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Ekon Ayo is a fullback defender in the SSL academy S25 class. New to the league, Ekon wants to grow into a defensive specialist for his club, but he doesn’t yet have a good sense for how he should prioritize his development to get there. Over this series of articles, he learns the defensive behaviors that he should replicate to maximize value at his position.

Part 1 outlines the defensive stats
Part 2 analyzes the defender roles on the pitch
Part 3 considers broader team success
Part 4 dives deeper into center backs
Part 5 identifies role model fullbacks for Ekon
Part 6 focuses on wing backs
Part 7 appreciates defensive midfielders
Part 8 looks at differences in the minor league

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PART 1
A LOOK AT THE STATS

There is one thing that should be made clear from the start: evaluating individual defensive performance is not a straightforward numbers exercise in soccer. Although a defender can certainly make plays that get recorded in the box score, and these plays are important individual victories in a match, the box score results don’t tell the full story of a defender’s value to their team. For example, a defender’s ability to disturb the pace, positioning, and decision-making of an opponent is an extremely valuable contribution towards the team’s control of the match, but it won’t necessarily show up in their stats unless it meets the specific criteria for a press. These are the limitations of traditional event tracking – there just aren’t enough stats to quantify all the indirect ways a defender impacts an offensive possession.

However, despite their deficiencies, the stats that do get recorded are still useful as a starting place for understanding the behavior and value of defenders. After all, a defender with no impact plays probably doesn’t have the physicality, spatial awareness, and concentration that make a good all-around defender on the pitch.

The SSL index records the following individual defensive plays:

A clearance is an action on the ball that removes it from a dangerous situation and temporarily alleviates attacking pressure on the goal.
A block is a deflection of a pass, cross, or shot attempt that disrupts the offensive action but doesn’t win possession.
An interception is a play into the line of an opponent’s pass that cuts the ball off before it reaches the target player and wins possession.
A tackle is a direct physical attempt to take the ball away from an opponent, which may or may not win possession of the ball.
A press is a strategic action that involves limiting an attacker's time and space in an attempt to force a bad decision, errant pass, or other defensive outcome without making direct contact with the ball or the player, which may or may not successfully dispossess the opponent.

One important technique for properly analyzing individual defensive stats is accounting for time of play. A defender should be judged by the rate at which they make plays, which depends on how many minutes they play. A common adjustment is “per 90”, which divides the stat totals by minutes played and scales up to a 90-minute match.

The rate at which defenders make plays also depends on how possession is split in a match. The less a team possesses the ball, the more chances their defense has to make defensive actions against their opponent, but losing the possession battle is itself a sign of poor defensive performance. Without adjustment for possession, these defenders would have over-inflated stats and appear on the surface to be more productive defenders than those on better defenses. Ideally, averages per 90 should be further adjusted by normalizing them to a balanced 50% opponent time of possession. These stats might be designated as “per opp 45” to indicate that the stats have been adjusted to 45 minutes of opponent possession. For instance, a player that wins 6 tackles in a match where the opponent had only 35 minutes of possession would have 7.7 “tackles won per opp 45”. Making this additional adjustment does start to lose the interpretability of the results, though (not to mention that opponent time of possession isn’t something readily available in the SSL statistics index), so traditional per 90 measures may suffice with the acknowledgement that they might be biased by team performance.

The distribution of a player’s defensive stats across the different types of plays provides some insight into the style and activity of the defender – and of the defensive unit as a whole. Logging more interceptions and blocks but fewer presses may indicate a less aggressive style of play that prioritizes effective positioning between attackers. Having a higher number of attempted tackles and clearances might correspond to a more risky and reactive approach, and in some cases this may be a signal of defensive struggle rather than defensive strength. Abundance of defensive plays can correlate with good defense, but more doesn’t always mean better.

In short, there is no formula for calculating defensive value. Defensive value comes from the defender performing consistently with their role, not performing to maximize their box score.

Continue to Part 2: Performing for a Role