River Plate pre-kickoff photo, Argentine Superliga 2018/19. One question that pops up from time to time in football punditry is the following: How often does a manager’s preferred eleven appear on the field? It may take a while for that preferred eleven to reveal itself, but the idea is that once it is known, it […]
Racing Club are the new champions of the Argentine Superliga, and have returned to the summit after winning the Primera División four years ago. Like outgoing champions Boca Juniors, Racing were never headed in the league table after the very early rounds. Unlike Boca, they faced a challenger who applied increasing amounts of pressure until […]
Any match between Boca Juniors and River Plate will capture the full attention of a country and the rest of the football-watching world like no other club match with the exception of Real Madrid and Barcelona. That this match happens to be the opening match of the final of this year’s Copa Libertadores makes it […]
The 2018 CONMEBOL Copa Libertadores has reached its semifinal stage featuring traditional powers from the two biggest football countries in South America. River Plate will host defending champions Grêmio in the first leg of the first semifinal on Tuesday night; Boca Juniors will open the second semifinal at home to Palmeiras on Wednesday. Even though […]
Argentina’s Superliga competition enters the October international break at one-third distance, with a fair number of matches pending due to weather or lack of groundskeeping. Here is the league table after the most recent matchday:For the first time in almost two years, there is a new leader of the top flight in Argentina. Boca Juniors […]
Before the World Cup I posted expected goal maps of all of this season’s Copa Libertadores matches, from the preliminary rounds to the group stage, to the Soccermetrics Pictures Twitter feed. Now that the World Cup is over and Libertadores is set to resume next week, it’s time to take a statistical look at the […]
As you already know, France are the new world champions after defeating Croatia 4-2 in the 2018 FIFA World Cup Final.You would be hard pressed to say that France don’t deserve to be world champions. They didn’t lose a match, they achieved four clean sheets, and they had arguably the best central defender pairing, holding […]
Boca Juniors have repeated as champions of Argentina and champions of the newly created Superliga. Boca has been at the top of the league for over a calendar year, the title has been Boca’s to lose since November or December, and all challengers to the title had faded away or were turned back in showdowns […]
We’re now four rounds into Argentina’s newly-branded Superliga competition, which is a little premature to predict a champion (although there are some candidates) but not so much for seeing some managerial changes (three changes at San Lorenzo, Estudiantes, and most recently Defensa y Justicia). Furthermore, some storylines are starting to emerge from the opening matchdays: […]
Continuing from my previous post, here is the list of expected saves and goals allowed for all the teams in Argentina’s Primera División 2016-17. Own goals have been ignored, but penalties have not. There may be some discrepancies between the total shots on goal as calculated by DataFactory and by me.The total expected goals allowed […]
