Most of us are familiar with the old adage “defense wins championships.” It’s a notion that applies to virtually any sport involving a team of players chasing after a ball and trying to score with said ball. While offense is sexier and gets the lion’s share of the headlines and accolades, oftentimes it’s the defensive players who put their teams in position to realize success in getting the scoreboard to register in their favor.

Soccer is no different. Listen to the commentators for any match and the analyst commonly refers to “build-up play.” Even more specific to this is the concept of “building from the back.” What exactly are they getting at and how does it tie into the defensive side of the game?

Essentially, this refers to involving all the positional elements, defenders, midfielders, forwards, even the goalkeeper, in the distribution required to cycle the ball into the attacking third. This collective team effort requires a combination of technical passing ability and effective movement to find space. When this happens, chances get created, shots cascade towards the opposing net, and goals are eventually scored.

But in order for all of this to be possible, one must be able to win the ball from the opposition. I believe it’s an under-appreciated skill in the modern game. And it’s something that’s a lot easier to statistically analyze nowadays. The analytics firm Opta does a tremendous job tracking a boatload of on-field data from soccer leagues all over the world, including Major League Soccer.

And that brings us to the focal point of what will be analyzed in this piece. How do we use the data provided by Opta as a means of evaluating the effectiveness of MLS defensive players’ ability to dispossess opposing players of the ball? Does having players who grade highly in these kinds of evaluations help make teams contenders?

Our analysis will be centered on a metric known as usage rate.

Evaluating the MLS D-Mid with Usage Rates

For the uninitiated, it might make sense to explain what the heck usage rates are trying to track. We’re looking at a given player’s contribution to a particular statistic as a percentage of the team’s total over 90 minutes. In this case, we’re going to be using three stats related to defensive work and combining them to come up with a comprehensive usage rate relating to ball-winning effectiveness.

Those three stats are recoveries, interceptions and tackles. In my opinion, these are the most important sets of data in being able to evaluate overall defensive acumen. All three do well in putting together an accurate snapshot of a player’s grit, determination, work rate and soccer IQ when it comes to winning the ball.

Nowhere is the amalgamation of these qualities more evident than in the role of the defensive midfielder. It’s that position, more than any, which is the veritable engine of the squad. There also tend to be two varieties of this position and sometimes both of them can be on the field at the same time, particularly in a 4-2-3-1 formation.

The first of these is the number six. This is a more withdrawn, holding midfielder who’s primarily tasked with protecting the back four. He does this by attempting to prevent opposing attackers’ attempts to run directly at the defenders behind him. This involves a great deal of industrious defensive work and these players routinely lead field players in touches and distribution as well.

The second variation of a defensive midfielder is known as a number eight. Similar to a six, it’s common for these types of players to be very busy defensively and have a high percentage of touches and passes. The only difference is that a number eight is much more free to push up into the attack when need be. It’s a reason that another term for this particular role is “box-to-box midfielder.”

Not surprisingly, these types of players will commonly lead their respective teams in recoveries, interceptions and tackles. By extension, we should expect their defensive usage rates to be among the top in the league. If we take a look at the raw data, it turns out this conclusion is warranted.

The first thing we need to do in order to arrive at individual player usage rates is to calculate the team totals for these three defensive actions per 90 minutes of play. It’s from there that we can then look at how much the top players contribute to these stats. For the sake of this study, the cumulative stats from the 2015 MLS regular season will be considered.

Those findings can be seen in the following few charts. The first one shows the top teams in the league for each of the three stats we’re interested in. We then add these together to come up with a comprehensive metric which we’ll term recovery+interception+tackles per 90 (RIT/90). This data was compiled using the website Whoscored.com as well as Opta chalkboards from the MLS website since Whoscored doesn’t track recoveries.

As mentioned, adding these three together gives us what we need to evaluate the top ball-winning players on each of these teams.

The final thing required to calculate usage rates is to find out each player’s contribution to their team total per game. This individual RIT/90 metric is calculated using the following formula.

RIT/90 = R + I + T/ (M/90)

where R is recoveries, I is interceptions, T is tackles and M is total minutes played. That number becomes the numerator in a formula where the team total RIT/90 is the denominator. The result of that simple division problem is the player RIT usage rate and is expressed as a percentage.

(Player RIT/90) / (Team RIT/90) = RIT usage rate

You can see the team leaders in RIT usage rate in the following chart, with their RIT/90 also included. Players must have appeared in at least 60 percent of their team’s minutes to make it onto this list.

Seven of the top ten players on this list operate in that defensive midfield role for their respective sides. So this data certainly underscores how important such a player is in a team’s tactical setup. A good d-mid shoulders the responsibility of doing the dirty work in central midfield, on the edge of the defensive third, and even further up the park when employing a high line. Through reading the movement and passing tendencies of the opposition as well as sheer out and out physicality at times, this type of player is crucial to getting the build-up play started that creates chances downfield.

Is having exceptional defensive midfield play the be-all end-all when it comes to contending for MLS titles? Not necessarily. After all, last year’s two MLS Cup finalists, Columbus and Portland, finished bottom quarter of the league in recoveries, interceptions and tackles per game. Nevertheless, Tony Tchani’s exceptional play in 2015 got him called up to the USMNT where he played in both recent friendlies with Canada and Iceland. And Alvas Powell has been a regular contributor at international level for Jamaica.

Still, the New York Red Bulls led the league in two of these defensive actions per game. Team captain Dax McCarty finished third league-wide in RIT/90 and fourth in usage rate. His team won the Supporters’ Shield and came fairly close to an MLS Cup appearance themselves.

And of the top 12 teams in recoveries, interceptions and tackles per game, eight qualified for the playoffs.

There are various pieces to the overall tactical puzzle on a soccer pitch essential to a team’s success. Having a talented striker with an eye for goal and clinical finishing ability certainly helps. But he doesn’t get the ball unless the players behind him do their part. Today’s deeper analytics enable us to quantify how valuable these players are.

And for us stat geeks, it makes the game that much more appealing to watch, analyze, write about and discuss.

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