The numbers behind SC Magdeburg’s success
Throughout the course of the EHF Champions League Women and the Machineseeker EHF Champions League, data analyst Julian Rux provides the handball community with deep insights into the numbers behind the game, analysing what the data says about teams’ and players’ performances. A look at the numbers behind SC Magdeburg’s success wraps up the season.
Usually, it’s the statistically best teams over the season, or at least the best teams in offence or defence, that win the Machineseeker EHF Champions League or the EHF Champions League Women. For example, last year’s champions Barça had the best defence, as did Györi Audi ETO KC in the past two seasons.
To do these comparisons on both sides of the court, opponent and possession-adjusted metrics represent the best and fairest way. On the one hand, the adjustment for pace, or rather the number of possessions played, is necessary because the raw number of goals is not only influenced by efficiency, but also by the number of possessions (whether a team and their opponents play fast or slow), which nevertheless is no indicator of quality.
On the other hand, not all teams played against the same opponents and there are differences in the quality of the sides, especially in the knockout stage. This adjustment is done by calculating how many goals conceded per 50 possessions (as one game has roughly 50 possessions per team) would be expected for each game and team by the number of goals the opponents scored and conceded per 50 possessions in their other games. The so-called “garbage time”, the final minutes of a game that is already decided, is also filtered out. To obtain the final adjusted rating, the differences to the actual goals scored and conceded can then be added to the goals scored or conceded per 50 possessions.
However, neither SC Magdeburg’s offensive or defensive metrics place them among the best. In attack, 29.2 opponent-adjusted goals per 50 possessions ranks them as the fourth-best attack of the season, while opponent-adjusted 27.5 goals conceded per 50 possessions is only just the sixth-best.
The power of belief
However, what these numbers do not reflect is the fact that Magdeburg have undergone a significant transformation since the start of the season. Before March, they won just five out of 13 games, or 0.84 points per game, but since then they had just one draw, in the first leg of the quarter-finals against One Veszprém HC, and won all the other six matches. That’s 1.86 points per game.
Adjusted for the opponent's strength, their offence improved at the same time from 28.3 goals per 50 possessions to 30.1, which places them second, behind Berlin over the season. Their defence improved from opponent-adjusted 28.3 goals conceded to 27.4, which ranks them sixth.
So, in the end, SCM were in top form at the right time, which is the most important thing in a competition with a knockout stage like the Machineseeker EHF Champions League. They were there when it mattered the most, especially in the important minutes, the crunch time.
Crunch time is defined as the last six minutes of a match if the gap between the two teams is two goals or less at least once and as long as it’s not the previously mentioned “garbage time”. Here, no team was nearly as good this season as Magdeburg. Extrapolated to 50 possessions, they scored 10.8 more goals than their opponents, with the second-best team, OTP Bank - PICK Szeged, not even half as good. In the press conference after the semi-final win against Barça, head coach Bennet Wiegert spoke about “belief” being his team’s driving force and these numbers show exactly that.
Similarities and differences
In the final, SC Magdeburg played against a team they knew extremely well and that plays in some ways very similar to them, but Berlin are still different in some regards. One of the big similarities is their shot selection in positional attack, as both are known to avoid distance shots as much as possible. In the German Bundesliga, their shot distance is 6.4 (Magdeburg) and 6.5 (Berlin), the second and fourth-shortest. Unfortunately, this data is not available for the Machineseeker EHF Champions League, but they should not deviate too much from that.
One big difference in their style of play, which also played a big factor in the final, was the pace. Berlin had the second-fastest matches with 55.2 possessions per game this season, while Magdeburg ranked second to last with 50.2. The length of Füchse’s possessions was just 30.2 seconds, the fastest, while Magdeburg ranked 13th with seven seconds more per possession.
In the final, Magdeburg found their rhythm perfectly as their possessions were 38.0 seconds long, just marginally longer than their average. They were also able to convert this into slightly above-average 31.4 goals per 50 possessions.
In fact, Füchse were almost exactly seven seconds faster with 30.8 seconds per possession, but 52 possessions per team was the second-lowest of the season for them. With that, they were missing their usual efficiency and 25.0 goals per 50 possessions was their second-worst performance of the season. Over the whole season, they have the best shooting percentage with 68.9, but in the final they had their worst performance of the season by far, with 54.2 per cent. Magdeburg’s back player Felix Claar summarised that, saying: “We controlled the pace of the game, more than anything else.”
SCM’s defence in general was strong, but goalkeeper Sergey Hernandez stood out with a save percentage of 42.9, his second-best of the season. Going into the final, goalkeeping was maybe the biggest advantage Magdeburg had, as they ranked third in saves with 30.4 per cent, compared to Berlin’s 27.6 per cent, which was just 11th best. And it showed: excluding seven-metre penalty throws, Hernandez saved 45.0 per cent, Magdeburg’s tied season best.
