The final match in the 2022 World Cup between France and Argentina has been crowned as “Best game of our lifetime” by many fans, players and pundits. The defending champions France looked to bring the Trophy back to their home country, as Argentina tried to end their 40 year drought for a World cup title.
The build-up ahead of this game was mostly about Messi vs Mbappe. Messi needed the missing piece in his trophy cabinet to solidify himself as the “Greatest of all time”, while Mbappe needed his second World Cup Trophy to get his name into the “Greatest of all time” conversation.
We use R and its visualization tools to analyse this game, we will try to analyse patterns and tactics behind this goal-fiesta of a match.
The data for this analysis was provided by Statbomb and its free to use datasets.
## jersey_number player.name position.name
## 23 Damián Emiliano Martínez Goalkeeper
## 26 Nahuel Molina Lucero Right Back
## 13 Cristian Gabriel Romero Right Center Back
## 19 Nicolás Hernán Otamendi Left Center Back
## 3 Nicolás Alejandro Tagliafico Left Back
## 24 Enzo Fernandez Center Defensive Midfield
## 7 Rodrigo Javier De Paul Right Center Midfield
## 20 Alexis Mac Allister Left Center Midfield
## 10 Lionel Andrés Messi Cuccittini Right Wing
## 11 Ángel Fabián Di María Hernández Left Wing
## 9 Julián Álvarez Center Forward
## jersey_number player.name position.name
## 1 Hugo Lloris Goalkeeper
## 5 Jules Koundé Right Back
## 4 Raphaël Varane Right Center Back
## 18 Dayotchanculle Upamecano Left Center Back
## 22 Theo Bernard François Hernández Left Back
## 8 Aurélien Djani Tchouaméni Right Defensive Midfield
## 14 Adrien Rabiot Left Defensive Midfield
## 11 Ousmane Dembélé Right Wing
## 7 Antoine Griezmann Center Attacking Midfield
## 10 Kylian Mbappé Lottin Left Wing
## 9 Olivier Giroud Center Forward
Both team lined up in their most used formations, 4-3-3 for Argentina and 4-2-3-1 for France.
Argentina had a visible dominance over France in the first half, let take a deeper look of what went down in that first half. The french manager Didier Deschamps made a decision to substitute their main striker Oliver Giroud and right winger Ousmanne Dembele at minute 41. The substitution changed the game for France in the second half, so lets begin by look at how the match panned out between minute 0 and 42.
## A tibble: 26 × 4
## type.name Argentina France Total
## <chr> <int> <int> <int>
## Pass 277 153 430
## Ball Receipt* 265 132 397
## Carry 216 105 321
## Pressure 35 51 86
## Duel 15 14 29
## Ball Recovery 14 8 22
## Foul Committed 8 10 18
## Foul Won 10 7 17
## Dribble 11 4 15
## Interception 5 7 12
## # … with 16 more rows
The dataframe shows us Argentina had a higher ball possession (possession is define as completed passes by FIFA), this despite the higher pressure attempt by France. So why wasnt the pressure working (or maybe it did?). Lets try to dive deeper to the pressure attempts.
It doesnt look like there is a correlation between Frances pressure and Argentinas passers, what if Deschamps tactics was not to pressure to passer but rather pressure the receiver?
So the heat maps shows no correlation between pressure on
passer/receiver, but then what was the reason France kept applying
pressure on Argentina’s left side for the majority of the first half?
Lets take a look on the dribbles for the Argentina players
## # A tibble: 12 × 3
## # Groups: player.name [12]
## player.name Dribble `Dribbled Past`
## <chr> <int> <int>
## 1 Ángel Fabián Di María Hernández 7 0
## 2 Rodrigo Javier De Paul 2 0
## 3 Alexis Mac Allister 1 0
## 4 Lionel Andrés Messi Cuccittini 1 0
## 5 Cristian Gabriel Romero 0 1
## 6 Damián Emiliano Martínez 0 0
## 7 Enzo Fernandez 0 1
## 8 Julián Álvarez 0 0
## 9 Nahuel Molina Lucero 0 0
## 10 Nicolás Alejandro Tagliafico 0 0
## 11 Nicolás Hernán Otamendi 0 0
The dataframe shows that Angel Di Maria that the highest attempt of
Dribbles among the Argentina squad. The Argentinian manager Lionel
Scaloni’s selection of Di Maria, whho hadn’t received any significant
playing time since the last game of the group stages, seem to be purely
tactical. The idea is to let Di Maria attack France’s right flank and
expose the defensively weak right winger Ousmanne Dembele and thus
opening up the field for Argentina. This tactical decision seem to payed
off when Di Maria tricky dribbling on the left side won Argetina a
penalty which Leo Messi managed to convert.
By forcing France to apply pressure on their right side to give defensive support for Ousmanne Dembele, Argentina seemed to be playing as far away from Kylian Mbappe on the opposite side of the field as possible, and isolating him from the action.
How did Messi fit in the grand scheme of things in the first half?
Lets take a look of his passing and heat map
The visualization shows us that despite lining up as “Right Winger”, most of Messi’s actions and plays came from the left side, the passing map shows how the pass distance were significantly shorter when passing to the left side compared to the right side because of this position, further supporting the theory playing away from Kylian Mbappe on the opposite side.
French manager subbed in Marcus Thuram and Randal Kolo Muani at the end of first to try to turn things around. Thuram, a more defensive midfielder than Dembele, was clearly brought in to stop the left flank of Argentina and perhaps make Argentina play more towards the middle or the right side.
## # A tibble: 13 × 3
## # Groups: player.name [13]
## player.name Dribble `Dribbled Past`
## <chr> <int> <int>
## 1 Rodrigo Javier De Paul 2 2
## 2 Alexis Mac Allister 1 1
## 3 Lionel Andrés Messi Cuccittini 1 0
## 4 Ángel Fabián Di María Hernández 1 2
## 5 Cristian Gabriel Romero 0 0
## 6 Damián Emiliano Martínez 0 0
## 7 Enzo Fernandez 0 0
## 8 Julián Álvarez 0 2
## 9 Marcos Javier Acuña 0 0
## 10 Nahuel Molina Lucero 0 1
## 11 Nicolás Alejandro Tagliafico 0 0
## 12 Nicolás Hernán Otamendi 0 0
## 13 <NA> 0 0
The tactical change by Deschamp seem to be giving effect as France pressured more on the right side and the number of dribbles decreased from the first half.
The ball dominating Argentina was nowhere to be found in the second half.
## # A tibble: 2 × 5
## # Groups: team.name [2]
## team.name Pass Dribble Dispossessed `Foul Committed`
## <chr> <int> <int> <int> <int>
## 1 Argentina 224 5 7 10
## 2 France 286 12 4 7
France had more control of the ball and was being more agressive on the offensive end, they kept attacking Argentina and won more fouls in the second half.
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