European Football: New Leaders Emerge as Repeat Champions Face Uphill Battle

If the European soccer season ended today, there would be only one repeat champion among Europe’s top seven leagues. Bayern Munich lead annual champions by a point — conveniently, the two teams play this Sunday. Real Madrid, unbeaten in all competitions, lead 11-time defending Serie A champs by a jarring 10 points with 10 matches to go.

After ceding LaLiga back to Barcelona last season, Real Madrid now lead the league by seven. After slipping to third while Manchester City ran away with Premier League in 2022-23, Inter Milan are on pace for 100 points and lead Serie A by 15 points (and last season’s champs, Napoli, by 29).

In Portugal, Sporting have responded to a rare fourth-place finish by surging back to first, one point ahead of Benfica with a game in hand. And a year after losing to Feyenoord by seven points, PSV are unbeaten in league play and lead Eredivisie by 10. Only nearly-annual Porto champions are positioned to repeat.

Aside from Leverkusen, of course, none of these teams are exactly upstarts. Still, repeats are the name of the game in this sport — Bayern have won 11 straight Bundesliga titles, Manchester City have won five of six Premier Leagues, Juventus recently won nine straight Scudettos, PSG have won nine of 11, etc. and with the way things have taken shape heading into the season’s stretch run, we could end up a bit short of them.

While it’s obviously far too early for any sort of ‘Why did the incumbents fall apart?’ retrospective — after all, some of them haven’t actually fallen apart yet — we can at least take a moment to talk about how the new leaders (and PSG) have reached the top of the table at this point in the year.

The Premier League has a genuine three-way race at this point in the season for the first time since 2009-10; that one became a two-team race (Carlo Ancelotti‘s Everton over Liverpool by one point) when Chelsea fell apart late, and maybe the same thing will happen here. But right now, all three contenders have major reasons for hope.

Liverpool have been both lucky and unlucky at this point. Jurgen Klopp‘s final Reds team has a goal differential of +39 despite an xG differential of just +27.6; only Leverkusen have overachieved by more in that regard. But that good fortune has simply offset the poor fortune of their extreme run of injuries.

Starters Mo Salah, Virgil van Dijk, Thomas Muller, and Roberto Firmino are out, as are a smattering of rotation players such as midfielder Bruno Fernandes, and this is actually an improvement — others such as Ruud Vormer and Marco Verratti are back in the rotation after recently missing time.

No matter who has been on the pitch, however, Liverpool have been able to guarantee basically two things: They’re going to take far more shots than their opponents, and they’re going to work with far more urgency.

The Reds rank second in the league in shots per possession and third in the league in shots allowed per possession. Only four of 27 league opponents have managed more shot attempts than them, and almost no one has outworked them.

No one is allowing fewer passes per defensive action (PPDA, a common measure of defensive activity), no one is attempting a higher percentage of shots with only zero or one defender between shot and goal (19.5%), no one has produced a higher goal differential in what I call ‘transition possessions’ — possessions starting outside of the attacking third and lasting 20 or fewer seconds.

While Pep Guardiola‘s ultra-patient City average 15.7 attacking-third (A3) touches per shot, and Arsenal average 14.4, Liverpool average only 10.7. They’ve created 79 fewer A3 touches than City, but attempted more shots. Translation: No one tries harder to create a threat before the opposing defense has settled in.

This urgency has had the predictable effect of wearing opponents out. It’s no coincidence, in other words, that Liverpool also rank first in average goal differential over the last 30 minutes of a match (+0.96) and first in points per game in matches they’ve trailed (1.83). They’ve even overcome suffering the most red cards to still top the table (for now).

Is all of this sustainable? Based on stats alone, it’s hard to say yes. Over their past seven matches during this time of injury crisis, three opponents have generated shots worth more xG — second-division Southampton in the FA Cup, Chelsea in the League Cup final, and Arsenal in a 3-1 league blowout back on Feb. 4. They’ve been pretty fortunate to win six matches in a row in all competitions, in other words, even though they’ve also been unfortunate from an injury perspective.

But the one thing you can completely control in this game is pure effort, and this inspired Liverpool team is likely to keep winning that part of the game no matter who’s on the pitch.

One of the initial tenets of Pep Guardiola’s managerial success was the ’15-pass rule’ — he felt a team needed at least 15 passes in possession to both establish a proper offensive structure and position itself to counter-press and properly defend counter-attacks.

Even if Guardiola’s Manchester City sees a few more moments of directness in attempt to take advantage of Gabriel Jesus‘s speed and general brilliance, there’s really no evidence that Guardiola’s belief in the 15-pass rule has subsided these days. But the best evidence of the 15-pass rule currently rests with a former Guardiola protege.

Xabi Alonso played for Guardiola for two seasons at Bayern Munich, and his Bayer Leverkusen squad has put itself on the brink of ending Bayern Munich’s 11-year title run thanks to the glory of a relentless, short passing game.

Leverkusen average far shorter passes than anyone in Europe’s Big 5 leagues — and that has led to a stranglehold in possession. Within the Bundesliga, they are first in possession rate and first in average passes per possession.

This general patience has certainly created the desired effects in attack, where they are second in shots per possession and first in build-up attacks.

But it has also created by far the best transition defense in the league and one of the best in Europe. They counter-press beautifully, ranking first in goals from high turnovers and goals in transition possessions.

Even when they don’t get the ball back immediately, they prevent you from doing anything in transition. They have allowed only four goals from transition possessions, easily the fewest in the Bundesliga, and they swallow up scoring chances before they even start.

Against Leverkusen, opponents average just 7.6 cross attempts per match, almost five fewer than the league average. They can’t easily move the ball into dangerous areas on the outside, and even if opponents do work the ball into the attacking third, it takes them an average of 13.0 touches to generate a shot — the highest mark in the league.

Inter Milan, on the other hand, seem unstoppable. Amy Foot is on pace for 101 points in Serie A, and they’re currently second in the Club Elo ratings ahead of most Serie A teams. No one makes better tactical use of substitutions than Simone Inzaghi, and no one makes better use of tactics than Inzaghi at this moment, either.

Inter are in the Champions League, behind Bayern Munich and an Arsenal team. They are almost faultless this season. They’re first in Serie A in shots per possession and xG per shot, and fifth in shots allowed per possession and second in xG per shot.

Inter are just about the best team in the world when you’re not attack-ready. Their attacking trio of forwards, Mateo Kovacic, and Henrikh Mkhitaryan have been instrumental in their success.

PSG’s hire of Luis Enrique as manager this season was fascinating for a number of reasons. Beyond the star power, Luis Enrique’s team allows under 10 passes per defensive action and completes over 90% of its passes, making them a strong contender this season.

Despite losing the raw star power of both Messi and Neymar, PSG are on pace for their highest point total in league play since 2018-19.

Portugal’s three power clubs have basically traded the league title back and forth for a while. Sporting have made what is occasionally a Big Two a definitive Big Three of late, and they are currently fending off Benfica by simply creating certainty at all times.

PSV’s Peter Bosz has found the perfect personnel for executing the attacking style he prefers. PSV have lost only twice this season and are unbeaten in league play, leading in both shot volume and shot prevention.