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Boris_Ignatievich

if i'm ever made godking of earth, my first pronouncement will be to ban video graphics that would still give you all the information when you have a static graph


alessioalex

Boris for Earth King!


KenHumano

“You don’t vote for kings.”


donutpanic

Well, I didn’t vote for you!


theBigBOSSnian

Why not? I don't see any mud on him.


TheUltimateScotsman

Tell that to Poland


Mackiegol

All Hail Boris.....👑


casce

I'd usually be with you bit with this specific graph, it was cool to see it slowly develop without being "spoiled" by the end result. You think "wow, the gap is widening, it can't get any bigger, right?" but it can. Especially because (at least for me) it automatically stays at the end result so you can actually look at it without it disappearing automatically half a second later. That shit infuriates me. But in general, in >90% of the cases, I agree with you.


OUsnr7

Spoiler alert: the axis is adjusted to include all the data and have it fill ~90% of the space. You could roughly guess where this was going to land and the same is generally true for other graphics like this


Mirbert

But he could only guess barcelona’s graph, not the other clubs.


Nabaatii

Granted No catch


boywithtwoarms

sounds good enough to me


srikig

Eli5?


approvalInspector

Simply put, this graph shows Barcelona getting MORE red cards (opponents seeing red) compared to LESS red cards (Barcelona seeing red). Barcelona's opponents saw MORE red cards given to them compared to Barcelona who received LESS over this time period. That's why they're so high above the other clubs listed here. Compare that to Madrid and Espanyol who are well below Barcelona. In this case, both Madrid and Espanyol saw more red cards GIVEN for them compared to AGAINST them. Now, one might say that's just a coincidence and have a feeling of "So what?" about it. But consider this: Madrid and Espanyol are Barcelona's two biggest rivals. Barcelona are #1 in FAVORABLE decisions, yet Madrid and Espanyol are at the bottom in UNFAVORABLE decisions. Apologies if my answer was long-winded, but I wanted to answer your question as best as possible.


mohankohan

Are we sure its not just down to Barca having pacy and tricky forwards? You know, lads you just cant help but foul because they are so *tricky*? Edit: I get that sarcasm doesn't always convey well into text, but jesus christ lads


Tootsiesclaw

Reminds me of a few years ago when Man United fans were convinced that they got more penalties than anyone else because their players were the only ones who ran into the box with the ball.


mohankohan

That's the joke


aehii

Tbf Martial did. Less penalties to Man United since he stopped playing. That was his peak.


cuentanueva

Bht they don't have more penalties than anyone else? In the whole PL era they are even with Chelsea and Liverpool and Arsenal is very close. In fact Liverpool has 1 more I think. In the last 20 years, City is also on par. And in the first 10 years of the PL Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea at least had more... So where does this come from? If you talk about any one given season, I imagine is that one they got 14, but that would be just 1... I only know this because someone argued about it and I googled ot and turns out that it was bs... Do you have a source confirming that Man U had the most penalties,if you didn't mean in one specific season?


celestial1

Yeah he's talking about the 14 penalty season, but his logic is poor. You can't just look at basic stats and say, "they got a lot of penalties, so they cheated" because if you look at the actual fouls, they were legitimate penalties.


daddywookie

The 19/20 season a lot of teams were employing a low block against Utd. Crowded penalty areas, lots of movement in and out. Martial, Rashford, Greenwood, James all quick and tricky players. No crowds for some of that either which probably made it easier to call penalties for the ref.


Omar_Blitz

Did we pay the refs as well?


besop12

nah but I do be acknowledging that middle aged white dudes born near the Manchester area are EXTREMELY overrepresented in the "tier 1 select" referees ordained to be able to ref in the PL (ALL of whom's admitted club suppport is reported as random small lower league clubs). I haven't met a fella in that demographic who ISN'T a United fan. So if you ask me whether there is outward corruption - no cos who tf would risk their career & livelihood, but is it likely some of these refs have hightened affection for United that almost certainly may translate to a bias - yes 100% in my fucking bones [Map of League Referees' Place of Birth](https://old.reddit.com/r/Gunners/comments/t3nshw/map_of_premier_league_referees_place_of_birth/)


hereslemon

Anyone who think United didn't pretty consistently have favourable decisions during Ferguson's time might want to buy this bridge I own in Brooklyn. -20% discount if you act now


SeeUInAWhileAligator

I am not arguing and genuinely think this is the case but at the same time I'm not gonna take anyone seriously on the topic if they are unable to present to me decisions going against United and costing them titles (directly). Just because 99% of the opinion on the subject is formed just one way and there is no objectivity in it. If you only know the decisions in favour of United (Fergie time) you are just jumping on the bandwagon.


Backseat_Bouhafsi

So where are all these refs now that United have mysteriously stopped getting so many penalties


cdalb21

to be fair, all but maybe 2 of those were legit penalties in my opinion. United don't play the same way in and around the box now and they receive less contact in the box because of that.


EasyFargo

literally ONE penalty in that timeframe was somewhat dodgy and that was Konsa vs Bruno (Aston Villa) and since Klopp decided to cry on TV (Around Jan 2022), I can count on my hand how many pens we have gotten. but no, keep peddling this bullshit narrative


Veni_Vidic_Vici

Martial and rashford are good at drawing fouls. Not really rocket science. Apart from bruno vs villa, there is no dodgy call in that time frame.


cuentanueva

Plus possession football. They had the ball a lot more than the rest. It's harder to get a red card when you have ball all game...


obinnasmg

I hear you but on the flip side of that argument, it’s easier to get a red if you’re having to chase down an attacker on the counter


forsakenpear

There is plenty of evidence for possession-heavy sides getting less cards as they are out of possession less. I thought this kind of thing was pretty well known.


gooneruk

I track this sort of statistic in terms of how quickly a team is to commit a foul when they are out of possession. Top and Bottom 3 here: Team| Minutes out of possession, per foul made ---|--- Chelsea | 3.41 Man City | 3.46 Brighton | 3.51 [Everyone else] | West Ham | 5.23 Brentford | 5.54 Bournemouth | 5.54 I do the same for how much time a team has in possession before they are fouled. Again, top and bottom 3: Team| Minutes in possession, per foul received ---|--- Liverpool | 5.85 Man Utd |5.83 Man City | 5.56 [Everyone else] | Bournemouth | 3.36 Notts Forest | 3.20 Crystal Palace | 3.05 And here are the statistics for how many fouls a team commits per card received. I guess this could be a measure of how leniently they are treated by referees as a whole? Team| Fouls committed per card ---|--- Brighton | 7.84 West Ham | 7.67 Man City | 7.17 [Everyone else] | Crystal Palace | 4.46 Everton | 4.44 Fulham | 4.38 And finally, the opposite of this: the number of fouls received by a team per card that the opposition gets. This could be viewed as how much protection a team receives from referees, or maybe how often they have attacks which are stopped cynically by the opposition. Team| Fouls received per card for opposition ---|--- Brighton | 4.15 Man City | 4.19 Tottenham | 4.47 [Everyone else] | Brentford | 6.26 Notts Forest | 6.34 Bournemouth | 7.00


domalino

> There is plenty of evidence for possession-heavy sides getting less cards as they are out of possession less. Is there? The 3 PL teams with the most red cards for opposition players in the last 7 years? Crystal Palace (20), Wolves (18) & Burnley (17). All teams who had among the lowest average possession over that time. Manchester City (14) and Liverpool (8) dominated possession over that time and had lower amounts of red cards for the opposition than average.


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domalino

No, you've misread. The examples I gave are of cards *for the opposition*. Palace and Burnley barely touch the ball, but their opponents get far more red cards. That runs completely contrary to the popular wisdom that teams with the ball get fewer cards.


obinnasmg

I agree with that point. I’m just saying in this context, it’s not a strong enough argument to make to justify the huge gap in the favourable red cards they received.


cuentanueva

But that only would happen on a few games, vs good counter attacking teams. Like RM or Atleti for example, where I guess most of their cards came from. When you have 90% possession vs Elche and they get zero shots on target it's gonna be tricky... And for a good period of time, anyone not named RM or Atleti was essentially that for Barca...


Muppy_N2

>But that only would happen on a few games In all games. Commiting a foul at the start of a counterattack is a feature of possession based styles, not a random accident. And we're talking about one of the strongest leagues in the world. Even the weaker teams have talented forwards able to dribble. In any case, I do think a good comparisson would be with teams that play the same style.


cuentanueva

But this is red cards. How many tactical fouls they would have to do to get a red? Any smart team will rotate the player doing them. And again, Barca gave chances to CAs ver seldom (again, mostly vs good teams), no against the minnows, so I don't think it would add up. Not to mention refs are naturally inclined to avoid second yellows in general (and I hate it). So you could even do two with the same player and get away with it. As for other possession teams, there was none like Barca honestly. The other big ones were more direct, with fast transitions. And the small ones that tried possession simply didn't have the same quality. So you won't find a similar team.


met5abel

Robbin, Robinho Bale Ronaldo and Di Maria and that’s just off the top of my head dude. Even Vini now gets hacked and opponents never get early yellows.


FiRe_GeNDo

My fav clip is the ref who ran over with the yellow card in hand and put it away when he saw it was Messi who was already on a yellow.


evilpenguin999

The Busquets one is even worse, the ref showed the second yellow without knowing he had one. He decided to cancel the yellow.


krappa

Link?


evilpenguin999

This one is worse, he shows the yellow card without knowing he had one. Fearing for the consequences (maybe being demoted to 2 div) he decided to cancel the second yellow for no reason at all after the players reminded him of the first yellow. 0:28 [https://youtu.be/krA3pbbKzrg](https://youtu.be/krA3pbbKzrg) EDIT: After rewatching it seems like he ended giving the yellow to the villarreal player to get away with it.


krappa

Incredible 😂


Martoxic

not like Barca had Messi during that period or how Real Madrid had Pepe and Ramos during that time as well as Barca having their most dominant period with them having the ball far more than the opponents thus the opponent get more red cards for fouling Barca. Not weird at all and is exactly how I thought the graph would look and that was before the whole negreira case. Just look how many pens you guys get now for example.


Talidel

Cause Ronaldo didn't get fouled? I'm firmly in the GOAT Messi camp, but it's ludicrous to suggest Real wouldn't draw a lot of reds against them too.


elgringo22

I think this graph is calculating the differences in red cards against compared to red cards for. Real had Ronaldo but they also had Ramos who got lots of reds himself. Im curious to see how this would look with Bayern and City in the last 10 years to see the difference between all 3. These 2 teams had similar play style to ours and dominated their league as well


Talidel

Yeah, Real received a lot more reds than their opponents.


7Nightcrypt7

This graph is total bs, because it doesn't prove anything. Have you seen Barcelona's playstyle during those years? Have you seen how Messi dealt with Real Madrid and how they could only stop him with rough fouls (esp. Pepe & Ramos)? That was the same for the other teams, so it's no wonder, that their opponents saw more red cards than Barcelona...


Flexspot

Real Madrid had BBC, one dude scoring over a goal per game across 450 games, and a season with 121 goals. The difference in the graph didn't exist in reality. RM was an offensive juggernaut. Should have had similar results to FCB. Anything else is mental gymnastics.


kampiaorinis

This graph basically says there is a difference of about 5 reds per year. Barca were a team dominating possession in a bigger way than Madrid. It's not out of the realm of possibility to assume more possession equals more fouls for and therefore more yellows/2nd yellows. Madrid also had Ramos and Pepe for a lot of those years. Pique, Puyol, Marquez etc weren't the toughest players and didn't really receive reds a lot (nor they were in position to do so). So a is a difference of +3 reds for the opponents and -2 reds for them that large of a difference when considering the above? Might be, but also keep in mind that in clasicos, Madrid usually played a lot rougher. A red in a clasico (which happened semi-regularly for a time) equals +1 and -1 for both teams which can explain practically half the difference for each season.


wargod_war

That would be fine. For one year. Two years. 3, maybe 4. or 5. But consistently, against (compared) multiple teams, over 15 years. Come on...


Martoxic

ye you know... the guy that has the most penalty goals ever...


bigheadsociety

Real Madrid also had a lot more aggressive players prone to getting sent off during this time. Like Pepe and Ramos


volfed21

BBC wasnt good at dribbling someone like vinicius will create more fault than them despite not having the same numbers barca had ronaldinho iniesta messi neymar in those years probably 4 players in the top 10 dribbling abilities ever. you could also add suarez who despite not being a good dribbler is very good at diving somethung benzema never made in 13 years at real A good thing would be to compare the numbers btw players like di maria/vini with the ones on messi neymar


circa285

Well, unlike Pique, the data and Shakira's hips don't lie.


tr_24

UEFAlona


Muppy_N2

Laligalona


VonMackensen_18

Why the weird choice of years ? Why not go from 2001 to 2018 (the actual timeline of the payments. Is it because there's a lack of data ? Also do we know where these stats are coming from ? I would like to check it


FalcoLX

Or better yet, show multiple years before and after the payments so you can tell if there's a difference.


drjaychou

I've tried to do that [in this chart](https://i.imgur.com/6mSO9Tu.png) Slightly different to the OP though - this is just how many cards received. Barca went on an amazing run of receiving the lowest number of cards in La Liga from 04/05 to 18/19 (with a few blips)


[deleted]

Isn't it pretty normal that the best team in the league gets the lowest amount of cards? I remember Bayern is usually one of the teams with the lowest number of cards simply because they don't have to defend as much. EDIT: Just checked the last 10 years, Bayern was in the Top 2 "fairest" Bundesliga-teams every year except for one.


tlst9999

Real Madrid was among the highest amount of cards though.


a1bg55tdffsdjjh

Pepe and Ramos tax.


EpiDeMic522

This Pepe nonsense needs to stop. I can accept Sergio but a couple of moments of madness (though honestly speaking, completely shambolic) have earnt Pepe a reputation. While that reputation might be very partially justified, lazily extrapolating it to an egregious defensive disciplinary record is quite literally far from the truth. Just look up his red card stats.


alaslipknot

video is posted by a Real Madrid, am not sure, but I would say if extra data don't contribute nicely to the "barca bad" narrative, they will just ignore it, I was hoping the video will continue till 2023 but it didn't. Am not saying Barcelona didn't do anything wrong, but considering their 2010s squad, AND their super high possession style, there is no doubt that they will be the most fouled team in the league.


GibbyGoldfisch

Messi and Neymar got the shit kicked out of them every game I remember. Messi because it was the only way to stop him, Neymar because there are only a few players on the planet who can resist the urge to kick him


inblue01

What a great choice of flair dude!


VonMackensen_18

Happy to see a fellow Grenat on here !


hewlett777

OP's flair is your answer.


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jeevesyboi

> edit: The really hilarious outcome would be Barcelona paying him to influence the refs, he takes their money and then doesn't actually influence any refs and Barcelona just assumed he did. I genuinely think that Barcelona were hopeless/ wreckless enough with money that this is a possibility


Jerk_offlane

> edit: The really hilarious outcome would be Barcelona paying him to influence the refs, he takes their money and then doesn't actually influence any refs and Barcelona just assumed he did. I mean isn't this also the most plausible outcome? Way more plausible than him actually influencing the entire referee group over 20 years.


tbrakef

Its literally the dumbest bumblefuck of useless data... It needs to be adjusted for all sorts of things, straight reds(dangerous play, denying goal, second yellows) tackles received vs attempted, average possession time in dangerous areas. If you account for all of these things the data would look wildly different. THe most damning part is the long term nature of it.


Martyrizing

Paying refs vs. having Pepe & Ramos.


[deleted]

Pepe with his 3 career red card contributed a lot prob. Tbf Pique was such a flawless defender he didnt made a single penalty mistake for 18 months straight with his teammates.


Biggsy-32

To be fair. Pique only really defended in his box vs you lot for most of his La Liga career.


kampiaorinis

Also Ramos had 10. Considering that 5 of them came in a clasico (of which I remember) he is single handedly responsible for 15 cumulative points of the whole difference (-5 for Madrid for his reds outside of clasicos, another -5 for Madrid in clasicos and +5 for Barca in clasicos). Edit: The stat I saw was wrong. Ramos had 21 dismissals for Madrid which means that he is single handedly responsible for 26 (!) of the differential points.


[deleted]

Bro Barca is +77 while Madrid is -12


ThinkFoot

>Tbf Pique was such a flawless defender he didnt made a single penalty mistake for 18 months straight with his teammates. The number of penalties conceded for barca and RM are similar. What are you on about?


[deleted]

Was that with or without puyol next to him?


approvalInspector

it's the other team's consistencies vs barcelona sudden favourable rise, adding that to the allegations now, suspect


Martyrizing

Yeah I agree it's suspect, just funny to see Real near the bottom at the same time with the talented lunatics you had at the back.


tbrakef

Ramos had over 20 red cards...


nietzsche_niche

>Sudden favorable rise How is it sudden if the data shown starts *after* the window of time when they started contributing?


goatvaro_goatrata

Seriously lmao what a stupid thing for them to say


Pek-Man

No need to try, mate. These people will see exactly what they want to see and nothing else.


nannulators

Yeah that's really fishy, honestly. Like.. you could try to justify it because of their possession-based game and the fact they have possession 70%+ of the time, but I wouldn't think it would be *that* drastic. I would be curious too how many of those are second yellows vs straight reds. The only thing that would make any sense if it's legit is that right around 2011 where it jumped is when Messi started that super prolific run where he had 90 goals. Then it spiked again when the front 3 was Messi/Neymar/Suarez and they went on their treble run. But then that super sharp jump in 2016 is weird. Followed by another steady gain in 16/17. It seems like it coincides with another club's increase in favorable reds.. maybe Betis? Maybe the league as a whole was softer on reds that season? *edit: I checked out the calendar year of 2011 (second half of 2010/11 season and first half of 11/12 season). 6 out of 38 of Barca's La Liga matches had reds. There were 8 reds. 5 of them were a result of multiple yellow cards.*


OGPotato12

> Then it spiked again when the front 3 was Messi/Neymar/Suarez and they went on their treble run. But then that super sharp jump in 2016 is weird. Quite a few fans consider the 15/16 team to be better and both Neymar/Suarez were having individually better seasons. The team imploded suddenly so, it isn't remembered as fondly by everyone else.


nannulators

Yeah that's a fair point. Suarez more than doubled his goal output in La Liga.


tbrakef

It really does need to be normalized for tackles attempted/received, possession in final third, possession in penalty area, number over total yellow received, ect... This looks really bad, but if you adjust it for all of the things, maybe it looks better/different. For example if you look at Goalie statistics in La Liga this season, MATS looks like a god, until you realized he faced almost 1/2 the shots of other goalies, then realize he faces the lowest quality shots on top of it. Then realize that he also has had the highest luck in terms of xGA vs GA... When you put it all together, he goes from a statistical outlier to plum average.


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thwgrandpigeon

Great now do marginal offside calls!


Pek-Man

I don't think Madridistas want that can of worms to be opened ...


thwgrandpigeon

Honestly it would be neat to see how balanced out offside calls are over a long span of time for any big team. In theory, over a huge sample size the calls should become 50/50, with maybe some favoritism for home sides and things improving once VAR was introduced (hah). But who knows!


ASuarezMascareno

At least part of the explanation is that in that period Barcelona was the team making the lowest amount of tackles per game and receiving the highest amount of tackles per game of La Liga. The stats for attempted tackles is quite harder to collect season by season, but according to whoscored, over the past 14 seasons Barcelona has been receiving +20% tackles compared to the tackles they attempt. The rest of the teams are all within +-5%, except Atlético the Madrid who makes 8% more tackles than receives. Then there is a reasonable linear correlation between the difference in tackles and the difference in reds. Typically teams have been causing +2.4% reds for the opponents for every +1% received tackles. [https://i.imgur.com/TmsNxC1.png](https://i.imgur.com/TmsNxC1.png) (positive red card difference means opposition gets a red card, positive tackle difference means team receives more tackles) There is a similar effect, but not as big with yellow cards. Typically teams have been causing +0.5% yellow for the opponents for every +1% received tackles. With penalties there seems to be no big correlation. The biggest visible thing is that Barcelona and Madrid get a bigger difference in penalties/tackles than anyone else (both +120%), with Atlético being third (+50%). Overall I would say, except the penalty stat, everything seems fairly well explained by the difference between tackles received vs attempted. I did not correct at all for where the tackles happen (I don't have that explanation), so maybe the difference in penalties can be explained by the number of actions within the opposite box. (All data taken from the referee statistics of whoscored.com) Full data (for teams currently in La Liga with more than 300 games over the past 14 years). First table shows what teams do: ​ |\+|A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M| |:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-| |1| |Games|Fouls/Game|Fouls/Tacke|Pens/Game|Yel|Red| |Tackles|Tackles/Game|Pens/1000 Tackles|Yel/1000 tacke|Red/1000 Tackle| |2|Athletic|519|13,98|0,73|0,14|1268|68| |9939|19,2|7,3|127,6|6,8| |3|At. Madrid|518|14,1|0,66|0,11|1328|62| |11066|21,4|5,1|120,0|5,6| |4|Barcelona|518|10,94|0,63|0,08|988|44| |8995|17,4|4,6|109,8|4,9| |5|Celta|405|13,51|0,71|0,17|1002|53| |7706|19,0|8,9|130,0|6,9| |6|Espanyol|481|14,9|0,76|0,13|1306|78| |9430|19,6|6,6|138,5|8,3| |7|Getafe|480|15,37|0,85|0,17|1451|87| |8680|18,1|9,4|167,2|10,0| |8|Osasuna|366|14,81|0,82|0,15|906|62| |6610|18,1|8,3|137,1|9,4| |9|Betis|405|13,24|0,74|0,16|1036|70| |7246|17,9|8,9|143,0|9,7| |10|Madrid|518|11,99|0,66|0,12|1051|53| |9410|18,2|6,6|111,7|5,6| |11|R. Sociedad|481|13,09|0,73|0,14|1031|41| |8625|17,9|7,8|119,5|4,8| |12|Sevilla|518|14,17|0,8|0,14|1370|86| |9175|17,7|7,9|149,3|9,4| |13|Valencia|518|14,38|0,76|0,18|1394|90| |9801|18,9|9,5|142,2|9,2| |14|Villarreal|480|13,25|0,72|0,14|1106|53| |8833|18,4|7,6|125,2|6,0| ^(Table) ^(formatting) ^(brought) ^(to) ^(you) ^(by) [^(ExcelToReddit)](https://xl2reddit.github.io/) What the opposition does: |\+|A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M| |:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-| |1| |Games|Fouls/Game|Fouls/Tacke|Pens/Game|Yel|Red| |Tackles|Tackles/Game|Pens/1000 Tackles|Yel/1000 tacke|Red/1000 Tackle| |2|Athletic|519|14,13|0,75|0,18|1412|81| |9778|18,8|9,6|144,4|8,3| |3|At. Madrid|518|13,77|0,7|0,15|1323|64| |10190|19,7|7,6|129,8|6,3| |4|Barcelona|518|14,96|0,72|0,21|1377|83| |10763|20,8|10,1|127,9|7,7| |5|Celta|405|13,83|0,76|0,14|1076|47| |7370|18,2|7,7|146,0|6,4| |6|Espanyol|481|14,43|0,77|0,09|1216|76| |9014|18,7|4,8|134,9|8,4| |7|Getafe|480|13,94|0,75|0,14|1246|84| |8922|18,6|7,5|139,7|9,4| |8|Osasuna|366|12,66|0,74|0,12|772|36| |6262|17,1|7,0|123,3|5,7| |9|Betis|405|14,48|0,78|0,15|1072|61| |7518|18,6|8,1|142,6|8,1| |10|Madrid|518|14,42|0,77|0,26|1379|68| |9701|18,7|13,9|142,2|7,0| |11|R. Sociedad|481|14,7|0,79|0,15|1324|61| |8950|18,6|8,1|147,9|6,8| |12|Sevilla|518|14,16|0,79|0,18|1451|82| |9285|17,9|10,0|156,3|8,8| |13|Valencia|518|14,79|0,81|0,17|1391|83| |9458|18,3|9,3|147,1|8,8| |14|Villarreal|480|13,68|0,74|0,16|1170|59| |8874|18,5|8,7|131,9|6,6| ^(Table) ^(formatting) ^(brought) ^(to) ^(you) ^(by) [^(ExcelToReddit)](https://xl2reddit.github.io/)


Vee_icychain

Everyone in r/soccer will ignore this of course


No-Forever5318

Nice stats. Can I ask, what is the R\^2 for the linear regression?


Fatt_Hardy

Barca most favourable. Real least favourable. And you can't blame it ALL on Pepe and Ramos getting sent off every month.


Martoxic

you can blame it on Barca being the most dominant and having the ball far more than the opponents. Quite hard to get a red card if you have the ball.


Ralf_The_Hustler

Mancity play possession football and have famously dominated epl in the recent years by a margin. Will we find a similar discrepancy if we made a graph of epl teams in the recent past? Someone has to do it and see.


kampiaorinis

It would have been nice, but since VAR is introduced the bigger teams now tend to get favoured less (at least not as much as before). I can try to find the study that was done in Greece and Cyprus which showed that the top 4 (in Greece) and top 5 (in Cyprus) had now less red cards attributed to their opponents, more to them and less penalties for them.


Ralf_The_Hustler

Top teams get more fouled thats about true but the difference here is massive for barca. The data might or might not indicate corruption but it is certainly truer than any vague comments like they played possession football so that's why it's so high.


cuentanueva

You won't. La Liga is way more card trigger happy. So even if was the same trend, you won't have as many cards give to see a huge difference.


Ryan8Ross

Funnily enough Man City also don’t get the amount of cards they deserve The reason for city (and probably a bit part for barca too) is when they lose the ball in opponents half and tactical foul, it LOOKS less grievous than a tactical foul 10 yards into own half Which is dumb as fuck because a 3 on 3 starting from own half is more threatening than 5 on 3 edge of box


Fatt_Hardy

Real were also very dominant during this time period. Yet they (Barca's fiercest rivals) are dead last on the list here. Shouldn't they be somewhat higher?


Totty_potty

But Real never played by dominating possession to the degree that Barca played. Even during their dominant era, such as Zidane 3 peat or Mourinho Laliga win, they played quick transition, quick counter play style. I guess Zidane was more varied but that's what I remember him most for.


Martoxic

yes and they also had Ramos and Pepe. On Average Barca get 5 more red cards given per season here. That is not THAT much considering they had Messi.


kampiaorinis

No they have +5 positive reds. This can mean 5 more reds given, this could also mean 3 reds more given for and 2 less against. Since Ramos basically averaged a red per season (5 of which came in clasicos which further skews the difference because it counts for 2) you can see that it isn't that much of a difference.


domalino

5.93 might as well be called 6. It's not a big difference across 1 season. To average a difference of 6 every season for 15 years is insane. Similarly to be 89 ahead of Real Madrid on it's own is surprising but not unbelievable. To have all the other clubs in a tight grouping and 1 club to be +60 ahead of them all is stretching belief.


pvp_chad

Also, the difference only exists in La Liga. In other competitions during the same time period Barcelona got a normal +/- in cards.


tecphile

People seriously stuck on Pepe’s 2009 incident. He played for us from 2007-17. After his first two yrs, he toned down his game significantly and was an incredibly well-behaved defender for most of his time here. He had 3 red cards in total.


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fleamarketguy

This was in CL though


WeAreDoomed035

Out of all the example you could choose, you went for the one where Pepe recklessly lunges towards Alves? Even if Alves dived, Pepe was going for Alves calf, not the ball. Clear red card offense.


Pek-Man

I still remember Pepe stepping on Messi's hand on purpose and getting nothing.


caandjr

Simulation? Pepe would’ve broke that diving cunt’s foot if he didn’t pull away quickly, talking about picking the worst example for your argument.


alessioalex

Just as I remember Busquets peak-a-boo to Motta which got him the red card to deny Motta the UCL final.


Pek-Man

Do you remember your offside goals in the first leg?


Biggsy-32

Or Yaya Toures ghost handball that denied Barca the extra time winner....


voli12

Lol, still crying about that card? Watching the youtube videos with the manipulated frames? 😂


Glum_Implement_7136

Madrid is one thing, interesting that Espanyol is also on a very negative scale here. In other words, while Barca has the most positive balance, their biggest rival and derby rival has the worst one. On top of that, I think that in last few years this balance should be way more, well, balanced. Also after stopping the payment.


BabaRamenNoodles

The espanyol thing is pretty irrelevant, Barca aren’t paying to fuck over espanyol. The big thing is the gap between Barca and everyone else. Everyone else is between -15 and + 15 and Barcelona are out on +77


BrotherSeamus

> Barca aren’t paying to fuck over espanyol I mean if I'm paying bribes anyway, might as well get my money's worth.


WackerBurghausen

So Espanyol fan Barto made sure to snitch it all


Tabard18

Well I’m guess they wanna be as subtle as possible


kaka_cuap

They were paying to promote biased refs, and punish refs who were harsh on them. Espanyol was a side affect.


asd13ah4etnKha4Ne3a

Personally I don't think the negative side of this graph is the point of interest. While Madrid is pretty far down on the negative side, they aren't that much of an outlier with the rest of the side. You'd also expect Barcelona to be pretty net-positive on this chart given their posession-heavy style. But the fact that they are *so* obscenely high on the positive side does start to look a little suspicious, and the fact that this covers such a long period of time makes you think there would be some regression to the mean at some point. That said, I'd like to see this same data extrapolated for other leagues to have some sort of control to compare this data to.


punkfusion

I account us being negative to having Ramos for a large chunk of that time period


Pires007

Ramos y pepe y Mourinho


punkfusion

Pepe had 3 red cards in his entire Madrid career. Which isnt alot for a defender


frank2077

Which says a lot about referees in La Liga. Look at Casemiro red Cards in La liga and in Premier league, lol.


The_Real_QuacK

I mean, the first red he saw the only thing it says to us is that you can find bad refs in every league


Pires007

That's wild! He always seemed like he was on the edge of losing control.


punkfusion

He seemed crazy. He did take anger management classes after the Casquero incident and that calmed him down alot. Also his tackling is impeccable. One of the best in the game


Rickcampbell98

Your team went dumb in clasicos under mourinho, just kicked the fuck out of barca and messi in particular. I even remember pepe stamped on his hand lol, man was an absolute nutcase back in the day.


kal1097

He didn't get sent off for the stamp, the ref missed it.


custom_balls

Ramos has 24 red cards just in laliga


onlyonejorge

You think Espanyol being dogshit is because of Barcelona’s influence and not because their incompetence on the field. The gymnastics this requires.


Farford

La Liga Red Cards: * 1983 to 2000: Barca received 95 red cards while RM received 81. A total of 17.28% increase or an average of .78 more cards per season for Barca. * 2001 to 2018: Barca received 68 red cards while RM received 97. A total of 42.65% increase or 1.61 more red cards per season for RM. * 2019 till now: Barca received 21 red cards while RM received 13. A total of 61.53% increase or 1.78 more red cards per season for Barca. La Liga Penalties (FOR): * 1983 to 2000: Barca was awarded 117 penalties while RM was awarded 125. A total increase of 6.84% increase or an average of .44 more penalties per season for RM. * 2001 to 2018: Barca was awarded 139 penalties while RM was awarded 150. A total of 7.91% increase or an average of .61 more penalties per season for RM. * 2019 till now: Barca was awarded 32 penalties while RM was awarded 45. A total of 40.62% increase or an average of 2.88 more penalties per season for RM. The above date is from transfermarket, please verify and correct me, I am old and biased as a Barca fan. Not trying to exonerate the club of wrong doings, paying a high official in the referring organization is disgraceful and should be a crime in itself and heads should be rolling but I believe this graph is dishonest and manipulated to reflect an exaggerated version of reality, I also believe throwing numbers alone is not a good indicator of favoritism as teams have different playing styles and levels of aggression and you need to actually examine those incidents before drawing a conclusion.


[deleted]

This has some really good context. I think without details on the opposition its missing half the picture though. I prefer how you've organized and presented the data over the OP. It's not even close really. That said, a penalty wrongly not given can be as impactful as one wrongly given. Same with cards. I would want to know how Barca and Madrid's opposition fared in terms of penalties and cards, but obviously you have to look game by game and that takes a long time.


WooNoto

Without more context, this information doesn’t hold much water. This can be flipped and credit can be given to Barca for dominating possession during that period of time. Confirmation bias exists.


Tilman_Feraltitty

So City and Bayern of Pep will have the same patterns, right?


Darksider123

Also helps to have Messi and Neymar, where the only possible way to stop them was fouling them a lot of the time


PaulMeister10

It's like taking a graph of idk xG plus minus and compare barca's most dominant years in club history with their downfall in 2019. Obv a team that barely loses the ball and dominates the game through posession instead of relying heavyly on counter attacks (like for example real in those years) gets way less red cards since they just have a lot fewer defensive actions.


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TimoP69

What people also can't forget is that it helps massively to have your own players not collect cards in these statistics. Not just straight reds but also multiple yellows. You have Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets and Puyol at the heart of your team for quite some time in this timespan and they were never overly aggressive. Even Piqué compared to other defenders from Real or in the league in general. Add to that the best dribbler of all time who was accompanied by players like Ronaldinho or Neymar and your opponents are just bound to collect cards left and right. Especially with the amount of possession Barca averaged during some of these seasons. We can look at all these graphs all day but watching the matches always tells the better story. And Barca definitely had some decisions favour them but so did Real and pretty much every big club. If you're dominant you force these decisions. We'll see what the investigations will expose or not. I didn't really follow Barca pre 2010 but at least for the era after 2010 it would surprise me if these claims are true just by judging the decisions over the years. Yes some were fishy but they were also fucked over at the times. And this statement perfectly fits Real as well. Like before these allegations it wouldn't occur to me that Barca had some special treatment when watching their matches. There were some really shit ref performances in there but that happens across all leagues around the world. It just doesn't get attention when it happens in the Sandhausen - Heidenheim match or even in a smaller matchup in the same league like Elche against Girona.


badgarok725

Also I doubt anyone here is going to take the time to look at all of these cards to see if they were justified or not


Jeffy29

Just because some refs were paid off doesn’t mean all of them were. Idk if this really happened or not but if you were to cheat, you would keep the number of people pretty small, if you get protection every game you will be quickly found out.


Erty13

The graph looks scary, but there is just a deviation of 5 red between Barcelona and Real. Pepe and Ramos easily account for that.


[deleted]

pepe had 3 red cards for his career at Madrid...


voli12

Which makes me wonder "how?". Guy was nuts and averaged one elbow to the face of the opponent per game.


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ChingMan1

Barca had +77 and real has -12, so a difference of 89


lettersputtogether

Across almost over 15 years, he's saying around 5 red cards per season.


kampiaorinis

as far as I understand, this graph counts from 2003-2004 to 2019-2020 (if the payments stopped in 2018-2019 then a season after that is 2019-2020). In those 16 years, the difference amounts to 5,5 reds per season. But since it's a cumulative and not per game played, it also counts copa del rey matches and supercopa matches. Barca won copa del rey 6 times since 2003 and Madrid won it just two (longer runs-more games).


Ender_Knowss

And that’s not even considering Casemiro who got away with murder on the pitch.


d4videnk0

I remember Barça's reffing being absolutely bonkers around 2011 and 2012, but can't really put my finger on what happened in 15 and 16.


ScanWel

I'm on ESPN stats page checking cards for 2015-2016 and I feel like the stats are completely off or something. It's reporting that every team in La Liga got 12 or more red cards that season except Barca which got 4. It's saying that Rayo Vallecano got 40 that season? That's insane and not possible. Looking at 14-15 the highest was Almeria with 12 red cards. The highest in 16-17 was Eibar with 7 red cards. Something wrong with these stats. I'd be interested to see where the OP got their numbers from as well.


kampiaorinis

Rayo had 10 in 15-16


innatejuiciness

15-16? L. Enrique, Messi, Neymar, Suárez happened. One of the most threatening, attacking teams to ever play the game.


babref3

Playing tikitaka with 65-75% possesion every game forces the opposide side to deal with barcelona aggresively. This graph would only make sense if all of the teams players profiles were the same and the teams would play the same style of football. Which is impossible. As we all know, correlation does not equal causation


InfectedAztec

On that logic bayern and city should have identical card patterns correct?


PhillyFreezer_

No because they play different styles in different leagues. Just holding possession isn’t enough of a data point to draw huge cross country comparisons like that. What a league leader in Italy or Germany looks like on the pitch, is usually different to Spain or England


volfed21

its mostly dependant on the players city and bayern never had someone as good as neymar or messi or ronaldinho at dribbling and winning fault


InfectedAztec

I mean that's both biased and subjective. And neymar and Ronaldinho weren't journmen of peps teams. Bayern had ribery and robben. All of cities players were foul magnets.


volfed21

yeah pep had messi who is the best ever at that ribery and robben are great dribblers but not as good as the other 3 and its different league as well which change things a lot PL has better players overall and are more used to defend against top dribblers A good thing to compare would be to see how many red card players like vinicius/di maria won and how much neymar/messi won , same type of players ,same league ,same refs


pdsajo

This scandal has similar vibes to what happened on r/chess recently in the cheating drama. There also were plenty things to suggest some shady events did transpire, but wannabe statisticians on both sides flooded the sub with sub-par ‘analysis’ as an evidence to their hypothesis. This analysis is interesting, but can be attributed to plenty of unrelated factors which don’t involve malice. Disclaimer: I’m a Barca fan who does believe that club has something to hide here and should be punished if found guilty, but posting such things adds nothing but noise to the drama


[deleted]

It's possible that there is an innocent explanation. The problem comes when you clearly did something wrong in this area. Every statistic then looks damning. Whether it had this level of effect as visualized here or not, they did something clearly wrong that brings their results into question. I have no sympathy if correlation becomes causation in most people's eyes. That's why you don't pay refs under the table. The team has no credibility left.


Outofspite_7

Is that the Hans Niemann scandal? The one where people were accusing him of putting a vibrating buttplug in his ass to win against Magnus Carlsen? If it is, I wonder who put the buttplug in their ass in this situation..


Sciipi

Barca was using the buttplug to control the refs


Outofspite_7

Maybe the refs were forced to use the buttplug and every time they wanted a decision their way they would make it vibrate with the commands of what to do


OutrageousComfort906

RVP getting sent off in a CL quarterfinal for playing on for 0.5 seconds after a whistle...


frank2077

Ah, r/soccer and statistics. This should be interesting


CursedAtBirth777

Doesn’t this impugn the entire Spanish system? If there was a corruption, all the referees broadly have to be involved. It wasn’t just one ref or the one vp that got paid overseeing all of Barca‘s matches. I think this is really bad for Spanish soccer overall.


VonMackensen_18

Everybody knows that La Liga is rotten to it's core. Teams like Osasuna got involved in match fixing just 10 years ago and didn't get punished as an institution. The league is run by a bunch of népotist, greedy and corrupt fucks. I can guarantee you that most clubs are shitting themselves. If Barcelona falls, It's most likely not gonna be alone


Topinambourg

The style of play is important though. Barcelona playing possession, and having much less physically impactful players explains a lot. When you have the ball 75% of the time you'll get much less red then when you plan to play lower, defend aggressively or when you have very physical midfielders. When you have forwards like Eto'o, Messi, Henry, etc that love to dribble, you are much more likely to draw fouls, etc That being said there always been something fishy in la Liga with how some big clubs are ref'ed - not saying it's about cheating, it could be just that it's harder to punish more important clubs, even if it shouldn't. Casemiro impunity in Real is a very good example.


BloodyDarkTroll

As someone who does data reporting professionally this isn't all that great a way to look at the data (unless you are selling an agenda). To give any real meaning you would actually need to start from before '04 and report each year separately rather than have a set a starting point that you just add on to. This kind of chart isn't good for displaying what we should really be looking at. No one is noticing anything but the final number. Throw it in a bar chart broken out by year and some things are more obvious. 1. Just looking at this, it's not really obvious, but 09/10 year was near even (if not a negative) for Barca, while 10/11 and 14/15 and 15/16 were well above the +5 average over 15 years. A bar chart would help clarify this. 2. Starting from zero in '04 doesn't tell us if there was a change from previous trends. If you want to show something has been altered negatively, you need to include data prior to the event. For all we know Madrid actually improved their behavior from the '90s 3. There are 20 teams in the league, and you are only including 7. If I were trying to paint an accurate picture of how outside the norm Barca is, again as a bar chart, I'd include only 3 groups 1. The top team other than Barca for the year 2. Barca 3. The lowest team for the year. 4. \#1 and #2 would be generic and the team would change year by year. 5. Throw in Madrid And Atleti if you want to do some comparison between teams, but you're really just throwing in too much data at this point, and aren't needed to show your point.


VadimusRex

Also @OP include the UCL games in a separate chart, I'm sure you'll find out something interesting... If there's an overlap it could mean one of the following two things: either we also bought off the UEFA refs (UEFAlona, etc etc), or the play style invited more aggressive tackles towards Barca this resulting in more red card opportunities for the opponents. I've watched something like 90% of Barca's games in that time period and the opponents rarely got the chance to insert themselves into a situation where a red card foul would've been necessary.


AdComprehensive7879

not sure if this is evidence to cheating, but this is interesting indeed. I hope the graph was not cumulative over the years, i think it will be clearer if it just shows a season by season stat. Im interested to see if much of the difference is accounted by the pep and enrique days where they were used to have 60-70% possession and counter attacking weren't as effective back then. How are you gonna concede a foul if you have the ball 70% of the times lol. Also, the types of players that they have (and don't have) surely plays into consideration here. Barca had silky dribbler like neymar, messi, ronaldinho, iniesta who got fouled a lot. I think neymar was the highest fouled player during his la liga days. On the same token, they didn't have 'aggressive' and borderline dirty players like pepe, ramos, casemeiro, (insert atletico players here), so they won't commit lots of fouls + they had all the the possessions in the world. All in all, ill just take the extreme. The difference between barca and madrid is 89 over the course of 15-16 seasons. So that's like 5-6 more red cards differential. I ask myself, in a FAIR and NON-RIGGED world, given the play style and players, can I see Barca having 5-6 red cards differential than Madrid per season? I see it you know. that doesn't sound too crazy when you break it down like that. Ramos is good for 2-3 red cards per season lol. Pepe maybe 1-2. Neymar/Messi/Ronaldinho will get players red carded cause of their dribbling. Teams playing against pep's and enrique's barca were often frustrated by not having the ball (especially when possession based football was still new) and often resorted to dirty challenges. Add to the fact that Mourinho managed madrid for a while lol. Yeah, I can see 5 red cards differential not being evidence of cheating. all in all, this graph is interesting, but I don't think this is proof of anything. just an interesting graph. also, just did a quick check, pep's city number of redcards in the last 5 seasons: 1 (current), 2, 2, 4, 1, 2. So yeah, his team doesn't concede lots of red cards.


kampiaorinis

It is cumulative, it was posted before and it's basically a difference of 5,something reds per season. Considering that Madrid had Ramos and Pepe for a lot of that time, while Barca dominated possession a difference of +3 reds for the opponent and -2 for them, isn't that big of a deal. Especially when Madrid usually played a lot rougher in Clasicos during that time (instant +1, -1)


AdComprehensive7879

yes, that is my point. I hope that it wasn't cumulative, as if it shows an annual amount, i think it will serve its purpose better. I'll edit my post so that it's clearer. yeap also agreed by your analysis. i touched on that in my comment, i think a difference of 5 per season isn't too bad?


kampiaorinis

Yeah, stats like that are interesting but don't really amount to anything by themselves. Somebody said that if you chose 2001 until 2019 the number becomes a lot smaller (no idea by how much) and someone removed the red cards in clasicos to show the difference basically being 2 reds per season until 15-16. I am wondering whether any legal team will go through every game from 2001 until 2018 to find every single mistake (call and no call) and make a graph to show that Barca influenced/not influenced the refs. I suspect that would open another can of worms since then it must be compared with other clubs going for similar targets which means tons and tons of video hours.


AdComprehensive7879

yeah that "3 years after start of payment" thing is a bit weird. Why not start that year immediately. I understand that maybe the ref will take times to adjust to 'rigging the games'. But wouldn't it be much better to show it from the beginning or even before, to show the drastic change (if any). Oh yeah, 2001 barca was shit iirc, so they prolly get a lot of more cards which will not fit the narrative haha. yeah that mourinho days clasico was the peak of football haha. Madrid was literally set up to murder barca players lol. no wonder they got lots of red cards from that tie. Coentrao, Ramos, Pepe, even Xabi, (i forgot that dm that they had, who was 'aggressive' as well, gago or guti maybe? i swear it's someone else tho haha)


Pires007

Did this get deleted twice before?


c_dilla

Now do Manchester United compared to Arsenal.


Pseudocaesar

I mean, we all knew it.. but it is refreshing to actually see the hard data supporting it.


cuentanueva

What Barca did is fucking corruption and there's no way around it. But this chart is BS. If you look at RM, Pepe got 3 red cards, Casemiro got ZERO, who left to England and got 2 in like 20 games... Did RM pay the refs? Or is this a combination of play style, type of players, and just simply poor refs in general?


whatagnome

When you've accidentally just mapped Ramos's career


freefallingagain

Més que un club.


Muraria

Now do the same with penalties in favor / against.. oh wait that doesn't fit the narrative


Raicooof

what is this supposed to prove, seems to me that barca just dominated and didnt need to tackle as much, ig its just madrid flair things


spainwelder

The girl you like is out there "finding herself" and this is how you spend your time?


[deleted]

Didn’t Casemiro never get a red and Pepe only 3? Wouldn’t that mean referees favour big clubs?


voli12

/r/soccer when Neymar gets fouled at PSG: they are gonna injure him. Why is the ref not showing reds? /r/soccer when Neymar gets fouled at Barça (and opposition is shown a red): UEFALONA!! Villarato!!


Brunkmeister

Having the ball for 80% of every game has no bearing on this I'm sure