Is it Easier to score in Spain than England or Germany?

Europe

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I heard a stat the Ronaldo has 21 hat tricks with 20 of them coming in Spain. If true, it must be easier to score in Spain.

Ronaldo didn't score as much in England.

His last 3 years in England he had 66 goals in 101 EPL games. I didn't even count his first 3 years, which were worse than his last 3.
.65 goals a game

all years in England in EPL--84 goals 194 games

.43 goals a game in EPL

In Spain 136 goals in 123 games.
1.11 goals a game

I would like Messi to play in England so we can see how he does in another league. I don't think he would score as much. He also benefits from Iniesta and Xavi at Barca.
 

frederic38

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i don't think that he had the same role in manchester as he has now in real madrid
i remember even in his first season for real madrid he was playing more as an offensive middlefielder/winger
now he is more than that
he is here to score goals now
cristiano ronaldo fans for example remember him at manchester united and say that back then he did more "skill moves", now at real madrid his main role is to score goals


it is a new thing to have players who score this much in the spanish league, it didn't exist before messi and ronaldo
for example van nistelrooy played both in england and spain, and he scored the same amount of goals in both leagues
did the defences change in 6-7 years? i don't think so

it's true that in england there are more teams that can compete for the title, so it has to make it harder to score over a season because you face many teams that are as good as your team


both the english and the spanish league are, however, leagues in which it is easier to score because of the culture or the style
i can compare with france
in france when a team plays away or against a better team, they don't try to attack, they just focus on defense
in england and in spain even the smaller teams try to attack in every match
in france when you ask a coach a question during a match, he usually says the same: "we have to be solid in defense, focus on keeping the ball away from our goal, then if we get one or 2 interesting situations maybe we can think about scoring"

i remember when we talked about pelé, we knew that it was easier to score in the league pelé played in, and it was easy to prove because pelé had way more goals per match in his regional league than he had in national-scale competitions (brazilian championship or similar competitions)
i remember that someone said that this could also be said about messi , but messi scores as many goals per match in champions league as he scores in the spanish league
there are even players who score more in champions league than they score in the spanish league, like benzema for example, who scored his champions league goals against weak teams (the only exeption was manchester city)

the difference for me is that in the premiere league more defensive work is expected from the star players and they don't rely as much on these stars as real madrid and barcelona do
also ronaldo and messi are not the usual striker, they can do much more than score goals, like rooney for example
imagine if rooney at manchester united had similar conditions to ronaldo at madrid: if rooney would take all the free kicks, all the penalty kicks, if he could move freely everywhere around the penalty area without having to worry about defensive tasks, if he could play all the matches, i think that he would have as many goals

another example of this kind of players who can be a striker but also score goals that a striker wouldn't score is ibrahimowicz in PSG, he is not as good as messi and ronaldo but at PSG he's put in similar conditions
in premiere league i can't think of a player who gets these perfect conditions
 

Europe

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i don't think that he had the same role in manchester as he has now in [COLOR=#009900 !important]real madrid[/COLOR]

Didn't Rooney have to play 2nd fiddle to Ronaldo at Manchester?

I wonder what the goals per game are in England vs Spain, especially goals vs the bottom 10 team?
 

frederic38

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Didn't Rooney have to play 2nd fiddle to Ronaldo at Manchester?

maybe, i didn't watch premiere league at the time
from the stats you can see that during the 2007-08 season he started scoring more goals and giving less assists, which means that that year his role was more similar to his role at real madrid now
but even during that season, there were both rooney and tevez as strikers

during the 2008 champions league final for example, both rooney and tevez played
in real madrid, there are benzema and higuain, but they never play at the same time


I wonder what the goals per game are in England vs Spain, especially goals vs the bottom 10 team?

i'm not sure if it would mean anything, what if the forwards playing in spain are better than the ones playing in england?

but you make a good point
in england there are slightly more goals scored per match, but real madrid and barcelona are more dominant and score more goals per match than the top english clubs


here are 2 articles that go your way:

http://futbolisticametrica.blogspot.fr/2011/03/las-cifras-infladas-de-barcelona-y-real.html

http://futbolisticametrica.blogspot.fr/2012/02/los-goles-inutiles-del-real-madrid-y.html

they talk about how cristiano ronaldo's goals and messi's goal scoring tallies are inflated with useless goals against weaker opositions
if you remember, i already talked about the importance of a striker's goals, i mentioned it regarding forlan (who has an unique feature compared with other strikers, he scored more goals against barcelona than against the other la liga teams, and also he almost never scores in friendly matches with uruguay) and also when i compared higuain and benzema, i said that benzema scores more useless goals, while higuain often scores the first goal of a match (i gave the amount of points earnt by benzema and higuain's goals)

i'm going to translate the most significant stats in these articles (the stats are from the first part of the latest season, 2011-12):

*to show that the top spanish teams score a lot and that the others don't, they mention that amongst the teams ranked 5th to last, 88% have a negative goal scoring difference
they also say that half of the teams are 3 victories away from both the champions league places and the relegation (so there are a few teams that win most matches and the rest of the teams are very even)

*real madrid's useless goals: a useless goal is defined as a goal scored when the team is already leading by 2 goals or more

JUGADORuseless goals
(total)
useless goals %age%age of the useless goals of the team%age of the useful goals for the team
CRISTIANO RONALDO 11 (29) 37.9 40.7 34.0
BENZEMA 5 (13) 38.5 18.5 15.1
DI MARIA 3 (5) 60.0 11.1 3.8
HIGUAÃN 2 (14) 14.3 7.4 22.6
CALLEJÓN 2 (4) 50.0 7.4 3.8
KAKÃ 1 (4) 25.0 3.7 5.7
MARCELO 1 (3) 33.3 3.7 3.8
ALTINTOP 1 (1) 100.0 3.7 0
XABI 1 (1) 100.0 3.7 0
TOTAL 27 (80) 33.8 100.0

so 1 goal out of 3 is useless for the team and is only usefull to inflate players stats

you can see that as i pointed out in another thread, benzema's goals are the most useless out of the strikers, while higuain's goals are the most useful ones

*barcelona's useless goals:


JUGADORuseless goals
(total)
useless goals %age%age of the useless goals of the team%age of the useful goals for the team
MESSI13 (28)46.450.034.1
VILLA4 (5)80.015.42.3
ALEXIS2 (8)25.07.713.6
XAVI2 (7)28.67.711.4
ISAAC CUENCA2 (2)100.07.70
ALVES1 (2)50.03.82.3
PUYOL1 (1)100.03.80
P.P.1 (1)
TOTAL26 (70)37.1100.0

almost half of messi's goals are useless


the same can be said about falcao this season: but we might see falcao in premiere league in the future so we will be able to compare

i already mentionned this notion of goal importance with forlan, who's the caricatural example of a player who scores in the biggest matches, the most important goals
this is what i said about him:


to this point, forlan had played 6 years in spain and scored a lot of goals
but even more impressive than his incredible goal-scoring record (120 goals in 208 appearances) are the teams against which he scored these goals
forlan is known as a player who always is at his best in the most important matches
his goal-scoring record for uruguay, with only 5 goals out of 33 that were scored in friendlies, shows it
this comes from a very individualistic approach in the preparation leading to the match, which comes from his years when he played tennis
the teams against which forlan scored the most goals to this point were:
1-athletic bilbao
2-barcelona (10 goals in 9 matches)
this means that when one looks at forlans career, he has to see beyond the incredible goal-scoring record because forlan is even better than that
this is why forlan can challenge players like messi or ronaldo or rooney for the "best player in the world" status
this proves that forlan not only is a very good goal-scorer like the media says, he's actually the best in the world

in premiere league, there are many black strikers who inflate their goal scoring tallies with useless goals
i remember that on quite a few occasions, defoe scored 3, even 4 goals in a match
black striker gomis also did the fastest ever hat trick in champions league against zagreb, and is one of the few to have scored 4 goals in one champions league match, in that infamous match against zagreb, which was either fixed, or extremely one-sided (zagreb didn't have anything to win from that match anyways)
 
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