Benzema:
65 Touches
1/3 Dribbles
3 Shots
3/6 Duels Won
1 Big Chance Missed

Messi:
107 Touches
13/15 Dribbles
10 Shots
18/23 Duels Won

It’s an algorithm, Benz played ST & Messi CAM, so stats are weighted differently.
Don’t focus on those generic overall scores anyway

[A Thread] https://twitter.com/greatwhite_9/status/1322773618141536258

It seems a basic human instinct to want a score on everything.

That’s why ppl stamp scores (usually out of 10) on their reviews. Be it entertainment, sports or anything. It seems like it doesn’t matter how the score was achieved, just the number is important (like in school lol)

In football, the bar is always set differently & most of the time there isn’t really a middle ground.

E.g. if a Premier League team wins 6-0 in the Carabao Cup against a team from League Two & the PL striker does what he wants & scores 4 goals, he’ll get a 10/10 for the match

If said striker then plays a game in the PL, in which the manager sets his team up defensively & he plays a disciplined game without doing a ton with the ball, thus executing the game plan to perfection & maybe even scoring the game-winning 1-0, he’ll only get a 7.2 or something

That’s why I adore the ratings from L'Équipe who only give 10/10s if the performance was legendary (6/10 is a good performance for them).

On most other sites, ratings 1-6.9 are meaningless, as the general consensus is that anything below a 7/10 means that the performance was bad

In football overall scores don’t really make a ton of sense. Especially if they are created by automated algorithms, as most of the time different players in different teams under different managers are never instructed to do the same thing, even if they play in the same position

Marc Cucurella (playing under the extremely conservative Bordalás for Getafe) plays as a left midfielder / winger.

But his job is to press, win the ball, hold the defensive shape & do a ton of off the ball movement. (Stuff that doesn’t really show up on most basic stat sites)

Even tho he does exactly what’s asked from him (& most of the time even a lot more, also offensively). That’s also the reason why he doesn’t really get a lot of goals & assists, hence his ratings are pretty average most of the time, which most definitely doesn’t pass the eye test

How can Cucu be judged by the same algorithm & metrics as a player like Mikel Oyarzabal, who also plays as a left midfielder / winger, but for Sociedad? He is pretty much exclusively asked to score & create goals, often not offering a great deal in terms of defensive contribution

Both are obviously fantastic players, but most Gameweeks Oyarzabal will receive a higher rating on pretty much every stat site because of his goals & assists.
Even tho it all depends so much on the manager, system, tactics, team, teammates & simply the style of the player himself

This (natural) bias to overrate goal involvements is also something Philipp Lahm mentioned in his book when he talked about newspapers grading Full-Backs: The FUll-Back can have a fantastic game but will be graded as average, only if he manages an assist, the grade will go up

One game, a Full-Back can put in 10 inch-perfect crosses, but if the striker fails to convert any of them, BILD will only give him a 3.

Another game, he’ll deliver 1 decent cross, but the striker converts it, so BILD will give him a 2.

(For BILD, 1 is the best & 6 is the worst)

Automated rating sites are slightly better in this regard, as sites like SofaScore take those crosses into account as Key Passes.

Overall, people read far too much into scores / grades.
Imo, if you want to use stats, look at the individual metrics & not only at the overall grade