How Crucial is Possession?

[GG Riva]

I didn`t see Aberdeen v PAOK last night, but I did watch some 6 or 7 mins of highlights this morning. I was amazed to note that they had only 29 % possession during the game but led 2-0 with just over 15 mins to play before their Greek opponents produced a late rally to win 3-2.

Teams losing while dominating possession is nothing new, of course. Jose Mourinho`s teams are notoriously good at winning with low possession stats. Inter Milan knocked Barca out of the CL semi-finals with just 18% in the 2nd leg at the Nou Camp. You would imagine, though, that this is the exception that proves the rule and that teams that dominate possession win far more games than they lose.

There are stats on everything in football nowadays. Can anyone supply stats on the above?

[buspasspar]

[buspasspar]

https://blog.statscore.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/World-cup-finals.png

[buspasspar]

This one for you GG .. Celtic beat Barcelona 2-1 with only 27% possession 

celbar.png

[GG Riva]

With all due respect, BPP, the results of individual games have very little validity when we're trying to establish whether there is a pattern for trend. I asked the same question on dotnet and the most comprehensive answer was posted by parathletic.

"Over a 5 year period in the Champions League the team with most possession won 49.2% of games, drew 22% and lost 28.8%.As the range of difference grew so did the chances of winning."

He/she also added:

"I believe in playing to the strength of your team so it depends on your players.There are other factors like conditions, opponent, result, minutes played etc so horses for courses.
If you have a one dimensional approach it can get you in trouble and you become predictable and easy to play against.It does infuriate me watching teams trying to play from the back who don`t have the capability to do so and end up playing themselves into trouble."

Those of us old enough to remember the dominant Liverpool team established by Bill Shankly and continued by Bob Paisley, Joe Fagin and Kenny Dalglish, will recall that their success stemmed from their ability to keep the ball. Shankly's mantra was that "your opponents can't score if they don't have the ball" and "it's a sin to give the ball away."

[SanguinePar]

6 hours ago, GG Riva said:

Over a 5 year period in the Champions League the team with most possession won 49.2% of games, drew 22% and lost 28.8%.As the range of difference grew so did the chances of winning."

Is that potentially just correlation though? I mean you would expect the best team to have the most possession and also to win more often. Doesn't necessarily show that the possession caused the wins.

Although I do tend to agree that keeping possession is an important factor in winning - it's why I never like hearing people moan about us passing it around the back when doing anything else would likely mean losing the ball. "Just get it forward!!!” - 2 seconds later we've lost the ball.

[Digs]

Possession stats aren't based on time you have the ball, it's based on percentage of the games completed passes. If you stand and pass the ball side to side in your own half your possession stats will go up. It's a bit of a misnomer.

On Saturday our possession stats were poorer than Raiths, but we were the better team for huge parts of the game.