Result-driven analysis is flawed
Why Argentina vs Saudi Arabia showed us that result should not drive our analysis
It’s the 27th minute of Argentina vs Saudi Arabia. La Albiceleste is winning 1-0 thanks to a penalty kick scored by Lionel Messi. Papu Gomez is driving with the ball centrally without much pressure, he sees Lautaro Martínez’s great and trademark “half moon movement” to attack Saudi Arabia’s defensive line, superb pass by Papu that sends Lautaro in front of the goalkeeper, who gets beaten by a lovely chip shot by El Toro. It’s 2-0 Argentina and nobody is surprised by the result.
However, Argentina was actually facing a more difficult opponent than expected. Saudi Arabia - well coached by Hervé Renard, known both for having won the African Cup with Zambia in 2012 and for being Jaime Lannister’s doppleganger - have caught everyone’s attention for the courage with which they prepared the game: really high defensive line in order to force Argentina offside as many times as possible, in a very Arrigo-Sacchi way.
It worked: Argentina have been caught offside seven times in the first half, more than in their entire 2018 World Cup. Even Lautaro’s 2-0 was offside, since his shoulder was a few millimeters above as you can see in the header. I don’t think it is an exaggeration to believe that the match would have been virtually over after the 2-0. In my opinion, Argentina, aware of their strength thanks also to the 36-games unbeaten streak, would have begun to play with their trademark lightness and quality, while Saudi Arabia would have lost some confidence in their bold gameplan. Nevertheless, we know that football is strange and that all it takes is a tiny micro-event to completely change games, as well as the opinion of fans.
In the second half Saudi Arabia proved themselves by playing 45 minutes on the verge of perfection, especially considering the gap with the opponents and what were the expectations. Within 5 minutes, from the 48th to the 53rd, Renard's team managed first to equalize with Al-Shehri and then even to take the lead with an extraordinary goal by Al-Dawsari.
Despite the lead, Saudi Arabia maintained their gutsy set-up and their very high defense. It's a solution that worked because basically all Argentina's offensive players wanted to receive the ball on their feet; thus, keeping a short, compact and aggressive team on all their receptions allowed them to limit the dangerousness of Scaloni's team. The only striker who was very capable in making runs in-behind was Lautaro Martinez, but he doesn't shine for speed and he’s most effective when he can make those vertical movements just outside the box, exactly like he did in the aforementioned disallowed goal. He struggles when he also has to run for 40-50m before reaching the box.
Argentina lost the match first of all from a mental point of view, suffering the intensity of Saudi Arabia. Renard’s team kept the defensive line high as much as possible, although towards the end of the match they naturally had to play a bit deeper due to the fatigue and Argentina’s all-in.
Let’s be clear: Argentina played quite poorly. They had accustomed us to a totally different kind of gameplay, characterized by a narrow team with great central density to facilitate passing lines and quick combinations between high-quality players, as well as a better structure for counterpressing. Yesterday, they were the opposite: the center of the field was completely empty and they were playing in a sort of 4-0-6. They tried to exploit the space behind Saudi Arabia’s back line with long vertical passes (especially with a simultaneous movement that featured a player in the half space coming deep and the wide player attacking the space, as shown in the image below), but they lacked accuracy.
Besides this idea, Argentina had very few solutions. To better understand how the match unfolded, we can use the Expected Goals. According to Opta, Argentina produced 2.2 xG from 15 shots and Saudi Arabia 0.1 from 3 shots.
What conclusions can we draw? First of all, Argentina were very unlucky; well, yes and no. They did produce quite a bit, but only 0.30 of those xG were from open-play, a testament to the great work done by Renard's team and the bad performance of Scaloni’s. Second of all, one could easily make the argument that Saudi Arabia got pretty lucky. How many times will they score twice when producing so little?
Before this game Argentina were the biggest favorite to win the World Cup alongside to Brazil, and rightly so. As I said before, their unbeaten streak was remarkable and the quality of game expressed that lead team to win the Copa Ámerica 18 months ago was in plain sight. After this game though, it all looks like a mirage: Argentina are bad, Scaloni is an idiot, Messi is finished, Lautaro is overrated, De Paul only looked good at Udinese, etc. Is it so difficult to grasp the shades of gray? Is it so hard to realize that a great team in a competition that tends to downplay merit and exalt the single micro-episode can stumble into a bad day that jeopardizes an entire path?
The same argument can be made for Saudi Arabia. A result-driven analysis only risks downplaying and underestimating even the extraordinary and historic performance of an underdog like them. Their defensive performance have been outstanding from the 1st to the 90th (or rather 114th or something), and we should have defined it that way even at the 27th minute when we thought Argentina had doubled the lead and virtually sealed the game. It’s too easy congratulating after the game is over with the awareness that the unhoped-for result has been achieved. Would we have been able to do the same even if Lautaro's shoulder had been 1 centimeter further back and Argentina had comfortably won the game? What would have we said about Messi's performance if his good shot after just two minutes had not met Al-Owais' super response?
Football thrives on micro-episodes and that's one of the main reasons why is so beautiful and compelling. However, it's necessary to be aware of this when forming our opinion about the events of a game, a competition or even an entire season, otherwise we're just letting the result speak for ourselves.
By the way, for those who are giving up Argentina for dead, remember that Spain lost the first match against Switzerland in 2010 and then won the World Cup. Probably Argentina won’t be so lucky, but this was just the first game.