Leicester City’s triumph in the English Premier League, Atletico Madrid winning in 2014 and breaking Real Madrid and Barcelona’s 10-year duopoly over the La Liga, and more recently Iceland’s performance at Euro 2016 have been instances of the underdog fashioning improbable victories against wealthier and more illustrious competitors. These victories have showcased several similar threads: there has been a return of pragmatism over possession, ruggedness over style, team ethic over individual brilliance and each triumph has been an occasion where the manager has laid emphasis on efficiency rather than accuracy.
Rise of the underdog
For an insight into the rise of the underdog, a good place to start is Euro 2016. There were 36 matches in the group stage and 15 in the knockout stages of this tournament, making it the largest edition to date. In the group stages itself, in only eight (less than a quarter) of the matches did the bigger team (higher FIFA rank) actually win the game. Similarly, in the knockout (KO) stages, this number was only five (one-third). If we take into account extra-time and penalties, i.e. for matches over 90 minutes it rose to nine. Over the entire tournament, only 17 of the 51 matches ended with the bigger team winning. This number (let’s call it underdog percentage) seemed to be exceptionally high and if we look through the results of the previous two major tournaments, World Cup 2014 and Euro 2012, to check if there was a similar pattern, we find that this percentage is indeed much larger for Euro 2016.
In the World Cup 2014, even with the number one team in the world (Spain) losing two out of three matches, the underdog percentage was barely at 30% (35% for the group stages, and a paltry 13% for the KO games). The percentage rose to 45% for Euro 2012 (50% and 29%), but both these numbers were still short of the alarming ones for this year’s tournament (78% and 40%).
How are lower ranked teams suddenly performing better? This transition has been more gradual than meets the eye.
A pragmatic turn
When one thinks of great national teams like Brazil, the term o joga bonito is often something that is synonymous with them for the joy, the beauty and the sheer joie de vivre of their play. This has become a stereotype, but similar feelings emerge when one thinks of Barcelona and the tika-taka style that they pioneered for several years with dominance both on and off the pitch by inspiring legions of new fans. These teams had similar characteristic feints, short passes, tricks, plenty of possession and plenty of goals. However even among such teams there has been plenty of debate about whether futebol arte versus futebol forca should be adopted to ensure sustained success. Arguably many advocates maintain that Brazil’s more recent successes at the World Cup in 1994 and 2002 were in fact where they developed the latter approach, one which placed an emphasis on functionality and sturdiness.
If we are to look at data from Leicester City and Atletico Madrid’s performances in their title-winning seasons, we will see that there was a certain style to their play.
The table below indicates that these teams were, above all else, tough defensive units. This can be inferred by the fact that they were ranked very highly in terms of tackles made per game, number of interceptions converted, fewest goals conceded and number of shots allowed.
These statistics also indicate that Claudio Ranieri and Diego Simeone recognised two things given the individual limitations of their players: Firstly, neither could play the same game as their title rivals i.e. possession based football (ranked 18th and ninth) with high passing accuracy (ranked 19th and ninth), and secondly that the team needed to be brutally effective on counter-attack (ranked second and fourth respectively).
For the Leicester 2015-'2016 team, we can find an equivalent in Iceland at the Euros. Iceland had the lowest possession percentage (36%) and the second lowest passing accuracy (75%) of any of the teams at the Euros. But since they took most of their chances – scoring the fourth-highest goals per game (1.6) even though they ranked third-lowest for attempts per game (8) – they were comfortably able to close out games.
This need for efficiency over flamboyance was also reflected by Portugal’s manger Santos, who stated that, "It does not matter to us whether it is spectacular or not. Sometimes you play in an unspectacular way and you win. Other times you play very spectacularly and you lose."
His pragmatism seems to have been an emerging trend amongst other teams at Euro 2016, where four of the quarter-finalists were among the 10 teams with the lowest percentage of possession overall.
These teams clearly show that the best way to achieve results is through ruthless efficiency in front of goal, strong team spirit and keeping it solid at the back. This analysis provides some clues on how to define pragmatism and this new form of play. It involves allowing the opposition a lot of possession, counter-attacking and transitioning very quickly, conceding very few goals and having defensive solidity.
Is pragmatism worth emulating?
The success of Leicester, Atletico, and the minnows at Euro 2016 were heartening victories that won them admirers across the world. This is because by positioning themselves as underdogs, they were able to drive a narrative that built up their humble origins and their challenges to triumph against the odds. A team with a budget the fraction of the Manchester clubs, another with less than half the budget of Real Madrid and Barcelona, presented a compelling reason for the neutral to back them and it was this inequality that both Ranieri and Simeone exploited when they defrayed expectations around their teams and triumphed in their respective leagues. This was also similar with Iceland, as essentially a team built around furious team ethic inspired by a siege mentality, where the manager repeatedly downplayed expectations.
The adoption of a pragmatic approach is not new to football. Jose Mourinho and Rafa Benitez have long adopted an approach that places success and functionality over flamboyance. It is an approach that infuriates the purists as both found out at Real Madrid, but it is one that continuously brings them successes and new appointments. If it doesn’t go right though, even a long contract and a huge monetary loss for the club (Chesea and Real Madrid) cannot save your job.
That Antonio Conte, another exponent of this school, has succeeded in getting the Chelsea job even when Roman Abramovich has long desired for a fluency in his teams and that Mourinho has taken over Manchester United, long admired for their swashbuckling football, indicates that football as a results-oriented business is taking precedence over an industry obsessed with style. Pep Guardiola knows this better than most. Despite reinventing how Bayern Munich played their football, his loss to Simeone’s pragmatic Atletico Madrid last year is bound to leave a lasting impression on his legacy at the club.
With these methods and strategies being adopted by teams in almost every competition, how do we classify a team as an underdog? With so-called “smaller” teams achieving success on a more frequent basis, are their stories becoming more commonplace? Will we see fewer teams trying to pass their way out of trouble and simply defend deep and hit on the counter? Will we see more pragmatic managers like Mourinho and Conte and less total football themed mangers like Arsene Wenger and Louis Van Gaal? Only time will tell, and it makes for an exciting next few seasons of football.
(Jayant is currently working as a data scientist and is a realistic Gooner, while Siddharth works as a lawyer with Justice Adda and is an unrealistic Scouser.)