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#1 The battle in the wings: Robertson, Kimmich, Alaba, Alexander-Arnold
Wingers are of course the main protagonists in the wings but nowadays the concept of attacking full-backs predominates. Hardly any world class team is there whose full-backs don't leave their place in the defence move forward. Liverpool and Bayern Munich, both boast of full-backs with identical qualities in both wings alike. Andy Robertson and David Alaba are among the best left-backs in Europe. Trent Alexander-Arnold is a Golden Boy shortlist and Joshua Kimmich should arguably have made the FIFA Team of the Year 2018.
All four of our main protagonists will come up against each other. Andy Robertson will have a direct faceoff with Kimmich, both in attack and defence, while Alexander-Arnold and Alaba will have a similar affair. All of them boast of quality passing, passing, dribbling skills while also being good defensively. Kimmich and Alaba boast of a combined 130 passes per game with almost 88% success. Robertson and Alexander-Arnold have an almost similar number of passes with a combined average of 122 passes but the success percentage drops to 80%.
While Kimmich boasts of 2.3 key passes per game, Robertson, and Alexander-Arnold both have 1.3 and 1.1 key passes per game, while Alaba only makes 0.8 key passes per game. The number of long balls played is higher from the right-wing as compared to the left for both the teams. ( Long balls per game: Kimmich 4.5, Trent 3.7) When it comes to tackling Liverpool's full-backs are much better than their Bavarian counterparts. Andy Robertson (2.5) alone averages more tackles per game than both Alaba (1.3) and Kimmich (1).
These stats are just an insight before the game. Alaba has been well below his usual standards this season and Kimmich's brilliance is the reason that they could keep up with Liverpool's full-backs in stats. The wing with Robertson and Kimmich will surely be the busier one with Alaba not that fluent in attacking. Alexander-Arnold, however, will fancy his chances to fire down Bayern's wings as much as Andy Robertson.
Fasten the seatbelt, guys.
