The climax of the Champions League’s league stage was so outrageously dramatic that everything that had come before it quickly faded into irrelevance. With all other group games finishing moments earlier, Benfica were 3-2 up against Real Madrid deep into stoppage time, but still needed one more goal to climb into 24th, the final spot for the play-off round.
Up went goalkeeper Anatoliy Trubin, who headed home from Fredrik Aursnes’ free kick to spark scenes of pandemonium that will live long in the memory.
It was a fitting finale to an entertaining league stage. Across the 126 matches, 426 goals were scored, an average of 3.39 per game. Benfica dominated the headlines, but English clubs shaped the sharp end of the table.
Five of the top eight places, which bring direct qualification to the last 16, were filled by Premier League sides. Newcastle were the only English team to miss out, finishing 12th after a 1-1 draw away at Paris Saint-Germain.
Aside from Manchester City, all of those teams are scoring at a higher rate than they do domestically, where the Premier League has been more attritional, with 2.77 goals per game. Newcastle forward Anthony Gordon, who is joint-second for Champions League goal contributions (eight, behind Kylian Mbappe), attributes that contrast to stylistic differences between the two tournaments.
Anthony Gordon speaking before Newcastle’s draw in Paris (Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)
“In the Champions League, teams are much more open. They all try and play. It’s less transitional. In the Premier League, it’s become more physical than I’ve ever known it to be,” he said before the game.
There is some merit to Gordon’s view, which is broadly supported by the data. Champions League matches feature slightly more ball circulation, with an average of 3.7 passes per sequence compared to 3.4 in the Premier League. It stays on the deck longer, too, with long balls accounting for 10.4 per cent of passes, around one percentage point fewer than in the Premier League. Gordon’s point about transitions also holds — Champions League games average 12.1 counter-attacks per match, marginally lower than the Premier League’s 12.3.
These differences are minor, but it is easy to see why Gordon perceives a starker contrast. Matches involving Premier League clubs are a big driver of the competition’s less direct profile. When splitting games by whether English sides are involved, those fixtures are less direct across most metrics, including roughly six fewer long balls per game.
These six Premier League teams have not collectively overhauled their core playing styles for European competition. The chart below shows the changes in each side’s passes per sequence and ‘direct speed’ (how fast the ball is moved upfield) in domestic and Champions League matches. Arsenal become slightly more direct, Newcastle make fewer passes. Meanwhile, Tottenham Hotspur, Chelsea and Manchester City show greater patience in possession. Liverpool’s approach is largely unchanged.
English sides appeared to be involved in the most open matches without ripping up their core tactical identities, serving as a reminder that the Premier League’s perceived devolution into a kick-and-rush brand of direct football has been overstated. The league as a whole is leaning towards a more direct, physical style, but its leading sides remain among the most competent in the world at controlling and dominating games.
Instead, this intensity is layered on top of sound technical fundamentals, and the dominance of Premier League sides suggests the rest of Europe struggles to cope with this potent mix.
“They had more intensity, technique and pace, they occupied the space well, attacked the lines with intensity and speed, the same with the second balls, as they dive into every duel,” said Inter Milan head coach Christian Chivu after Arsenal beat them 3-1 last week.
Arsenal’s domestic opponents are better equipped tactically and physically to deal with that tempo, leading to tighter, lower-scoring affairs. Then there is the conflation of entertainment with quality. Germany’s Bundesliga has boasted a higher goals-per-game average than the Premier League in six of the last seven seasons, but few would argue that its technical quality is higher.
The Champions League’s goal glut reflects the tournament’s uneven landscape (reflected in the chart below). Using its team-strength model, 10 of the 36 group-stage sides are rated by Opta below West Ham United, who sit 18th in the Premier League, inside the relegation places. The defensive fragility of those weaker sides was laid bare in Liverpool’s 6-0 mauling of Azerbaijani side Qarabag on Wednesday night.
Gordon was even more accurate on the Premier League’s greater reliance on set-piece goals. The chart below shows the breakdown of goal types across competitions. The Premier League scores a higher share of goals from corners, 18 per cent compared to 13 per cent in the Champions League, but the starkest difference comes from long throws.
Long throws account for just one per cent of Champions League goals, but are at an all-time high of four per cent in the Premier League. Setting up for long throws slows the game down, and in the Premier League, long throws make up 31 per cent of attacking throw-ins — those taken in the attacking quarter of the pitch — compared to just over 10 per cent in the Champions League.
But tactical developments do not exist in a vacuum. If launched long throws continue to deliver an edge, others across the continent will follow.
In fact, this very competition helped spark the blend of physical and technical excellence now seen across the Premier League. When Bayern Munich’s high-energy approach overwhelmed a technically refined but physically slight Barcelona 7-0 over two legs in the 2012-13 semi-final, it hastened the end of short-passing tiki-taka’s dominance and pushed the game towards a hybrid approach.
The Premier League’s set-piece evolution has taken on slightly pejorative connotations. Yet there were no complaints that a free kick furnished the Champions League with its richest group-stage moment in a generation.