|
MOSCOW, Oct. 16-- Possession is clearly not everything in football as the FIFA Technical study Group (TSG) highlighted in their report over the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia, which was published on Tuesday. The TSG is made up of football luminaries such as former Brazil coach, Carlos Alberto Parreira, former Dutch international, Marco van Basten (who is FIFA's Chief Technical Development Officer), Emmanuel Amunike, Bora Milutinovic, Andy Roxburgh (former Scotland coach) and Pascal Zuberbuhler, a goalkeeping specialist in FIFA's Technical Development Division, and overseen by FIFA's Coaching & Player Development Department, led by Branimir Ujevic. The report contains detailed statistics on the tournament as a whole and every one of the 64 matches played in Russia this summer and among the main findings are that World Cup winners France were only 19th in the overall ranking of possession in the tournament, while Spain, who failed to progress past the last 16, saw more of the ball than any team in the tournament with 69 percent possession. While possession is clearly not a guarantee for success, putting in the mileage was also not a certain recipe for winning matches. The hardest working team in Russia - Serbia, whose players covered a combined total of 113 kilometers per game, failed to make it out of the group stage, while the French players only managed an average total of 101 kilometers per match and were 28th out of 32 teams in that respect. | 
