The Most Pressed Player shows which player was put under the most pressure by his opponents. - © DFL/Getty Images/Alexander Scheuber
The Most Pressed Player shows which player was put under the most pressure by his opponents. - © /DFL/Getty Images/Alexander Scheuber

Most Pressed Player: which players were put under the most pressure in 2020/21?

xwhatsappmailcopy-link

In Simon Rolfes, the Bundesliga and its partner AWS have an expert who knows the Bundesliga from A to Z. Bayer 04 Leverkusen's Sporting Director, Rolfes wore Die Werkself's colours 288 times between 2005 and 2015, and represented Germany on 26 occasions. Rolfes is the ideal man to write a regular column for the 'Bundesliga Match Facts Zone' on bundesliga.com, analysing current trends and giving unique insight on the Bundesliga Match Facts.

This week, Simon Rolfes looks at which players were put under the most pressure last season, using the recently added Bundesliga Match Fact 'Most Pressed Player'

By Simon Rolfes

In February, three new Match Facts were introduced in the Bundesliga. Alongside 'Average Position: Trends' and 'Attacking Zones', this also included 'Most Pressed Player'. This real-time statistic is likely to be the least recognised one for armchair fans, since it features rather rarely on the screen.

Watch: Bundesliga Match Fact 'Most Pressed Player' explained

Just to summarise what it is about, the Most Pressed Player is the player who has been put under the most pressure by his opponents whenever he has been in possession. A pressure situation is measured by the number of opponents, their distance from him and the direction in which they are running, when a player is in possession of the ball.

To give a bit more background, on Matchday 33 the Most Pressed Players from the 18 clubs fell within a range of 22 (Augsburg's Marco Richter) and 49 (Dortmund's Jadon Sancho) pressure situations. Some players, in particular substitutes, often come under a lot of pressure, even if they have a single-digit figure of significant pressure situations.

The following table shows which players from the 18 clubs ranked as the 'Most Pressed Player' on the most matchdays.

The Most Pressed Player of each of the 18 Bundesliga clubs - DFL

Augsburg's Daniel Caligiuri, who was the Most Pressed Player 21 times, and Dortmund's Jadon Sancho (17) stand out, while Ritsu Doan of Arminia Bielefeld (16) and Hertha Berlin's Matheus Cunha (15) also rank highly, and there is an interesting link between all four: they are the players who tend to dribble the ball the most, with Sancho, Doan and Cunha actually ranking in the top five across the league for the most dribbles.

So it is quite clear that the quick dribblers, who also pose a serious goalscoring threat, are the players who are singled out most to be put under pressure by their opponents – often with several players pressing at the same time. But there is also another interesting conclusion that can be drawn from this statistic: players with an ability to play a deadly pass are also put under pressure particularly often. Players such as Thomas Müller (Bayern), Filip Kostic (Frankfurt), Dani Olmo (Leipzig), Amine Harit (Schalke), Jean-Paul Boetius (Mainz) and Ondrej Duda (Köln) are not just their team's Most Pressed Player - they are also their best assist providers.

Despite being the Most Pressed Player of Bayern Munich, Thomas Müller was their leading assist provider - DFL/Getty Images/Alexander Scheuber

While with Robert Andrich (Union Berlin), Xaver Schlager (Wolfsburg) and Orel Mangala (Stuttgart) there are still three No6s, and in Stefan Lainer (Gladbach) there is one full-back among the Most Pressed Players, centre forwards and central defenders are conspicuous by their absence. The simple reason for this is that centre forwards do not tend to see all that much of the ball.

For example, when Robert Lewandowski scored a hat-trick against Borussia Mönchengladbach on Matchday 32, the Bayern striker only had 41 phases of possession – the lowest number of all Bayern players who played the full 90 minutes. Central defenders, on the other hand, generally have a comparatively greater number of phases of possession, but they tend to play short passes without much notable pressure from their opponents. This is why it does not surprise me that the five players with the highest total numbers of passes in the Bundesliga (Nico Elvedi, Manuel Akanji, Jonathan Tah, Edmond Tapsoba and Willi Orban) are all central defenders.

In summary: the Most Pressed Player is most often the player who makes the most dribbles or plays the most decisive passes. It makes perfect sense, from the point of view of an opponent, to put pressure on their rival's key players. At the end of the day, they want to nip in the bud any source of danger. This also shows the kind of quality the Most Pressed Players have in order to free themselves from such pressure situations, while at the same time being decisive in many of their team's attacks.

>>>More Bundesliga Match Facts, powered by AWS