Alright, so today I figured I’d finally get my hands dirty comparing some stats for that Barcelona versus Real Sociedad match. You know how it is – my mate Pedro was going on and on about Barcelona’s performance after the game, and I wanted to see the actual numbers myself before adding my two cents.
Getting Started: Where’s the Data?
First things first, I needed the raw numbers. Hit up a couple of the usual football stats websites I trust. Had to poke around a bit – some sites show you nice summaries but hide the detailed breakdown unless you pay, which I absolutely will not do for this little project!
Landed on one site that had a decent, free breakdown of player stats, possession, shots, the whole shebang. Took a few tries refreshing because the page was acting a bit slow, might have been my Wi-Fi playing up again.
Dealing with the Mess
Copied the stats tables straight off the website. Pasted them into my plain text editor first. Big mistake! It all looked kinda messy – tabs all over the place, some numbers stuck together. Took ages just tidying it up manually, separating the numbers into proper columns I could actually use.
Playing with Spreadsheets
Opened up my spreadsheet software. Made two separate sheets – one for Barcelona, one for Real Sociedad. Pasted the cleaned-up stats into each.
- Player Names: Had to double-check spellings. Some accents got mangled, had to fix those.
- Shots on Target / Off Target: Always interesting to see who was actually threatening.
- Passes Completed: This one takes a while to scan through.
- Tackles & Interceptions: Shows the dirty work, you know?
Honestly, just typing all those numbers felt like it took forever. Nearly gave up halfway through, but powered through with a strong cup of coffee!
Trying to Make Some Sense (and Charts!)
Once I had everything plugged in, I started playing around with the numbers. Added up the team totals for shots, possession percentage (thankfully the site gave that directly!), pass completion rates. Then I tried to spot anything interesting.
- Barca obviously had way more possession, like, a lot more. Expected that.
- But the shots? They had more, sure, but the accuracy didn’t look that much better than Sociedad.
- Key passes? That surprised me – Sociedad wasn’t far behind, seemed like they countered well.
Then I got ambitious and tried to make some simple bar charts right there in the spreadsheet. Possession comparison? Easy bar chart. Shots on Target? Another one. For the player stats though, it looked way too cluttered, so I gave up on individual player charts quickly.
What Stood Out (The “So What?” Bit)
Spent a good while just staring at the numbers, flicking between the teams’ sheets. The thing that jumped out?
- Possession didn’t equal danger. Barca had the ball loads, Sociedad was mostly sitting back, obviously. But those Sociedad counter stats? They had fewer passes overall, but actually managed more dangerous moments per attack than I initially thought.
- Also, looking at fouls. Barca got fouled way more, meaning Sociedad was breaking things up a lot.
Kinda backed up what I felt watching the highlights later – Barca controlled it, sure, but Sociedad had their moments and looked sharp when they broke forward.
Final Thoughts & The Pedro Problem
So, in the end, crunching the numbers myself was worth the hassle. It wasn’t just about who had the ball all game. You really need to see what they did with it, and how the other team reacted. The stats showed Sociedad defending pretty effectively and hitting back when they could.
Called Pedro back and told him: “Mate, you were right Barca dominated the ball, but Sociedad weren’t just parking the bus hoping for a draw, they actually played their counters pretty well! Have a look at these shot efficiency stats!”
He sounded impressed I bothered to look it up. Mostly I’m just glad I actually stuck with copying all that data – felt like proper detective work, even if it was tedious! Next time maybe I’ll find a better way to scrape the initial data… that manual copy/paste/correct step is the absolute worst.
Oh, and turns out I got the exact match date wrong when I first told Pedro which game I was looking at! Total facepalm moment. Had to double-check the fixture list again before finalizing the stats! Rookie mistake!