The data that makes Real Madrid's face fall with shame

BarcelonaWhile Kylian Mbappé justified running and pressing less than Raphinha or Ousmane Dembélé because he scores "more goals" than them, Lamine Yamal, in a public appearance at the press conference prior to the Barça-Feyenoord Champions League match, or Karim Adeyemi, in an interview with this newspaper, stated that attackers must also run. "We all have to run. If you don't run, you don't win," said the winger from Rocafonda. "We know what we have to do, and if we do it all together we are, as I have said, unstoppable, both with the ball and without it. Hansi wants this from us, so we give it our all, also in the press," assessed the German sprinter.

From affirmations to sensations and, also, to the data. While Barça is seen as a well-worked, choral, and hardworking team that has started the season like a thunderbolt and seems to be the team to beat in all of Europe, José Mourinho's Real Madrid leaves many doubts and has already lost two matches (against Betis and Atlético de Madrid), while also failing to convince in some victories: they struggled to overcome Inter Milan and saved the day against Espanyol and Elche in the final minutes.

But it is not only that Hansi Flick's Barça seems like a more worked and committed team, it is that the data also supports it. The whites are the team that runs the fewest kilometers in the entire League, according to the data collected by the specialized portal Sofascore after the dispute of the first seven matchdays. Mourinho's team has an average of 96.5 km covered per match. This places it, always according to the data from this recognized data platform, as the last of the 20 teams in the championship and well below Barça: Flick's team covers an average of 104.6 km per match.

The championship average, according to Sofascore, is around 102 km per match -Elche, with 105.6 km, is the team that covers the most- and, regarding the number of sprints per match, the blue and reds also expose the whites: 143 per match for Barça compared to 99 for Real Madrid. If the comparative analysis is extended to the five major leagues in Europe, of the 96 teams that make up the League, the Premier League, the Bundesliga, Ligue 1 and Serie A, Mourinho's team occupies the 94th position in the ranking. Only the Italians Cagliari and Frosinone, according to the Cope network, run less than Real Madrid.