Mesut Ozil's stats reveal he creates chances as easily as you shell peas

Mesut Ozil

After the very exciting deadline-day move of the German international from Real Madrid to Arsenal, I have been living in a feeling of euphoria, only women in bikinis and trophies can be better than this (and, no I am not talking about trophy wives, let’s not think and act sexist).

Back to the headline: Özil is considered to be one of the best playmaking midfielders in the world. I will be comparing the best attacking midfielders in the top 5 leagues on their domestic league and

Welcome, Özil!

Champions League performances. To qualify for the list, originally the player had to have a minimum of 17 assists in the Europa League, respective domestic league and Champions League in the 2012/2013 season, and be listed as an “attacking midfielder (central)” on whoscored.com.

Those are still the requirements but I did not include statistics from the Europa League. We are left with a pretty impressive list containing Mesut Özil, Marek Hamsik, Andres Iniesta and Juan Mata. Özil is a world-class playmaker, but let’s see how he fares against his fellow elite.

Although the statistics show that Juan Mata seems the best overall, just the goals and assists don’t tell the full story. The data is skewed slightly by two factors. The first is that Juan Mata was Chelsea‘s primary free-kick and corner-kick taker last season. The others were involved in set pieces as well, but not to the extent of Mata.

The second, and more important, is the time spent on the field. Obviously playing more minutes increases the chances of getting more goals and assists. Next I will be comparing goals and assists against appearances. Unfortunately, I could not find the exact amount of minutes each player played, so I will count starting appearances as one game and substitute appearances as 1/3 of a game.

The per game info shows Özil in a slightly better light by making statistics more accurate. Assists and goals are the most important factors when deciding how effective CAMs are, but other factors like chances created, successful through balls, tackles made, interceptions made, dribbles completed, etc. are also noteworthy.