Stat of the day: Barcelona’s iron grip on ball possession

Statistics master Alexis [aka @MisterChip], spent some serious time looking at the way Real Madrid and Barcelona worked to keep the ball in Sunday’s first-leg SuperCopa encounter. By the end of the match, Barcelona emerged with 51.79% compared with 48.21 for the Merengues. To break this down even further: during the full 94 minutes and 32 seconds of time in the match, there were 50 minutes and 53 seconds of open play in which possession of the ball could be contested. Out of this time period, Barcelona held the ball 1 minute and 49 seconds longer than Madrid, and eeked out the majority of the possession for the match.

To look at the bigger picture, this match represented the 184th consecutive official encounter in which the Blaugrana emerged with superior ball possession. That’s a lot of matches!