“It is unwise to draw firm conclusions about your Premier League team in the early weeks of the season. While it might be premature to spot any statistical trends, that doesn’t stop us from identifying some fun quirks that have stood out. As luck would have it, each of the five teams in question finished outside the top five positions in the Premier League last season. Don’t you love the symmetry? From West Ham United’s woes to Fulham’s flanks and a word from the xG gods, let’s dive in: feast your eyes on five tactical takeaways from the first five weekends. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)
Daily Archives: September 26, 2024
Tactical Fouls in the Brasileirão

“Tactical fouls are a polemic subject within football. Many view them as a valid defensive resource but there are plenty more who see them as a cynical exploitation of the rules. … There are various ways to define a tactical foul, but for the purposes of this article the definition will be: fouls committed within five seconds of an open-play turnover. It’s an approximation, but I’ve checked it against video and it seems to cover the large majority of situations that could be classified as tactical fouls. …”
StatsBomb
Germany: 2024-25 Bundesliga – Location-map, with 3 Charts…
“The map page shows a location-map for the 18 clubs in the 2024-25 Bundesliga, with recently promoted and relegated teams noted. (Promoted in 2024: FC St. Pauli, Holstein Kiel; relegated in 2024: FC Köln, Darmstadt.) The map also shows the 16 Federal States of Germany, and the 14 largest cities in Germany, with 2021 population estimates listed at the the top of the map. …”
Bill Sports Maps
W – 2024–25 Bundesliga
The Rise of Hungary and the Carpathian Brigade
Hungary’s ‘Carpathian Brigade’ before a recent game against Bulgaria
“As a Hungarian, who is infatuated with the national team, growing up in the late naughties and early 2010’s, I was not exactly accustomed to seeing my beloved reds represent the country of roughly 10 million people, at a national tournament. Let alone three consecutive tournaments. As a matter of fact, none of us Hungarians, who were alive between 1986 and 2016, were used to seeing the ‘Mighty Magyars’ on the TV, whenever the World Cup was on. In the aforementioned timeframe, the team failed to qualify for a single international tournament. This meant, that, back then, if you were Hungarian, and an avid follower of football, like such a big chunk of this nation’s population happens to be, you had to settle for a different nation’s team, come the World Cup or the Euros. …”
Football Paradise (Sep. 10, 2024)
NY Times/The Athletic: Hungary, Viktor Orban and the weaponisation of a national football team (June 13, 2024)
