There seems to be an argument amongst football fans that tackling is the dying art of the modern game, that in this era of VAR and multi-angle, super slomo replays no one is allowed to go in for the old fashioned cruncher. Others may maintain that at the top level our favourite players are more skilled than ever and the cleaner the tackle, the better the standard of football.
Either way, we’ve done our own crunching by going through this season’s stats to find the best tacklers across Europe’s top five leagues.
Either there’s a lot of fouling going on in Serie A, or tackling really is dying out! With the lowest average number of successful tackles across the leagues we’ll cover here, Italy’s top flight perhaps isn’t living up to its traditional defensive reputation.
Croatian international, Marko Rog currently leads our stats with an average of just 1.7 completed tackles per game, albeit at a high success rate of 68.1%. The midfielder is spending this season on loan at Cagliari, who were solidly mid-table at the time of the league’s suspension. You have to go down to the 5th best tackler in the league before you find a player from any of the clubs currently sitting in the top 4, and thats the veteran Lucas Leiva at Lazio (61.4%).
FC Köln’s Dutch right back, Kingsley Ehizibue has enjoyed his debut season in the Bundesliga, racking up 23 appearances and a tackle success rate of 66.2%.
That’s worked out to be a league leading average of 2 per match as the club look to solidify their position back at the top table of German football. He’s not looked bad going forward either, as his first goal in Köln colours shows.
Outside of Madrid, and perhaps his native Brazil, Casemiro is one of those under-appreciated players. With three Champions League medals to his name and nearly 50 caps for his country, that may be a little unfair.
Deployed in the middle of Zinedine Zidane’s midfield, he’s looked particularly strong this season – not least when the FotMob staff took a trip to the goalless El Clásico at Camp Nou back in December and witnessed him have a great game!
Over the campaign he’s averaged 2.2 successful tackles per match at a rate of 66.3%.
Famous for his tackling ability at previous club Crystal Palace where he was named player of the season last year, Aaron Wan-Bissaka hasn’t looked out of place at all following his big money move to Manchester United.
In fact, his form has been imperious and with an overall FotMob player rating of 7.2 he tops our tackle chart for the Premier League, averaging 2.5 successful challenges per match.
In terms of the straight number of challenges made this season, Wan-Bissaka is second only to Leicester’s Ricardo Pereira (99 to 119) but when you look at the percentage success of those tackles, Wan-Bissaka out strips his rival by nearly 10%.
Going from our social media audience alone, Ligue 1 seems to be discounted by a lot of people, written off with that rather unfortunate moniker – ‘farmer’s league.’
Well it’s not just PSG and their array of riches that have been making headlines this season. The Breton side, Stade Rennais have a teen sensation on their hands – Eduardo Camavinga.
After making his debut as a 16-year-old last season, he’s become the lynchpin of the side’s midfield and since receiving his French citizenship (he was born in Angola), he’s already made his debut for France’s U21s. Now 17, he’s featured in 25 matches during the 2019/20 campaign, averaging 2.6 tackles per game – the most of anyone in the leagues we’re covering here.
We would say remember the name, but you won’t have a choice if you take note of any transfer speculation in the world’s press. We’ve seen him linked to the likes of Real Madrid, Liverpool, Borussia Dortmund, Arsenal and of course, PSG in the last week alone!
If you fancy a deep dive into any of the countless statistics we cover on various league around the world, simply search by country, select a league profile and swipe right to the stats tab.
For more of this kind of thing, make sure you give us a follow on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.