at Leeds and does the same for Hansi Flick’s Barcelona. On top of that, he fits perfectly on the opposite side of Lamine Yamal in what’s becoming a common winger duo at the highest level of the game. One player touches the ball a ton and draws the defense’s attention, while the other one crashes into the space created on the other side of the field. To put some numbers on that, Raphinha has received the 12th-most xT of any player in Europe, while Yamal sits all the way down in 108th.
And lastly, I can’t really go with anyone other than Mohamed Salah on the right.
Yes, he’s absolutely incredible with the ball at his feet, and no, he doesn’t really do much defensive work these days, but there’s no one better in the world at recognizing a potential turnover and putting himself in position to take advantage of the moment when defense turns into attack. He really has lost a step as he has gotten older, but he’s so often breaking into tons of space because of how good he is at recognizing these opportunities before they actually happen.
So, three Liverpool players, huh? Well, they’ve significantly improved from last season despite their possession share dropping from 61% to 57%. Why is the team so good, then? Because of how good they are without the ball.
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Publish date : 2025-01-02 05:00:00
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