Borussia Dortmund





Bench: Sebastian Kehl (134.3), Kevin Großkreutz (127.4), Moritz Leitner (114.8), Nuri Sahin (126.9), Felipe Santana (117.9), Mitchell Langerak (115.8), Julian Schieber (115.7)

Real Madrid

1st leg Goalimpact Betfair Dortmund 34,4% 35,0% x 28,0% 28,0% Real 37,6% 37,1%

2nd leg Goalimpact Betfair Real 58,4% 54,0% x 23,9% 22,8% Dortmund 17,8% 23,2%

This year's Champions League brings us a German-Spanish semi-final. The second team in Bundesliga, Borussia Dortmund, will play against the second team of Primera Division, Real Madrid. The teams met already in the group phase and the aggregate of these two games was won by Dortmund. Let's look at the current statistics.The long injured Mats Hummels returned just in time to win Dortmund's victory against Malaga in the quarter final's last seconds and it is save to assume that he will play against Madrid too if he is fit. The starting XI may look like this.Just how important the return of Hummels is can be seen in the following chart. Here I don't report the normal career-average Goalimpact numbers as in the lineup above, but the rolling 1y Goalimpact. This number is more noisy and less able to differentiate between the players because they tend to be on the field all together most of the time, but it can give a feeling of the current form of each player.Mats Hummels, Neven Subotic and Marcel Schmelzer improved their Goalimpact more or less in parallel the last years. However, Lukasz Piszczek and - most significantly - Felipe Santana don't have the same world-class Goalimpact. With them, even if taking only the recent history into account, Borussia Dortmund performs worse. Santana will be identified as the weak spot by Mourinho in no time. His performance was not only weaker, it was also more unstable. So don't interpret Malaga's two goals against the BVB as general weakness of Dortmund's defense. It will be much better with Hummels. An he will certainly add to the attack play with precise passes, too.From the perspective of Goalimpact, the good thing about midfielders and strikers is that they are substituted more often and are not every week in the initial lineup. Therefore, it is much easier to distinguish the performance of them. In the following chart, you will see that the lines nearly move independently from each other.We can see why in the rematch against Malaga it was Bender and Gündogan playing on the defensive midfield. Nuri Sahin's career average is higher than Bender's but he was not performing as good lately and seems out of shape. (side note: Sahin's peak above 200 should not be stressed too much. It's an average over few game minutes only.)The star in Dortmund's midfield is clearly Ilkay Gündogan. He's 1Y-Goalimpact is only slightly higher than Bender's but he is much younger and still seems to be on an exponential rise. Bender, in contrast, hardly improved his play in the last two years.Dortmund has an impressive attack. Only Lewandowski, Götze and Reus have a high profile, but the others are not worse at all.All have an 1Y rolling Goalimpact between 150 and 170. If Klopp selects the staring XI according to last years average form, Großkreuz, Lewandowski, Götze and Schieber will play. But it is more likely that he will choose Kuba and Reus instead of Großkreuz and the young Schieber. Anyway, the downside risk of suspensions and injuries is lower in here than in the defense and midfield. I dare to predict, that Lewandowski's goodbye at the end of the season will have less negative impact than many seem to assume.Jose Mourinho can also choose freely from all his players. Only Arbeloa will miss the first leg due to a yellow card suspension.Bench: Pepe (157.2), Marcelo (158.7), Gonzalo Higuai­n (150.6), Luka Modric (127.4), Kaka (169.0), Jose Callejon (114.1), Adan (132.2)Yellow-card suspension: Arbeloa (161.5, first leg)Real Madrid had some excellent performance at the end of last season with Ramos peaking at a staggering 1Y-Goalimpact of 260. However, they failed to defy gravity thereafter and regressed towards their career average, the normal Goalimpact. It is fair to say, that Real Madrid's defense seems out of form, but they still now how to play very well. That said, I see Dortmund's defense slightly better. But they should watch out for Essien who apparently plays as excellent as ever nowadays.Given the way Dortmund plays with a lot of pressing, the fight for the control of the midfield can be the key battle of the game.Given the importance of the midfield, it is bad news for Real Madrid that also Xabi Alonso couldn't maintain his stratospheric 1Y-Goalimpact of 320 that he had last summer. Khedira still performs as usual though and Luka Modric seems to seek new heights. This may also be the reason why Modric played at the side of Khedira some games lately.In general, Real Madrid's midfield is superior to Dortmund's. But it depends heavily on the form of Xabi Alonso and this is not pointing upwards.The shining star of Real Madrid's forwards is of course Christiano Ronaldo. But the others also perform and by no means need to hide of shame.We see that CR7 is performing as good as ever. Unlike Xabi Alonso and Ramos, his 1Y-Goalimpact didn't drop too much from last summer's heights. Key-pass machine Mesut Özil also kept his high rating of a 1Y-Goalimpact just above 200. Di Maria, Hinguain and Benzema are all also world-class . Each of them would be for sure in Dortmund's starting XI if he'd play for their side. But the biggest suprise for me when looking at Madrid's players is Kaka. I have no clue why he doesn't play more often given his high impact whenever he is on the field. There is actually no difference in the last years to Christiano Ronaldo.Real Madrid is the favorite in this tie. However, two key players, namely Ramos and Xabi Alonso, are out of form and may perform worse than they did in the past, but still they look better than their peers in Dortmund. Real's excellent forwards will cause certainly problems to Dortmund also their defense is also excellent. Dortmund's advantage is that they are due to their system less dependent on single players.In total Goalimpact's prediction is roughly in line with the betting markets. If anything it is slightly more optimistic that Real will advance.