Analyzing Defender Value by Role (Part 8)

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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 8
PARALLELS ACROSS LEAGUES

All of the previous articles in this series have analyzed the defensive behaviors of players in the major league.  The major league is the stage for the SSL’s top talent, but young developing stars also showcase great skill in the minor league.  What ways do minor league defenders match the performance of the major league?  Where do they fall short?

Minor league clubs run a similar set of defensive formations as the major league.  Based on the last matchday of S23, 8 teams run a 2 center back formation with 2 fullbacks and somewhere between 1 and 3 defensive midfielders.  The other 4 teams (Seoul, Cairo City, Paris, Montreal) deploy 3 center backs with 2 defensive midfielders and up to 2 wing backs.

Part 2 of this series plotted the average defensive stats by role in the major league.  The radar plot below is the corresponding plot for the minor league, where each axis is normalized to the max value across all minor league outfielders that lined up in a defensive position last season (27 CBs, 16 FBs, 7 WBs, 24 DMs).



Looking first at the ways the different defensive positions support each other and how defensive plays get distributed across the team, the minor league is very similar to the major league.  Center backs still lead the disruption categories while fullbacks and wing backs dominate the aggression and dispossession actions.  There are some differences: in the minor league, defensive midfielders adopt a larger pressing responsibility, outside defenders have slightly declined production in blocks and clearances, and center backs make a lower portion of the team’s tackles.  However, these are all just slight adjustments that may be the result of the specific outcome of S23 rather than fundamental differences between leagues.

Comparing the actual stats per 90 across the leagues, other differences emerge.  Overall, minor league defenders produce fewer blocks per 90 minutes.  Average blocks per 90 in the major league were 2.5, 1.0, and 0.8 for center backs, fullbacks, and wing backs respectively; all marks were down to 2.1, 0.8, and 0.6 in the minors.  Minor league outside defenders were also worse at creating interceptions, logging only an average of 2.4 per 90 compared to 2.9 in the major league.  These skills rely on good defensive feel for the game, which may still be developing in minor league players.

On the insides, center backs and defensive midfielders average more clearances in the minor league: average clearances per 90 in S23 were up from 1.9 to 2.4 for center backs and 1.1 to 1.3 between major and minor leagues.  This might indicate that more activity takes place in the center of the pitch in the minors, which may be a difference in tactics between the leagues, or that central defenders in the minor league don’t yet have the skillset to dispossess an opponent and instead rely on clearance actions to alleviate offensive pressure.

Despite the subtle differences between league, defensive value is the same: value is role-dependent at its core, with no standard formula for success.  Defenders simply use their physical and tactical skills to make offenses uncomfortable at every turn.