Serie A Statistics and the little Brazilian called Diego

Serie A will get a major lift when the brilliant Diego starts pulling the strings for the "Old Lady" of Juventus. Here are some highlights of the dazzling skills and strengths of Diego Ribas da Cunha for your enjoyment, specially created by Ctheoson.


The closest I have seen to the great Diego Armando Maradona...there is no doubt that Diego can spark the same inspirational effect in Juve that Maradona had on Napoli.

This little gem was found in TheOffside site which has great news on world soccer as well as individual teams. Excellent stuff for a quick read on what's happening in world soccer, when things are slow on the EPL front. Just thought I’d share this.

Written by Francesco on TheOffside
So we all know in American sports there are statistics for everything. On base percentage, field goal percentage, runs batted in, how many times a player blows his nose at half-time, etc. Soccer as a whole is relatively new to statistics, and especially Italian calcio. Up until a few years ago assists weren’t even recorded. The only stats you had on calciatori were ‘games played’ and ‘goals scored’. But with the modern era came technology and therefore statistics started to become recorded. So now that the season is over, let’s go through which player or which team was the top in certain categories.

GOALS AGAINST
Defense wins championships they say. And according to this stat, they are right. It actually reflected how the table finished, the top 5 at least. Inter were top with 32 goals conceded, follwed by Milan (35), Juventus (37), Fiorentina (38), and Genoa (39). But who follows the top 5? No, it’s not Roma, it’s Siena. Yep, Siena only allowed 44 goals to have the 6th best defense in Serie A. Their problem was scoring goals, not conceding them. Imagine they had a prolific strikeforce? They would probably be in the UEFA zone. And that’s why Marco Giampaolo is so highly rated. On the other side of things, Roma conceded 61 goals, the same amount as relegated Torino and one less then relegated Reggina. If they didn’t have such a great strike force, they’d potentially be in relegation trouble. Lecce had the most porous defense, allowing 67 goals.

GOALS SCORED
On the other side of things, attack proved to win a championship too, as Inter led the league with 70 goals for (25 from Ibra), but Milan also scored 70. Juventus followed with 69, while Roma were 4th with 64 ahead of Udinese (61), Palermo (57), Genoa (56), and Fiorentina (53). So that clearly shows Roma have some work to do in defense. At the bottom are Reggina with 30 goals. Second to last are Siena with 33 goals. If Siena didn’t have such a good defense they would be surely going down to Serie B. All the relegation zone teams scored more goals than the Tuscan club.

YELLOW CARDS AND RED CARDS
Torino was the most yellow-carded team with 101 cards. Siena was the ‘nicest’ team, with only 62 yellow cards. In the red card category, Roma win the award for least disciplined team with 12 red cards. Siena were once again the ‘nicest’, with only 3 expulsions.

ASSISTS
We already know Ibra scored the most goals, but let’s see who supplied the most. Michele Fini of Cagliari was the best assist man this year, providing 13 killer passes. Antonio Cassano followed with 11 (probably would’ve been a lot more if Pazzini had been at Samp all season), and another Rossoblu player, Andrea Cossu, rounded out the top 3 with 10 assists.

FOULS SUFFERED AND FOULS COMMITTED
Who was the most fouled player in Serie A this season? It was Antonio Cassano, who was taken down a good 153 times. Ezequiel Lavezzi comes close at 133, followed by Sergio Floccari (123), Sergio Pellissier (114), and Bernardo Corradi (105). But who causes the most fouls in Serie A? It’s Chievo’s defensive midfielder Giampiero Pinzi, who fouled his opponents 116 times. Napoli’s Manuele Blasi follows at 111, and the top 5 is rounded out by Gaby Mudingayi (108), Bernardo Corradi (96) [so he fouls almost as much as he is fouled], and Felipe Melo (90).

PASSES, SHOTS, AND OFFSIDES
Of course the top 5 of the passes category are all players that play a deep playmaker role in front of the defense. Palermo’s Fabio Liverani shared the ball 2,338 times (and it would’ve been more if he didn’t get injured. Gaetano D’Agostino of Udinese follows with 2,139 passes, and then there’s space for Daniele De Rossi (2,032), Andrea Pirlo (2,031), and Christian Ledesma (1,925).

Zlatan Ibrahimovic took the most shots on net, firing away 158 times. Mauro Zarate follows with 133 tries, and then there’s Fabrizio Miccoli (132), Alessandro Del Piero (125), and Marco Di Vaio (117).

However who were the most accurate shooters?

Zlatan had the most shots on net with 68 (25 of which were goals), followed by Mauro Zarate with 59, Diego Milito, Fabrizio Miccoli, and Marco Di Vaio all with 55, and Antonio Cassano with 53.

And then there’s offside.

There’s no doubt about it, if Pippo Inzaghi played a full season he would be first place by miles. However, his crown was overtaken by his former teammate Alberto Gilardino, who was on the wrong side of the defense 94 times this season. Simone Tiribocchi followed with 85 offside calls. Sergio Pellissier (79), Marco Di Vaio (78), and and Diego Milito (76) round out the top 5.

Inzaghi? Despite not playing that much the first part of the year he managed to finish in 8th place with 53 offside calls.

TACKLES WON, INTERCEPTIONS, AND PLAYER DISCIPLINE
So the best tackler in Serie A is a defender right? Nope, it’s Gaetano D’Agostino, who made 109 clean tackles. Genoa’s Domenico Criscito follows at 106, while Chievo’s Mario Yepes is a close third at 103. Esteban Cambiasso and Manuele Blasi are tied for 4th at 98 and Christian Ledesma is 5th with 95.

In the interception category, we see who did the best job of anticipating the play. Daniele Conti made the most interceptions with 136, while Fabiano Santacroce just missed out with 135. Esteban Cambiasso and Salvatore Bocchetti are tied for third at 120, while Matteo Brighi is 4th with 116 and Felipe Melo 5th with 114.

While Daniele Conti intercepted balls the most, he also was yellow carded the most (15). Bruno Cirillo of Reggina and Cesare Bovo of Palermo follow with 14. Andrea Cossu is third with 13, and that’s a lot of yellow cards for a fantasista.

In the red card column, Felipe Melo, Diego Lopez, and Guillermo Giacomazzi were all sent off 3 times throughout the season. Matteo Sereni is the only goalkeeper with more than 1 red card with 2 sending offs.

GAME RECORDS
Most goals: 8 in Udinese-Cagliari 6-2 (Giornata 38)
Most fouls: 59 in Lazio-Torino 1-1 (Giornata 24)
Most yellow cards: 11 in Sampdoria-Genoa 0-1 (Giornata 15)
Most red cards: 4 in Fiorentina-Cagliari 2-1 (Giornata 31)
Most chances to score: 16 in Fiorentina-Udinese 4-2 (Giornata 13)

Finally, I just want to add some further stats,

MOST SAVES, SGOF, GAA, SHUTOUTS
Bologna's Francesco Antonioli made the most saves (197) this season, followed by Albano Bizzarri (154) and Julio Cesar (147) of Inter. Most shots on goal faced (SOGF) also belonged to Antonioli (253) and Bizzarri (191) followed by Marchetti (184).

Perhaps a better measure of goalkeeping excellence are the next two.
Julio Cesar (0.78) has the best Goals Against Average. Christian Abbiati (0.96) and Sebastian Frey (1.00) are the next best duo. In the shutouts category, Julio Cesar is again tops with 17. Genoa's Rubinho has 14, Sebastian Frey and Federico Marchetti are joint third on 12 and in joint fifth place is Abbiati and Gianluca Curci with 11.