Numbers and percentages: Player more and player less - the key to Serbia on the way to Olympic gold
Statistical data on the performance of the Serbian water polo team at the Olympic Games are an example that percentages and numbers can be misleading in evaluating sports achievements.
Like after the European Championship in Zagreb and World Championship in Doha, the UVTS website editorial prepared what the figures and percentages say about the games of the Serbian national team in Paris. Statistics from the OI were compared with those from the World Championships in Doha.
A simple comparison of the data from the Olympic Games and the World Championship recorded in the official records of the tournament does not indicate that Serbia won gold at the Olympic Games and sixth place at the World Championship.
Namely, in most parameters, both in attack and defense, Uroš Stevanović's team had a better performance percentage in Doha than in Paris. For example, they finished the Olympic tournament with a goal difference of +2 (93:91) in eight matches, and in the World Championship they scored 80 goals and conceded 62 goals in six games.
Therefore, a more realistic evaluation of the performance of the Serbian team at the Olympic tournament requires a "deeper reading of the statistics", divided into three segments: our team's shooting percentage, opponent's shooting percentage and other parameters (stolen balls, blocks, counterfouls ...) Serbian and rival teams.
Our national team played practically two different tournaments at the Olympic Games. In the competition in the group, she showed only one game at a high level – in the victory against France (15:8), which, along with the hard-won three points against Japan (16:15), brought her a place in the quarterfinals. But, in the second phase, when there is no more room for mistakes, Serbia showed that the group phase was a warm-up for the eliminations, that, as many said, the competition in the group was for the purpose of raising the form for the quarterfinals. She played better and better from match to match. On the way to the gold, Greece, USA and world champion Croatia fell, with very high-quality releases and good percentages both in attack and defense.
The strongest weapon of Serbia's attack at the Olympic Games was shots with the extra player - it scored 38 goals from 63 attempts and had the best percentage of realization of the extra player in the tournament (60%). Spain (57% – 43/75), Greece (55% – 46/83) and Italy (52% – 37/71) also had more than 50% success rates.
Now we come to the mentioned "deeper reading", that is, separation of data on group and elimination stage matches. Namely, even in the group stage, our team had a very good realization of the numerical advantage (19/36 – 53%), but as the tournament drew to a close, Serbia's attacks with players were almost perfect. Serbia scored 19 goals (70%) from 27 shots with a player more in three matches of the knockout stage. In the semi-final, against the USA, she made seven out of eight chances, and she missed the eighth in the finish when everything was decided. She missed the first player more in the final match against Croatia in the second half.
Attacks of our team with a player more often ended with shots by Nikola Dedović and Nikola Jakšić, which were practically infallible (Dedović 10 goals from 12 shots, Jakšić 9/12).
When it comes to defence with one less player, Serbia managed to defeat slightly less than 50% of the rival's attempts. Opponents scored 41 goals from 80 shots. However, in this element too, there is a big difference in the performance of Serbia in the group stage and in the elimination phase. Our team's rivals scored 26 goals from 43 shots (60%) in five matches against Serbia in the group. In the three games of the elimination phase, Serbia reduced the success percentage of its rivals to only 41% (15/37).
Judging by the statistics, good attacks with more players and defense with less players were the key to Serbia's success at the Olympic tournament, but some other figures and percentages should be highlighted. Our team is first on the list in the number of goals from a direct shot after a foul outside the 6-meter line. Serbia scored as many as 13 goals from such situations, and ten of those 13 goals were the work of the best scorer of the tournament, Dušan Mandić. The second-placed selection on this list is Hungary with three goals less than Mandić - seven. By the way, in Doha, Serbia scored two such goals, and Italy was the most successful with six goals.
Our team scored as many as 15 goals from the central position in Doha. This time, significantly fewer of our team's attacks ended this way. Two goals were recorded in the score sheet, but that does not mean that the Vico and Ubović centers did not make a significant contribution to the success, and here again we need a deeper reading. The anchor team won a lot of shutouts, and finished attacks with more players much more often than in Doha and often hit the net. Australia scored the most goals from the central position in Paris (10), Italy scored one less, and the other selections scored six or less each.
Serbia results in Paris - Group:Japan 16:15, Australia 3:8, Spain 11:15, France 15:8, Hungary 13:17. Quarterfinals: Greece 12:11, Semifinals: USA 10:6, Finals: Croatia 13:11
Serbia results in Doha - Group: Japan 17:10, Montenegro 14:6, USA 14:12, Quarterfinals: Croatia 13:15, Semi-final 5-8th place: Hungary 11:10 a.m., Match for fifth place: Greece 11:15 a.m.
| ATTACK | Paris 2024 | Doha 2024 |
| Goals/shots scored | 93/232 (40%) | 80/177 (45%) |
| Positional Attack | 27/121 (22%) | 20/72 (27%) |
| Goals from the central position | 2/9 (22%) | 15/22 (68%) |
| Shoot with player more | 38/63 (60%) | 35/67 (52%) |
| Goals after a foul outside the 6m line | 13/26 (50%) | 2/6 (33%) |
| Five meters | 10/10 (100 %) | 5/7 (71%) |
| Counterattacks | 3/3 (100%) | 3/3 (100%) |
Scorers for Serbia in Paris: Mandić 26/49, N.Jakšić 12/24, Dedović 12/27, Ćuk 9/30, Vico 7/14, V.Rašović 7/16, S. Rašović 7/34, Ubović 5/11, Drašović 4/13, P. Jakšić 2/4, Ranđelović 2/9
Goalies: Filipović 59/143 (41%), Misović 6/13 (46%)
In terms of the number of blocked shots, Serbia was the most successful in the tournament with 41 blocks (22 in five matches in the group and 19 in the remaining three matches), seven more than second-placed Australia. The most blocks - seven each were collected by Strahinja Rašović, Miloš Ćuk and Nikola Dedović.
The percentage of saves by goalkeepers Filipović and Mišović was 42% in total (in Doha, Filipović and Branislav Mitrović reached 46% success rate).
After a relatively modest 36% save percentage for our netminder tandem in the first phase of the Olympic Games, it jumped to 52% (30/58) in the second. All 30 defenses in the quarter-finals, semi-finals and final were collected by Filipović, Mišović only played briefly in the final and in the final twenty seconds there were no shots on his goal. Only USA goalkeeper Adrian Weinberg (63% – 42/67) was more successful than Filipovic in the last three matches, and 52% of the saved shots were recorded, along with the Serbian goalkeeper, Italian goalkeepers Del Lungo and Nicosi (both 14/27). .
