These players fly, by Joan Golobart

What a game we saw yesterday. Two teams developing the most modern version of football. Some footballers who have a complex when one remembers who he was and what football was played many years ago. Most of them are technically prodigious footballers, athletes who are true athletes capable of doing very long routes and also at extreme intensity. The truth is I don’t know where we are going to go and what consequences all this may have on the physique of these players. But if football for many years has had great tactical development coupled with training methods to internalize the fundamentals of tactics, in recent years the improvement in physical preparation is leading players to fly. Furthermore, if before it was difficult for a footballer to improve his performance from the age of 27, now you come across two center forwards like Kane and Lewandowski, who well into their thirties show the best football of their lives. There are many statistical values ​​that can show why one team is superior to another. Perhaps the most common is ball possession, perhaps because it is the easiest to appreciate, but there are many more.

One, for example, is taking over the divided balls. If a team is much superior to the other in that aspect, it is very rare that they do not win. There is another one that I really like, which is the kilometers traveled by the players. When a team covers many meters and also does so with similar values ​​among all its members, it demonstrates great power. In the end, the result of this fact is that in all attacking plays the ball holder finds solutions from his teammates. And the same in defensive plays, all rivals find someone in the way obstructing the play or covering spaces in interior passes.

Yesterday Bayern covered 62 km in the first half, a figure that should guarantee you winning any game and it is clear that this was not the case. But the Barcelona players accumulated 65 km, a figure that is difficult to digest, an almost impossible figure, I say almost because Barcelona achieved it. And think about how intensely the meters traveled were. How can you do so many meters with such intensity and at the same time carry out all the technical registration actions, and finish asphyxiated with surgical precision. What great players. Well, nothing, just rub your hands hoping that the classic also shows this football modernity.

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