Samba Magic – Marcelo

marcelo-2013-h1n-net Brazilian footballers are different. They are all of a unique mould. They play the game with a combination of flair and intensity, which makes them so unique. Naturally, this effect is felt by clubs that have Brazilians playing for them as well. Oscar, Neymar, Hulk, Dani Alves – the common theme here is how impactful these Brazilians are to their clubs. It is to no surprise that in Real Madrid’s case too, this holds true. Marcelo is a game changer. I’d go so far as to say he is one of the top two or three most important players in our squad. Playing style & Contribution Everybody is a fan of Marcelo’s playing style.

He is perhaps the best dribbler in the team, along with Di Maria. It is very hard to dispossess him. As a defender he is a nightmare because he not only has the skills to dribble by you, but also has a mean cross which can be dangerous to fellow defenders. If that’s not enough, he makes the team’s most dangerous scorer, even more dangerous. Cristiano plays more centrally these days, but still fancies to drift from the left side of the pitch. Since that is against the natural direction of the wing, sometimes it is difficult for him to do so, as both the right back as well as the centre back target him defensively. This is a tactic most teams use, especially amplified by even Dani Alves and Gerard Pique who at one point of time made Cristiano very frustrated. With Marcelo in the fray for this situation though, everything changes. At the back of the RB’s mind, is now another, very deadly attacking weapon. Catching Marcelo means, CR is one on one and in an advantageous position. Leaving him means a great dribbler and crosser free. Of course, this is an oversimplification, but we can see the framework of just how much he adds to the attack. Correlation between Marcelo playing and results Football statistics can be a wonderful tool if used well. Often there are lazy summaries to fit agenda, but I always prefer it when statistics help you get perspective on something, rather than blindly scream a conclusion. Just by watching, I always get the feeling that we are a much more dangerous team when he is playing rather than when he is not. I also don’t necessarily subscribe to the theory that, he is a defensive liability. I complied a bunch of statistics from the wonderful WhoScored website which I thought was relevant to see how impactful Marcelo is to the team, and whether the numbers agree with my observations. Full disclaimer here that it is probably not a good idea to take just 10 matches into the season as a valid sample set. Lots of factors that skew the statistics, such as us having a new manager and trying to implement a new way of playing. Injuries, opponents, form and several other factors make every match different from another but I’m going to try taking these statistics just as a correlation and not as a causation. marcelo First thing that screams out from this set of data is that our two hiccups in the league came when he wasn’t playing. Does this mean if he played we would have won? Absolutely not, but it is a starting point for perhaps how we played worse then, as we missed one of our most deadly players. If you throw all statistics aside, our team began with progress, and ever since the Villarreal game we’ve been on a downslide. We picked it up against Copenhagen, and also the last few minutes against Levante, and I believe a significant part of it was the presence and absence of Marcelo. From the passes statistic, we can infer that we more or less have had the same passing routine in most games. An average of 563 passes is healthy for a team that wants to try and dictate play. However, how many chances come off this passing is an important statistic as well. You can pass the ball around 900 times but Tiki Taka only worked in its prime because the chances created were proportional as well. There is a correlation between Marcelo playing, and chances being created. 14.5 chances per game during his injury absence and 16 when he plays. It can make a whole lot of difference. Another interesting stat that I thought would be interesting, was something I call as the left side bias. The website gave a wonderful piece of information where it gave a percentage break up of which region our attacks came from (and consequently, which region we were most attacked from).

When Marcelo plays, the average left side bias is 37% where as when he doesn’t it is 40%. Nacho and Arbeloa manned the left back position when he wasn’t available. Now there are multiple ways to interpret this, but I choose this one as it seems more logical than the others. Since Marcelo doesn’t play, defenders focus on centrally, leaving the less impactful left back more free, to do lesser damage. This perhaps reflects in the fact that even though, we had more left side bias, its end product was not good. I’d imagine if we look at the stats of Cristiano, and say Isco (both players who tend to drift more to the left than centre and right) during the games in which Marcelo wasn’t featured, we’d get a pattern of more mistakes, turnovers, and lesser productivity in general. Now that I think back on it, it did co-incide with Isco’s slight drop in form. Cristiano is a machine, and keeps getting his goals, but you can almost sense he is a lot more comfortable when he has the afro on his left side. The pass rank stat is one I came up with, to show how Marcelo is always in the top few people who make the most number of passes in Real Madrid’s matches. The fact that when he starts, and plays well (excluding the Granada match where he had a stinker), he ends up somewhere in the region of Pass Rank 5, in a team that is loaded with attacking potential, is further testament to the fact that he is a vital piece in the team. It is no secret though, that defending is not Marcelo’s best aspect. I wish there was a way to overlap average positions map from each map to find one for the season. What I’m getitng at is that, that map probably will show that Marcelo spends more time in the attacking half than the defending one.

Naturally that leaves more open space for opponents, especially ones that prefer to counter attack, which is practically every team we play nowadays. Does this impact us though? Raw statistics in terms of good plays and mistakes done by Marcelo, as the table suggests, doesn’t paint a bad picture. Marcelo makes up for spacing issues with his tackling and speed of recovery. He can though, be a bit reckless on tackling, but that’s a risk I’m more than happy taking for the tremendous impact he creates up front. Negatives of dependency It is clear just how dependent we can be on our Brazilian. Dependency though, is also a bad thing. Xabi Alonso, two words are all it takes for us to get the significance of that. One way to change the dependency is to have the back up, Coentrao, for instance, play in a similar way as Marcelo. They are not similar players, but they can follow the same outline of the game. Coentrao though, is a strange player to understand. He can, attack as much as Marcelo if he wants to, you only have to look at Portugal’s games to see what he can offer. At Madrid though, he chooses to proactively focus more on defending. Perhaps he feels that is the way he can stand out and win his place in the team. But once you force a mindset like that, it can be bad for the player and eventually the team. Another alternative, that has often been suggested on our boards, is the creation of width on the opposite side of the pitch. Carvajal does a good job creating that.

I believe it was Rahul who suggested it strongly that we must have at least one of the two ‘attacking’ full backs in every game to make sure we don’t stagnate offensively. It is probably not a coincidence that our weakest performances came when both of our wingbacks were of conservative nature, especially considering the logjam that is the opposition teams when they sit back. I suppose at the end of this article you can quite easily say – Tell me something I don’t know. Here it is though, you’ve read 1500 words any way. Give us your opinion on this topic though. Are we too dependent on our Samba magician? Is that a good or a bad thing? How do you reckon we can achieve balance and stability. Just something to keep your football minds occupied as we come out of international break and get back into the club groove of things.