Castrol Performance Index ambassador Arsene Wenger has been speaking about the tournament in general, and what the CPI can tell us about certain aspects of the games we have seen.

He reckons a big part of the reason that the games have been quite under par has been the psychological pressure that the players are under not to lose, leaving them a ‘little apprehensive’ about committing too much to the game or throwing their force forwards and conceding on the break. The ‘mental pressure’ of having ‘the weight of a country on their shoulders’ is obviously telling, but the Arsenal manager has had a look at the CPI stats, and has found some interesting points to show it isn’t all just in the mind.

He noticed that Croatia collectively covered 105km in their game with Austria, and commented that in the Champions League and Premier League he’d expect to see a figure around 115-125 km. He didn’t put the lack of work rate down to the players being tired after long domestic seasons though, more that they haven’t played for 3 or 4 weeks and ‘can’t sustain the pace of a top level game’. He expects distances and pace to improve as the tournament goes on.

As far as the France – Romania games goes, Wenger saw that the French were frustrated by the deep defending of their opponents, who didn’t ‘leave any space behind them’ for Les Bleus to attack. As the Romanian defence’s heat map below shows they certainly were packing the central area in and around the edge of the penalty area, which ultimately succeeded as a strategy and frustrated the French no end.

What Wenger has noticed is a change of tactics once a team goes ahead. ‘Holland scored first and Italy had to take more chances’, which resulted in them leaving themselves open at the back. He ended with a stark warning for any team that concedes in the tournament – ‘84% of the time [he’s talking in general], the team that scores first wins the big games’. Certainly true of the games so far in Euro 2008, so let’s see if this pattern continues through the tournament.