Soccer Analysis

Having Valencia back amongst Real Madrid, Barcelona, and Atletico Madrid adds another layer of nuance to La Liga. We haven't seen a good Valencia side in the social media era as Atleti have taken over the role as the alternative to the top-2. Read more »

Franck Ribery and Arjen Robben were the most impactful winger duo in European football for the past decade. But beyond the numbers was how they shaped the way Bayern played from tradition. Read more »

Bernardo Silva may simultaneously be City's most creative player and their most industrious. Read more »

Fullbacks have been perceived as the most valuable position on the field for over a decade, with their importance as box to box players relied upon to attack and defend symbolized through record-breaking transfer fees. Yet no team in Europe relies upon their fullbacks for creativity in the final third more than Liverpool. Read more »

The Champions League switched from being a glamour trophy to the single defining symbol of a side's season. Nowhere is that more true than Paris Saint-Germain. Read more »

There is no full accounting for Lionel Messi, but the players around him-they can be found out more easily than Barcelona's record suggests. Read more »

There are three distinct traits that showcase how seamlessly Luka Jovic's goalscoring ability could fit in the modern European game: inside the box goals, the late-running nature of those goals and the number of first touch goals. Read more »

Singular matches decided by a moment or mistake adds to the mystique of the Champions League, however incompatible it may be with Pep Guardiola's thinking. Read more »

How not to get left behind in European soccer without outside investment, when spending over a billion dollars on a new stadium offers no guarantees of success, is one of the many paradoxes of the modern game. Read more »

This match showed off the best of Bayern: their pace, attacking, pressure, and mentality and obsession to dominate matches for 90 minutes without any break. Read more »

Roberto De Zerbi is in his critically-acclaimed independent phase of his career. What he loses or gains when he moves to the Hollywood stage remains to be seen, but that’s also a story we’ve seen before. Read more »

Gregg Berhalter's style promotes movement, spacing, and pressing. And considering his affinity for explanation, plus the way we devour information online, perhaps he'll further progress another generation of tacticians as well. Read more »

That was not only one of the best Milan derbies in recent memory, that will surely be one of the matches of the season. Read more »

If last season was about clubs signing young South American talent, then this season presents the other side of that equation. Yet there is a tension between player development and building a cohesive, competitive side. Read more »

Ambitious jersey deals are just one example of how the internet is reshaping the footballing world. Likewise, the deal also gives Puma the opportunity to tap into the CFG network as a player would. Read more »

The advantage of being the biggest club in the world is that when all else fails, you can afford to be spectacularly unsubtle, remake the shape of an entire squad in the span of a single summer. Read more »

The mentality and pestilence brought on by instability looks to set Chelsea into a culture of short booms like Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte initially experienced, followed by an inevitable decline regardless of the manager. Read more »

How can two teams searching for continuity feel so different? Even with Ernesto Valverde more successful from a trophy standpoint last season, his signing feels like an existential acceptance that Messi must carry the team. Read more »

In the end, the most important aspect of style is having one, to look like you're trying to do something a specific way, and succeeding. Liverpool and Atleti had styles in their UCL matches this week against Bayern and Juventus. Read more »

That Gasperini is finding success at this relatively late age shows there are foundational truths of the game, about pressure and fitness, regardless of the current tactical moment. Read more »