A brand new model has been developed which includes four main criteria for league success: international activity of players, their league experience, squad stability and the quality of signings. This latter factor was not included in models used for the two previous seasons.

The combination of all these elements suggests that the following clubs have the best chances of finishing in the top three positions of the rankings. Clubs in bold have the highest probability of winning their respective league.

England:
Manchester City, Manchester United, Arsenal

Spain:
Barcelona, Real Madrid, Atlético Madrid

Germany:
Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, Schalke 04

Italy:
Juventus, Milan, Napoli

France:
Paris St-Germain, Lille, Olympique de Marseille

Our predictions also distinguish between clubs expected to finish in the top half of the league and teams expected to finish in the bottom part of the table. For both groups, we have identified a club per league with a high probability of performing better than expected, such as whether to finish in the top three (Chelsea, Valencia, Stuttgart, Inter Milan, and Olympique Lyonnais) or in the top half (West Bromwich, Getafe, Hamburger SV, Parma, and Lorient).

The complete predictions are available to download for free on the CIES Football Observatory website.

Week by week throughout the season, you will find on our website the updated comparison between the rank expected and actually achieved by all clubs as well as the average rank gap for each league. The best results last season were recorded in Italy and Germany (on average 3.2 ranks of difference between predictions and reality), while the worst was registered in Spain (4.3). The goal for this year is to have an average gap lower than 4 in all the leagues.

We kindly invite you to send us your questions, remarks or suggestions at football.observatory@cies.ch. We wish you an enjoyable season and, of course, may your favourite team perform better than we have forecasted!

Our first paper is already accessible by clicking here. It deals with the issue of player turnover at big-five league level, by comparing strategies followed by clubs according to their results for last season. This allows us to highlight best practices in this area.

More in-depth findings on this subject and further analysis on the key success factors both from a squad make up and pitch performance perspective will be published mid-August in the seventh edition of the CIES Football Observatory Annual Review.

The specific section on player pitch performance is already available by pre-ordering the full study. For more information, please refer to our website or write to football.observatory@cies.ch.

The “Player pitch Performance” chapter allows interested parties to access essential information prior to the opening of the summer transfer window. It notably includes rankings which highlight the best performing footballers when compared to their team-mates. This data is particularly useful in identifying relatively unknown players as potential future signings.

The CIES Football Observatory Annual Review is a 96-page must-have publication for understanding the logics of success in the five major European leagues. Using a novel “demo-technic” approach, the CIES Football Observatory academic team carefully combine the study of players’ demographic profile with their on-pitch performances both at an individual and collective level.

The six chapters that make up this key reference publication cover the following areas: player selection and turnover; age structure and club experience; mobility and contracts; club pitch performance and player pitch performance. An excerpt of the last year report may be downloaded for free from our website.

To order or for further information, please contact us at: football.observatory@cies.ch

An article (in French) presenting Euro 2012 teams’ strength is to be found at the following address.

The Football Observatory also publishes daily statistics on the Swiss radio and television’s -Radio Télévision Suisse (RTS)- official website.

Other recently published articles are accessible on the web: Football Analytics and Successful Recruitment and Understanding European Football.

CIES Football Observatory’s rankings classify players according to their pitch productivity per minute played in the following areas of the game: shooting, chance creation, take on, distribution and recovery. For the general index, each indicator was weighted according to the strength of the correlation with points achieved by clubs at the end of the season.

Aggregated at team level, all of the Football Observatory indicators are significantly correlated to club results for all leagues and seasons. This ensures their relevance and objectivity. Player pitch statistics are provided by our partner company Opta.

Other big-5 league gold medal winners for the 2011-2012 season are as follows:

Cristiano Ronaldo (Real Madrid CF) for shooting

Mesut Özil (Real Madrid CF) for chance creation

Franck Ribéry (FC Bayern München) for take on

Xavi Hernández (FC Barcelona) for distribution

Arturo Vidal (Juventus FC) for recovery

At league level, the Most Productive Players (general index) were as follows:

Lionel Messi (Spain)

David Silva (England)

Andrea Pirlo (Italy)

Franck Ribéry (Germany)

Anderson Nenê (France)

Lionel Messi is also the Football Observatory’s most decorated player of the season. In total, he achieves two gold, three silver and one bronze medal. Other multi award winners are Franck Ribéry, Andrea Pirlo, Cristiano Ronaldo, Xavi Hernández and Mathieu Valbuena (4 medals each).

The complete list of the CIES Football Observatory medal winners can be found in the special edition of our Big-5 Weekly Post, which is available for free download on our website.

Annual Review pre-ordering

Further analysis will be presented in August, when the CIES Football Observatory will publish the 7th edition of its Annual Review. The electronic version of the specific section on player performance will be already available by mid-June. This will allow interested parties accessing this essential information prior to the opening of the summer transfer window.

The player performance section notably includes rankings which highlight the best performing footballers when compared to their team-mates. This is particularly useful to identify relatively unknown potential signings. The whole section can be obtained by pre-ordering the full CIES Football Observatory’s Annual Review at a cost of ?299 + postage.

To order or for further information, please contact us at: ootball.observatory@cies.ch

Champions

Contrary to 2010/11, when three out of the five champions were correctly forecast, this ratio was 0% for the 2011/12 season. However, the final appraisal is not completely negative. Indeed, three forecasted champions finished 2nd (Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Paris St Germain). From the expected champions, the true disappointments came from Inter Milan (6th) and Champions League winner Chelsea FC (6th).
Moreover, three league champions out of five belonged to a narrow circle of “three-star” teams, for which our model had detected a concrete possibility of winning the title (Manchester City, Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund). Another league winner, Juventus FC, was also forecast to finish on the podium (3th place), while the remaining one, Montpellier HSC, was indicated as a possible surprise team.

Top Three

Our model forecast 10 of the 15 teams that finished the season on the podium in their respective championship. Moreover, two out of the five remaining teams are among those whose quality of play during the two preceding seasons convinced us to classify them as possible surprise teams: Montpellier and Arsenal. This confirms the relevance of pitch performance indicators developed by the CIES Football Observatory on the basis of data provided by our partner company Opta.
Ultimately, only Schalke 04, Valencia CF and Udinese Calcio have confounded our predictions by finishing third. With the exception of Chelsea FC and Inter FC, no team that was predicted to finish on the podium finished lower than fifth place (Olympique Lyonnais 4th, Málaga CF 4th, Bayer Leverkusen 5th).

Most positive and negative gaps

The most positive negative gap between rank estimated and finally achieved was for the Spanish side Villarreal CF (-13 ranks compared to our prediction), followed by three other “two-star” teams that could not avoid relegation: AJ Auxerre (-12), Bolton Wanderers (-9) and Wolverhampton Wanderers (-9).
Conversely, the most positive gaps were for “one-star” teams Levante UD (+13 ranks compared to our prediction), Borussia Mönchengladbach (+11), FC Parma (+11, which was considered as a possible surprise team) and Newcastle United (+10).
For more information, click here

Conclusion

From a prediction perspective, this appraisal shows that the statistical analysis of the demographic profile of teams at the start of the season provides valuable projections. However, it also indicates that numerous other factors, some of which are impossible to forecast and measure, should be taken into account to help determine more accurately winning teams.
While aware of the evident limits of the purely statistical procedures followed, we will continue working to improve our models – and continue to enjoy the project as we follow and analyse this fascinating game!

The CIES Football Observatory is pleased to inform you that a new edition of the Big-5 Weekly Post is available to download for free on our website. The latest issue considers the subject of big-5 league experience (average number of matches in the big-5 during career for players fielded).

Highest / lowest big-5 league experience, per league (last week-end)

English Premier League 143 / Spanish Liga 115

Highest / lowest big-5 league experience, per club (last week-end)

Milan AC (ITA) 285 / Norwich City (ENG) 24

Best players, general index (last week-end)

ENG: Y. Touré (Man. City) / ESP: A. Cejudo (Osasuna) / FRA: Nenê (Paris St. Germain) / ITA: C. Seedorf (Milan AC)

Chelsea FC, who lost in the 2008 final to Manchester United on penalties, and Bayern Munich, who were defeated by Inter Milan in 2010, will return to the biggest stage in club football for what will be a fascinating encounter. Both teams include numerous players who have participated in previous finals and both teams have battled against the odds to reach this stage of the tournament.

The CIES Football Observatory has analysed the two teams and can now present an exclusive identikit using three demographic and three technical indicators which are mainly linked to results. Each indicator is presented comparatively with the value of 100 for the team with the highest score. Our calculations are made on the basis of all matches played this year in the Champions League. Pitch performance indicators have been developed using data supplied by our partners Opta.

Chelsea FC shows greater Champions League experience and squad stability. However, this contrasts with Bayern Munich’s greater pitch performance levels in all areas of the game (attacking, distribution and defending) and recent national A-team activity for its squad members.

Our data indicate that Bayern Munich should win the final. The German side has also the advantage to playing at their home stadium. Interestingly, however, in 1984 AS Roma had also the opportunity to become champions at home but was defeated by Liverpool FC. It should be noted, though, that the last time the Champions League final was played in Munich a German club did win the competition with Borussia Dortmund the winners in 1997.

The today Big-5 Weekly Post is also available. Sign up to receive our e-news and periodic alerts from the home page (bottom left) of our website.

The latest issue of the Big-5 Weekly Post presents data on the best performing footballers for April in each of the five major European championships. All the results are available to download for free from the CIES Football Observatory website.

Rankings are established according to five exclusive key performance indicators identified by the CIES Football Observatory on the basis of raw data provided by our partner company Opta. The indicators cover the following areas of play: open play shot, chance creation, take on, distribution and recovery.

Significantly, all of the indicators aggregated at team level are positively correlated to club results for each league and season. Only footballers who have played at least 50% of championship minutes in April are included in the rankings.

Best players, general index (April)

Big-5: L. Messi (Barcelona) / ENG: C. Tévez (Man. City) / ESP: L. Messi (Barcelona) / FRA: A. Traoré (Auxerre) / GER: I. Periši? (B. Dortmund) / ITA: A. Pirlo (Juventus)

The address eurofootplayers.org is now redirected to this domain. This change reflects the recent and ongoing diversification of activities beyond football within the context of the broader CIES Observatory project.

The official launching of the latter will take place on the 2nd of May at the headquarters of the International Centre for Sports Studies (CIES) in Neuchâtel. On this occasion, the first ever International Basketball Migration Report will be presented.

Football lovers can rest assured as the Football section of the CIES Observatory will keep on growing and the contents of the website football-observatory.com will also be continuously developed in the weeks, months and years to come!

It should be noted, however, that only a small gap in pitch performance has been recorded by the Observatory for both fixtures and that the results in the two semi-finals are far from certain. As the exclusive Football Observatory performance indicators reveal, the general team productivity of FC Barcelona is only 11.1% greater than that of Chelsea FC, with the latter team showing significantly greater defensive strengths.

The other semi-final between Real Madrid and Bayern Munich is even more delicately balanced with the productivity of the Spanish side only 1.1% greater than that of the high flying German team. As Dr Raffaele Poli, Head of the CIES Football Observatory, notes, “This particular fixture is more likely to be decided by unpredictable events such as the injury to a key player, on pitch errors or various refereeing decisions.”

For more detailed statistics and analysis, please visit the CIES Football Observatory website or email us at eurofootplayers@cies.ch

If you would like to receive our weekly email alerts concerning the Big-5 Weekly Post, we kindly invite you filling in the registration form at the bottom left of the home page of our website.

You can also follow the CIES on twitter at: www.twitter.com/sportCIES

According to our general performance measurement index from the Champions League group stage, the only surprising outcome of the round of 16 was the elimination of French side Olympique Lyonnais by APOEL Nicosia.

The application of the same methodology for the forthcoming quarter finals suggests that the most evenly balanced fixture is that between FC Bayern München and Olympique de Marseille. Indeed, the general team productivity of the former club is only 13.7% greater than that of the latter one. The performance gap is 20.9% between Chelsea FC and SL Benfica, 21.6% between FC Barcelona and Milan AC, and up to 43.6% between Real Madrid and APOEL Nicosia.

More detailed statistics and analysis can be found on the CIES Football Observatory website at www.eurofootplayers.org