The 2007/8 Champions League. In Numbers.

By: Rob | May 6th, 2008

Can Drogba overtake C-Ron in the final? This season’s Champions League is quickly drawing to a close. Just two teams remain, Chelsea and Manchester United. So while the CL Offisde team prepares its teams of the tournament, and before we hand over to you to pick your team of the tournament (all will be revealed in due course) here’s a blitz through the stats of the tournement. Numbers can’t tell you everything, but some make for surprising, and interesting reading.

The Players.

Ronaldo is top goalscorer in the tournament so far with 7 goals. Didier Drogba on 6 is the only player likely to catch him.

Fenerbahce’s Alex was top assist giver with 6. No-one else got above 4 (Hleb, Pirlo, Robinho, Gerrard).

Didier Drogba had the most shots on target with 21. Ronaldo is back in third with 17. Seperating them is Lyon’s Juninho with 18

Ronaldo haters will be pleased to learn that the winger had the most shots off target (18)

Arsenal hitman Adebayour was ruled offside an astonishing 25 times. Drogba was next closest with 16. Pippo Inzaghi was waaaaay back.

No-one got more than one red card in the tournament.

Schalke midfielder Jermaine Jones picked up the most yellow cards in the competition with 5, after commiting 28 fouls. Didier Drogba and Javier Mascherano both commited more fouls though with 32 apiece.

A winger from Portugal was the most fouled player in the Champions League this season. But it wasn’t Ronaldo, it was Quaresma, Portugal’s Ronaldo in waiting.

The Clubs

Liverpool were easily the highest scoring club, with 29 goals. That put them 10 ahead of anyone else. That isn’t even including goals they scored to help out other clubs.

Meanwhile Valencia only managed 2 goals.

Dyanamo Kyiv conceeded 19 goals, giving them the worst defense in the tournament

Man United, astonishingly have only conceeded 5 times, which is one less than both Chelsea who they meet in the final, and Valencia who went out in round one.

Barcelona had 86 shots on target, meaning the probably faced the best goalkeepers. They also had an astonishing 91 corners.

PSV were the dirtiest team with an average of 20 fouls a match. However Chelsea’s 192 in the tournament and Schalke’s 194 are technically much more than PSV’s 125 - but they were in the tournament longer.

Tellingly, Schalke picked up ten more yellow cards than anyone else with 26.

Barca spent the most time on the ball, with a match average of 59%. Over the tournament they spent 454 minutes with the ball. As they showed against Man United though, its no good if they don’t do anything with it.

Second and third in terms of Ball posession were also Spanish clubs - Real Madrid and Sevilla.

Stats of the Tournament

Liverpool’s 8-0 win against Besiktas was a record breaking win - the previous record had been equalled this year too, Arsenal’s 7-0 group stage win against Slavia Prague.

Jose Mourinho’s regin was bought to an end at Chelsea, against Rosenborg in a game that produced 22 off target shots.

The group match at Old Trafford between Roma and Manchester United produced an amazing 21 corners.

There were 65 fouls in Fener’s amazing 5-5 draw with Schalke. It didn’t have as many yellow cards however as Roma’s win over Real in Madrid. 11 Players were booked.

Finally, there have been 120 goals in the last half hour of matches - the most. There have been 328 goals overall, 17 have come in injury time in the second half.

All the stats came from here. Hope you enjoyed reading, and hope it whet your appitite and gave you food for thought regarding your teams of the season, which you’ll have a chance to vote on soon, we promise.