Alex Ferguson once said that it’s defence that brings titles: who are the best defensive players in 1. SNL? (STATISTICS)

“Attacking brings wins, defending brings titles“, said Sir Alex Ferguson years ago, the legendary Scot who won everything there was to win with Manchester United. And an ace like that probably already knows a thing or two about football, doesn’t he? What do the statistics say about our defence? Who are the best defensive-minded players in the
Telemach First League
?

We will leave the goalkeepers out for the moment and rely solely on the midfielders. We will try to answer the question through six statistical categories. But before we dig into the bare numbers, it should be said that such comparisons are often very ungrateful. Players play for different numbers of minutes and with different roles on the green.

Teams with fewer possessions defend more, which is why their defenders score higher than teams that attack more. To at least try to put everything on the same denominator, we will look at all the statistics in the graphs in terms of 90 minutes played. That is, if a player successfully intercepts one ball in 30 minutes, he hypothetically intercepts 3 balls in 90 minutes, even though he may actually play less than 90 minutes. Such data mapping can sometimes produce surprising results.

Defence duels

A defensive duel is any situation where a player directly stops an opposing player who is in an attacking action. However, the stopping must not be an offence.

Gašper Jovan (Aluminij) had the most defensive rebounds in 129 games this season, followed by Mark Španring (Bravo) with 124. If we convert these matches to 90 minutes, the ranking is as follows:

The best is Maribor’s Ignacio Guerrico, who hasn’t played much for the Styrian giant lately. The other is Ognjen Gnjatić from
Radomlje
. The latter is one of the best players in Radomlje this year. Olimpija’s Ahmet Muhamedbegovic has the best defensive rebound percentage, winning almost 80% of his defensive rebounds.

Intercepted balls

In modern football, or football with a high number of passes, it is normal that more passes are intercepted. An intercepted ball is any ball won by a player during an opponent’s pass, shot or pass. A blocked shot also counts towards the intercepted ball statistics. Vicko Ševelj (Radomlje) intercepted the most, 123, followed by his evergreen teammate Uroš Korun with 103. They are also the only two players in the league to intercept more than 100 balls.

In terms of intercepted passes/90 min, Domžale’s Jan Đapo is the top player, intercepting 8 balls per game. Aleksandar Zeljković of Aluminium is not far behind (8.14).

Air duels

An aerial duel is any action where at least two football players jump into the air to knock the ball into their possession.

Matej Poplatnik from Bravo participated in the most aerial duels. In total, he went into 140 fights. Alumini’s Bamba Susso (103) is second and Alumini’s Tin Martić (95) third. In terms of 90 minutes, Poplatnik is again far ahead (10.67), followed by Susso (9.48) and Nejc Gradišar from Rogaška (9.46).

The most successful is Damjan Vuklišević from Celje. The latter wins 8 out of 10 duels, followed by his teammate Klemen Nemanič (75.5%) and Sven Šoštarič Karič from Maribor, who wins 65% of all aerial duels.

Blocked shots

Any shot blocked by players (except the goalkeeper) is recorded as a blocked shot.

Most shots prevented by Olimpija Marcel Ratnik (22), followed by Aleksandar Zeljković (14) of Aluminij and Maj Mittendorfer of Koper (13). Zeljković is ahead of Ratnik in the 90 minutes, as he played much less minutes than the young Olimpija defender.

Unblocked progressive passes

A progressive pass is any pass that reaches a player successfully and brings the attacking team relatively close to the opposing goal. A strict definition is a little more complex, so a little superficially we could say that these are depth feed-forwards. Such passes are often very fatal for defenders or defensive players. Unblocked progressive passes are basically passes that go past the defensive player’s zone.

Most of these passes went past Danijel Šturm (Domžale), 147. He is followed by Brava’s Jakoslav Stanković (124) and Mura’ s Almin Kurtović with 117 assists that went past him.

According to the 90 minutes, most of the passes went past two of Olimpija’s offensive players. More than 10 pass Nemanja Motika and 10 pass Mark Brest. Understandable in its own way, because the job of offensive players is not exactly to defend thoroughly.

Offences

Thalisson of Rogaška committed the most fouls (30), Sandro Jovanović of Alumini committed one less. Tin Martić (27) of Alumini is the third most fouled player and the only one with 6 yellow cards in the league. Thalisson is in the lead after 90 minutes, ahead of Agustin Doffo of Olimpija.

8 exclusions have been shown so far. No player has been sent off twice. Maribor (Lorber, Bozic) and Mura (Jurišić, Sadriu) have the most suspensions.

If we look at the statistical indexes, the (theoretical) best back line of defenders would look like this:

Left-back: Gašper Jovan (Aluminij)
Left central defender: Marcel Ratnik (Olimpija)
Right central defender: David Zec (Celje)
Right-back: Tin Hrvoj (Radomlje)
Defensive/central midfielders: Tin Martić (Aluminij), Gašper Trdin (Bravo)

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