The training at Packing Sports – the Manila-based division of Impect, a German data analysis company that counts some of Europe’s biggest clubs, Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain included, among its clients – lasts a couple of weeks. On Flores’ first day, he was tasked with tagging the same game that all new starters get: Germany’s demolition of Brazil, in front of a shell-shocked, mournful Maracana, in the 2014 World Cup semi-final. The choice is not solely rooted in triumphalist nostalgia, according to Lukas Keppler, Impect’s managing director. ‘It is because it was the first game that really highlighted the difference between our data and what you normally see,’ he said. ‘If you looked at that game, Brazil had more shots, more passes, more corners. But Germany won 7–1. It told you that those statistics were not telling the right story from the game.’
Impect’s approach is different. The company’s foundational metric – the piece of information it is looking for from a game – is known by the slightly uncomfortable anglicism of ‘packing’. It is, at heart, a measure of how many opposition players are bypassed by any single action on the pitch. It does not matter what form that takes: a quick, short pass that goes beyond two rival players carries the same weight as a languid, mazy dribble that does the same. It is a way of gauging, in other words, how effective a player and a team are at manoeuvring the ball up the field, at evading opponents, at creating danger. Germany’s packing measures in that game against Brazil were vastly superior. Joachim Löw’s team won, at least in Impect’s thinking, because it took more players out of the game, more effectively, than its opponent.
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