Winter breaks have no impact on success or failure in the Champions League

If an English team win the Champions League next season there will be a ready-made explanation. Next season Premier League teams will have a week off in February – ten in one week, ten in another.

But will it be the right explanation? Does having had a break really help when the Champions League resumes?

The evidence suggests not. There are good reasons for having a winter break but that is not one of them.

Manchester City have played 15 times since the last Champions League group games, which were eight weeks ago. Tottenham have played 14 times. Bayern Munich, Dortmund and Schalke have played seven times.

Next week in the Champions League round of 16 Tottenham face Dortmund. City go up against Schalke the following week, when Liverpool will complete a trio of Anglo-German ties by taking on Bayern.

German football shuts down for about four weeks in December and January because of predictably bad weather. In other leading European football nations winter breaks are shorter. Teams from those countries can still play as many games in December and January as teams from England.

Real Madrid have played 14 times since the last Champions League games, as many as Tottenham and only one fewer than City. Seven non-English sides who will be in the Champions League round of 16 have played as many or more games since the end of the group stage than Liverpool, who have played ten.

Teams from all countries have tended to achieve worse results in the Champions League after the turn of a year than before. This is because after the turn of a year the quality of opponents tends to be higher. Most of the poorest teams are sifted out at the group stage.

I compared results before and after the turn of the year in the last 15 Champions League seasons, 2003-04 to 2017-18. In each of those seasons there was a group stage from September to December followed by a knockout competition starting with a round of 16 in February and ending with a final in May or June.

You can compare results in different ways. Here they all tell a similar story, so let me use one that is easy to understand. Average goal difference per game is goals scored minus goals conceded, divided by games played.

Across all teams average goal difference per game deteriorated by 0.9 after the turn of a year. For English teams it deteriorated by 1.0 – a bit more but really neither here nor there. For German teams it deteriorated by 0.8 – a bit less but still nothing to get excited about. For Spanish teams it also deteriorated by 0.8, for Italian teams by just 0.7, but for French teams by 1.2.

The results of German teams, who have a month off, deteriorated by the same amount as the results of Spanish teams, who might get one free week. The results of English teams, who had no break, deteriorated by less than the results of French teams, who did have a break. There was nothing in the evidence to suggest that playing without a winter break harms results in the Champions League.

Or that having a long shutdown is either a help or a hindrance.

In Eastern European countries such as Russia and Ukraine football stops from the middle of December until the middle of February or early March. Russian and Ukrainian teams are still on a domestic break when European competitions resume. This season there will be no Russian or Ukrainian teams in the Champions League round of 16, but there will be two of each in the Europa League last 32.

After the turn of a year in previous seasons the Champions League results of Russian and Ukrainian teams deteriorated by about the same amount as the results of teams from most other places.

The importance of getting within shooting range

One reason good teams are better than bad teams is that more of their attacks reach the last third.

I found corroboration of this in stats on the Uefa website from the past two Champions League group stages – 2017-18 and 2018-19.

Adding runs into the final third and deliveries into the final third gave a total for the number of times attacks reached the final third. In practice a goal cannot be scored unless the ball is in the final third.

On average teams who finished bottom of their group reached the last third 40 times per match, teams who finished second from bottom reached the last third 48 times per match, teams who finished runners-up reached the last third 56 times per match and teams who won the group reached the last third 60 times per match.

For every two times that a bottom team moved into the final third a top team moved into the final third three times.

There were no stats for how often attacks started in the final third. However, we can be confident that good teams were also better than bad teams at winning the ball near the opposition goal.

Other Uefa Champions League stats covering all of the past four seasons – 2014-15 to 2017-18 – show a relationship between how long teams spent with the ball in the last third (which includes winning it there and taking it there) and how far they progressed in the competition. More of one meant further in the other.

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