Romania

Busiest man in the opening 15 minutes was Romania’s Petre, who covered a staggering 2010m. In 15 minutes. Take a look at his heat map for where he was plying his trade, and it quickly shows the right wing is being exploited to the full.

The final 10 minutes saw Romania defending for all they were worth, but as the heat map for the Italian attack shows, none of the forward motion is coming from wide. I’m sure if you’ve read anything on this site before, you’ll know that the stats show wide play gets results at the tournament. Look at the map below and it’s clear that the Azzurri are going straight down the middle.

Stats supplied by http://www.castrolindex.com

Scottish Premier League sensation Marius Niculae (who plies his trade at Inverness Caledonian Thistle) has yet to feature heavily at the tournament – he played 23 minutes in Romania’s first match against France – yet he’s causing a stir North of the border. The Caley Thistle Online forum is awash with news of his every move, and they’ve even dedicated their home page to the big fella. In homage to their hero, they’ve even managed to get an email address where you can send him a message during the tournament.

Scotty from the site is well pleased that Marius is involved with the national team, and his devotion has earned his site the inaugural Site of the Day/Week (we really need a better name, suggestions please) Award. He was good enough to take the time to answer a few of our questions, so here’s what he had to say:

Us: Who do you think will win Euro 2008?

Scotty: I will stick my neck out and say Spain. They are normally the bridesmaids but maybe they can do it his time!

Us: Other than Marius (Niculae), who is the best player you’ve seen during the tournament?

Scotty: Unfortunately, living in Toronto [and supporting Caley, crazy! – ed] …I haven’t seen enough coverage to judge fully, but I was impressed by both Pepe and Wes Sneijder in the first set of games.

Us: What does it mean to ICT to have a player gracing the big stage like this?

Scotty: I think you will see from the postings on our message board that it has given our fans a big lift. Because we are a smaller club and fans are not only close to the pitch at the stadium but also bump into players in the town from time to time, it’s like seeing “a mate” on telly. The feeling of goodwill increased hugely when he made the gesture of approaching us and asking about an email address fans could write to so he could respond. Top bloke !!!

For the club its more businesslike I think and it seems they are enjoying the unexpected windfall from UEFA that having a player at a competition like this brings … something like 3 grand a day !!!

Us: Have you heard from Marius since the start of the tournament?

Scotty: A number of fans have had personal responses to emails they sent to him. I am not sure if he has responded to them all or not but he said he would try to respond to as many as he could … obviously preparations for the games have to come first but to even offer to do this in the first place speaks volumes about his feelings towards the fans.

Us: What do you think next season will hold for ICT?

Scotty: Obviously with Marius gracing the Euro stage there is also talk of him going to a bigger club. If we lose him then we will have only 1 striker with SPL experience and he is just a young lad who struggles to find the net. We do have a few promising youngsters who were loaned out to lower league clubs last year but its a big ask to expect them to step up 2 or 3 divisions and instantly make the grade. If next season was a state of mind it would be called “worried” !!!

Look out for Marius Niculae as he faces the might of the Italians, and listen carefully for the cheer coming from the Caley every time he touches the ball.

Stats brought to you by http://www.castrolindex.com

It appears from looking at the CPI stats that there are two dimensions to the midfields of tonight’s ‘must win’ game (are all the matches going to be called this now?) between the bruised World Champions Italy and the frankly dull Romanian team. The first of these is the outstanding workload of the mostly Milan-based midfield, led by the little man that is General Gennaro Gattuso. As ever, he covered more ground than his team mates in an attempt to lift them out of their doldrums following the shock lead taken by the Dutch, and he didn’t stop when the 2^nd and 3^rd went in either. His chums Pirlo and Ambrosini also put in the hard yards but to no avail. Maybe they’ll get more luck against Romania tonight.

But what’s this? A Romanian side unwilling to go forward? That hardly cross the half way line with an attacking intention? Not exactly breaking news, and the stats back it up, showing that Romania were actually the most negative team to play so far, with just 46% of their passes being completed in the opposition’s half. That means that for 54% of the time, they were idly passing it around in their own half. No one is going to win a match like that. And that is where the Italians could catch them. With the boys described above willing to chase down every ball, the negativity of the Romanians could be their downfall as they get caught in possession near their own box. Only time will tell.

Jack reckons a flukey 1-0 will see the Romanians through

Tom thinks that if the Italians lose this one, it’s time to reopen the Coliseum and feed them to the lions. 2-0 Italy.

The stats were provided by http://www.castrolindex.com

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.

The group of death! France set to take on the world. Well, actually it was a fairly disappointing match, but the Romanian defence did their job, with the entire team covering 110,526m… Far more than the French who generated the miserly team total of 104,360m.

Karim Benzema, before he was taken off, was France’s most industrious player, as was Romania’s Cocis. Nicolita took up the mantle, and ended up covering  well over 12km in the match - and it is the Romanian defence that will take all the plaudits. Alan Hansen may have rated it ‘the worst game he has ever seen’, but  as a former steward at Swnasea City, I simply could not agree.

World Cup Blog had it right questioning the French strikeforce, with Ian Rose suggesting “Their first weakness? Scoring. Despite having an incredible array of attacking options that includes Franck Ribery, Nicolas Anelka, Thierry Henry and the young phenom Karim Benzema, the French have struggled lately to score goals from open play.” How right he was!

But fear not - for now we’re on to the most anticipated game of the tournament… Italy vs Holland in 45 minutes. Bring it on!

Apart from a couple of silly bookings, and the odd touch of excitement up the wrong end, France have looked dominant in this game – and quite the hard-working player so far, according to the CPI, has been young Karim Benzema,

The fastest Frenchman on the pitch (topping the speed tables at 26.1kmh) and covering 5,796m over the first 45 minutes – drifting out to the right and attacking the slightly ropey Romanian left back Razvan Rat. Making sure to shift himself up and down the pitch too, you can see that his diagonal runs from left back have threatened somewhat.

He has however been eclipsed by Nicolita whose work rate has been quite phenomenal, at 6,487m. No surprise that Romanian’s defence was very well received statistically during the qualifiers.

For minute-by-minute updates, make sure to pop over to Ole Ole’s Samba Soccer Club right now – it’s the match he’s been waiting for, and I can only hope he’s not too disappointed thus far. He says “France has probably the best midfield and offensive squad of all the team in the competition but so far Romania’s tight defense managed to control Benzema, Ribery, Anelka and Malouda very well” - as the stats show.

For more heat-maps and stats, check out our flickr page, or follow the game live on the CPI.

In a replay of the first game of Euro ’96, France take on the Romanians in what has quite rightly been dubbed the ‘Group Of Death’. One would think that Romania will be the whipping boys of this group, with the French, Italians and Dutch players lining up to punish the back of the net. There might be a surprise in store for any team cocky enough to go into combat with an overconfident swagger, however. According to the qualifying stats, Romania have a canny knack of converting their chances, and are better than the French at doing so. Of their 116 shots during the qualifying campaign (France outdid them with 147), 54% were on target (to France’s 59%). ‘So what?’ I hear you cry, ‘the French win!’ Ah, but if you look at the conversion rate, the Romanians have a much better finishing tally. 22% of their shots found the back of the net, so whilst the French were spraying it extravagantly and having wonder shots, the Romanians were quietly getting on with things and finishing clinically. It is for this reason that during their 12 qualifying matches (the same as the French) they outscored their opponents tonight 26 to 25. Now there’s food for thought.

Talking of scoring goals, who better to feature than one T. Henry, winning his 101^st cap tonight and surely a talismanic figurehead of a side if ever there was one. One would be forgiven for thinking that he is constantly bagging them for Les Bleus, but the media hype might just have clouded the public perception of his scoring prowess. In his 100 previous games, he has scored just 44 times, giving him a goals per game return of 0.44. Compare this to his club form throughout his career when he has been finding the net at a rate of 0.52. So the French might just have to look elsewhere if they want someone to score, especially against the plucky Romanians who I expect to mark Henry off the pitch. If ever there was a cue for someone to score a hat trick, I think that was it.

Tom says 0-0

Jack says 1-0 to Romania!

Thanks again to the CPI for the stats