Speaking to Bild this week, Giovanni Trapattoni is quoted criticising Pep’s style at Bayern Munich:
For me there’s too much possession. Tick, tack, tick, tack. Tuck, tuck, tuck. To and fro. With too little return. And after 27 minutes they shoot on the goal for the first time – that’s inefficient.
Tobi (@redrobbery on Twitter) posted some passes-per-shot numbers dispelling this myth, showing that FCB are actually pretty decent at getting regular shots on target:
Trapattoni says Bayern pass too much without taking shots. Here’s this season’s Champions League data. pic.twitter.com/g0Aac6Eo2s
— tobi (#14) (@redrobbery) 7 April 2016
I thought I’d add to this with some time-to-shot-for numbers because they are even more pronounced. Here’s the median TTSF for each team’s passing in the Champions League, that is, the average number of seconds it takes between a pass and a shot:
| Team | TTSF |
|---|---|
| Real Madrid | 119 |
| Bayer 04 Leverkusen | 146 |
| FC Bayern München | 148 |
| Atlético de Madrid | 150 |
| Juventus | 167 |
| Lyon | 173 |
| Galatasaray | 174 |
| Roma | 175 |
| Manchester City | 181 |
| Barcelona | 188 |
| Paris Saint-Germain | 192 |
| Olympiakos | 193 |
| Manchester United | 199 |
| VfL Wolfsburg | 199 |
| Benfica | 201 |
| FC Astana | 210 |
| Chelsea | 220 |
| Arsenal | 222 |
| FC Porto | 223 |
| Sevilla | 224 |
| Valencia CF | 227 |
| Borussia Mönchengladbach | 237 |
| Dinamo Zagreb | 238 |
| Shakhtar Donetsk | 238 |
| Dynamo Kyiv | 253 |
| KAA Gent | 261 |
| Zenit St Petersburg | 267 |
| CSKA Moscow | 277 |
| Maccabi Tel Aviv | 284 |
| PSV | 315 |
| Malmö FF | 399 |
| BATE Borisov | 510 |
Borisov messing with my colour scheme there, but still – there you go: 2 minutes, 28 seconds, a mere factor of 10 out for Trapattoni. It’s a pretty reliable number for Bayern too, if you look here at the distributions of each team’s TTSF values for passes:
Even at their absolute slowest, Pep’s team have only been about 750 seconds from tick, to tack, to shot.
Deep xG 