FSV Mainz 05 and FC. Thiago Alcantara new signing of Liverpool at Anfield on September 18, 2020 in Liverpool, England. Thiago Alcantara of FC Bayern Munich celebrates with the trophy after his team's victory in the UEFA Champions League Final match between Paris. Coface Arena is the home stadium of Bundesliga side Mainz and features a capacity of 34,034 with 19,700 of spectators seated. Coface replaces the Stadion am Bruchweg with a designed said to resemble the traditional English football stands such as the Kop and the Stretford end with their high stands.

• Mainz 05: Interested in Ligue 1 striker A regular first-team member of Olympique de Marseille has been wanted all across the world, despite the fact that he scored just two goals in the last season. 30-year-old Valere Germain is an experienced footballer who has played nearly 300 professional games in France's top flight and recorded 40.
• World news - USA - Bayern Munich against Mainz: Sule brings Bayern 3-2 in the lead -. We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our website, display personalized content and targeted ads, CAMEROON MAGAZINE - CAMEROUN INFO - CAMEROUN ACTU.

Germany’s wine capital, Mainz was founded by the Romans on the left bank of the Rhine and has more than 2,000 years of history. Looming over the Altstadt’s romantic warren of cobblestone streets is the huge Romanesque cathedral, burial place for centuries of ruling Prince Archbishops.

The city’s museums have Roman artefacts discovered beneath the city, like a small armada of 1700-year-old warships now kept in an industrial locomotive shed. In the 1430s the Mainz citizen Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, and the museum dedicated to him has two of the remaining editions of the Gutenberg bible. Mainz also puts on a big-time carnival, and its televised parade on Shrove Monday pulls in hundreds of thousands of spectators.

Let’s have a look at the best things to do in Mainz:

1. Mainz Cathedral

With a millennium of history in its walls, Mainz’s immense sandstone cathedral radiates religious and political power.

The design is still mostly Romanesque from the High Middle Ages, but there’s also some Gothic and Baroque design in the chapels and roof.

The interior has the largest set of funerary monuments to Prince-Archbishops in the former Holy Roman Empire.

These monuments represent all phases of European art history, from Gothic to Baroque, as well as the Medieval revival styles of the 19th century.

In the Kettelerkapelle.

In the High Middle Ages six German monarchs, from Agnes de Poitou in 1043 to Heinrich Raspe in 1246 were crowned in the cathedral.

Be sure to see the treasury, rich with centuries of religious art.

2. Gutenberg Museum

The Gutenberg Museum was inaugurated in 1900 on the 500th anniversary of Johannes Gutenberg’s birth, and in 1927 moved into the delightful Renaissance townhouse, “Zum Römischen Kaiser” across the way from the cathedral.

There are quite a few wonders to wow visitors in its galleries, including two of the 29 remaining copies of the Gutenberg bible, the first work that Gutenberg published.

You can also see the earliest known example of woodblock printing, produced in Japan in 770, as well as other highly valuable works printed in the 15th century.

One is “Peregrinationes in Terram Sanctam”, an illustrated travel memoir from a trip to the Holy Land, printed in 1483.

3. Markt

The largest of the four squares around the cathedral, Markt is on the north side and developed with the cathedral in the 10th century.

There’s a market trading here on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday mornings.

You can also go in for a closer look at some of the monuments on the square: The Marktbrunnen (Market Fountain), is a highly ornamented Renaissance fountain, donated in 1526 by the Elector of Brandenburg.

In front of the cathedral is the Gotthardkapelle, a Romanesque palace chapel ordered by Adalbert of Mainz in 1137. Lastly, the Heunensäule is a sandstone column in the centre of the square.

This is one of 42 that was carved for the reconstruction of the cathedral after it burnt down in 1009 but never used.

Only eight are known to survive today in different spots around Germany.

4. Stephanskirche

Atop the highest hill in the old city, Stephanskirche was founded in 990 and has mostly Gothic architecture from the 1300s.

A later extension was the beautiful Gothic cloister, added in the 15th century, with marvellous vaults on its south wall.

And although the style of the building is much as it was in the Middle Ages, the church has come through a difficult 200 years: In 1857 an explosion destroyed the Baroque facade, while the church and its western belfry were only restored in the 1970s after taking damage in the war.

The windows in the choir, famed for their blue tones, were redesigned by Marc Chagall between 1978 and 1985, and there’s nothing to compare to them in Germany.

The church also has some Medieval fittings like an altar table from the 1200s and a sizeable tabernacle from the beginning of the 16th century.

5. Kirschgarten

One of the prettiest scenes in Mainz is this small rectangular square enclosed by tall half-timbered houses.

The square itself dates back to before 1329, while its houses are from the 16th to the 18th centuries.

One, Zum Aschaffenberg is the oldest preserved half-timbered house in Mainz, built around 1500. In front of another fine old house, Zum Beimburg you can find the remains of a stump: This isn’t actually a cherry tree as it is often claimed to be (Kirschgarten means cherry orchard), but an almost petrified oak.

At the centre, bordered by a restaurant terrace, is the Kirchgartenbrunnen, a fountain that has only been here since 1932 and is made with red sandstone repurposed from broken ornamental structures on the Theodor Heuss Bridge.

6. Schillerplatz

A grand tree-lined square, Schillerplatz was already a public plaza in Mainz’s Roman era and was used as a marketplace in the Middle Ages.

The square is fringed by regal palaces in the Baroque and Rococo styles housing state government offices.

There’s a bronze statue of the poet and playwright Friedrich Schiller, put up on his 100th birthday in 1859. But the square’s most striking monument is the nine-metre-high Mainzer Fastnachtsbrunnen, which commemorates the famous carnival celebrations that take over the square on Shrove Monday.

This fountain is a postcard favourite and is decorated with more than 200 bronze figures from Mainz history and local folklore.

7. Rheinufer

If you’re in the mood, you can walk beside the Rhine for hours, from Mainz’s Neustadt in the north to the railway bridge that marks the southern limit of the city in the south.

In summer you won’t have to take more than a few steps before coming to a Biergarten with riverside views, an ice cream stand, or long lawns where you watch one of the world’s great rivers flow past.

On the Stresemann-Ufer beside the Altstadt there’s a lovely perspective of the cathedral, as well as pieces of public art and a remnant of the city’s Baroque fortifications at the red sandstone Templertor.

8. Augustinerkirche

Built between 1768 and 1771, the Catholic Augustinerkirche is a Baroque masterpiece unaffected by the Second World War.

Above the portal on Augustinerstraße look for the group of sculptures depicting the coronation of Mary between Augustine of Hippo and his mother Monica of Hippo.

As the church was funded by wealthy patrons, the interior has almost overwhelming Rococo decoration, glinting with gilded stucco and dramatic frescoes glorifying the life of Augustine of Hippo.

The church’s organ from 1773 is one of the few created by Johann Heinrich Stumm to make it to the 21st century, but there’s also one piece that looks a little out of place: In a niche between the southern side altars is an image of Maria with Child, carved in 1420 and brought here after its church burnt down in 1793.

9. Landesmuseum Mainz

A museum of archaeology, art and culture, the Landesmuseum Mainz has a collection that begins in prehistory and comes right up to the 21st century.

The attraction is in a Baroque former barracks building that was given a modern glass annexe in 2010. If you love Gothic and Renaissance art there’s much to uncover, like a cycle of paintings of Mary by Master of the Housebook, as well as works by Hans Baldung Grien and a stunning painting of Mary with Child by Lorenzo di Credi.

A highlight in the medieval department is a gold and enamel fibula dating to 1000, depicting an eagle an encrusted with sapphires.

The Baroque collection has refined pieces of furniture, like a Rococo writing desk designed by master craftsman Peter Schuß, adorned with gilded carvings and dainty walnut and cherry wood marquetry.

10. Museum of Ancient Seafaring

In the early 1980s the well-preserved remains of several Roman war ships from the 4th century were found during construction work by the Rhine.

These five vessels are the core of this museum’s exhibition and are from two different designs.

There are also full-sized replicas to show what these boats would have looked like 1700 years ago.

There are also models illustration the many types of craft that navigated the Rhine in Roman times, as well as riveting artefacts like a ship’s bronze bow spur from the 200s.

The location also deserves mention as the museum is in the vast former repair hall of the Hessische Ludwigsbahn railway, dating to 1870.

11. Heiligtum der Isis und Mater Magna

When the Römerpassage shopping mall was being built in the late-1990s workers happened upon a sanctuary devoted to Isis and Cybele that had been used until the 3rd century.

A small but diverting museum was later set up in the basement of the Römerpassage around the ruins.

There’s a raised glass walkway, allowing you to look down into the remnants of the sanctuary, which is labelled with information boards.

Along the walls are glass cases full of the interesting finds made on the site.

Among them are some of the hundreds of clay oil lamps discovered here, as well as animal sacrifices, curses inscribed on lead tablets and statuettes of Mercury and Venus.

12. Holzturm and Eisenturm (Wooden Tower and Iron Tower)

The main vestiges of Mainz’s defensive wall are two towers a few hundred metres apart on Rheinstraße.

Both were raised in the 1200s and have a Late Gothic design from the early 1400s.

The pair were damaged in the war but were restored in the 1961 to celebrate Mainz’s 2000th anniversary.

These lofty buildings were used as gatehouses, watchtowers and prisons.

The wooden tower held one of the most famous outlaws in German history, Schinderhannes, who was locked up here after a spree of daring robberies and an escape from jail.

Following 15 months in prison he was guillotined by the French authorities in 1803 in front of a crowd of 40,000.

13. Mainzer Fastnacht

Carnival season in Mainz begins on 11 November and continues right the way through to Shrovetide in February or March.

There are small events happening throughout this time, but the everything ramps up for the days leading up to Ash Wednesday.

Shrove Monday is definitely the day to be in the city, so long as you don’t mind crowds, as 500,000 spectators line the streets for the Rosenmontagszug parade.

There are almost 10,000 participants in the procession that snakes past the sights in the Alt Stadt.

The parade in Mainz is famous for its wit, and floats carry enormous satirical set pieces with an irreverent take on world affairs.

14. 1. FSV Mainz 05

Even though they were playing amateur football just 30 years ago, the local football team has been a constant presence in the Bundesliga since 2010. In 2011 the club moved into the new 34,000-capacity Opel Arena, which is a superb place to watch a football match, with high tiers and a cacophonous noise created by 15,000 standing fans.

The club also infuses local carnival culture into matches: Whenever Mainz score they play the Narrhallamarsch, which is the signature tune of the Mainzer Fastnacht.

If you can’t catch a match but want to see inside the stadium there are multilingual 90-minute tours on Fridays at 17:00, taking you around the dressing room, dugouts, corporate hospitality boxes and the conference room.

15. Spundekäs

If you fancy trying something local, Spundekäs is as authentic as it gets in Mainz.

This is a smooth cheese paste, partly made from quark and seasoned with pepper, salt and sweet paprika.

When you order Spundekäs it will normally come with chopped onion sprinkled on top and with crackers and mini pretzels on the side for dipping.

The perfect match is Riesling or Müller-Thurgau wine, from the surrounding Rheinhessen region.

Another cheese that is a bit more challenging is Handkäse, which is often marinated in vinegar and has a powerful aroma.

In this second post of our trilogy on ball possession, we expand the analysis we started in the first part, digging into the build-up habits of the top European teams. We propose the ratio of passes on total touches, as an indicator of “good football”. Napoli are topping the tables on this measure. Man City are the European team doing the most ball touches in the opposition’s third, confirming that Guardiola does not aim at “possession for the sake of it”.

Positional Play and ball possession

The cover image of this post is dedicated to Pep Guardiola and Maurizio Sarri, who are currently two of the top evangelists of Positional Play, which has the control of the ball as one of its main characteristics and targets.

Positional Play (“Juego de Posición”, in Spanish) is mainly related to Johan Cruijff, although it was first developed at Ajax by the Englishman Jack Reynolds and then by Rinus Michels, who exported the “totaalvoetbal” to Barcelona.

As the name ‘Positional Play’ suggests, it is mainly based on the recognition of positional references, by which a team is able to constantly maintain structures that make orderly processes possible.

As we anticipated in our first post on ball possession, a good positioning (in the data, reflected in the percentage of short passes* on total) plays a big role on pass accuracy, which is correlated with the number of passes a team is able to accomplish.

We also showed that the number of passes is positively correlated with the number of shots on target and, ultimately, with the number of goals. We retrieve here below the “possession-to-goal chain“. It is composed of four correlations, linked to each other, which should show that, over a season or so, a team’s ability to produce a fluid build-up positively influences their results. It seems to validate the recent focus that many European clubs have put on ball control.

*Note: According to Opta, short passes means shorter than 25 yards (<22.9 metres).

Passes on ball touches: an indicator of “good football”?

Defining what ‘good football’ is and what is not, is clearly a subjective exercise. As they say, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”.

However, a fluent build-up is normally appreciated and accepted as “good football”. Further, as we saw in the first part of our trilogy on ball possession, being able to pass the ball precisely and fast is an effective tool: the more a team moves the ball, retaining possession, the higher their chances to disorganise the opponents’ lines and exploit attacking opportunities.

One way to increase such efficiency, is to move the ball fast. To do so, being able to pass it with as few touches as possible, is key.

We looked at how many touches it takes, to the teams of the five European major leagues, to pass the ball. On average, in Europe, the number of passes represents around 30% of total touches. Basically, for every 3.3 ball touches, there is one pass.

Chart 2: Passes on total touches, by league

From the chart above, we see that the Italian Serie A displays a (slightly) higher ratio of passes on total touches (30.3% vs 29.7% average). The differences between the leagues are kind of minimal, anyway. Interestingly though, the Spanish La Liga, where ‘tiki-taka‘ was born, shows the lowest ratio.

In chart 3 below, we show the 5 teams displaying the highest ratio of passes on total touches in Europe, as well as the 5 teams with the lowest ratio.

It is surprising to see the country of tiki-taka not being represented, not even by Barcelona, in the top 5 teams on this measure. On the contrary, there are four Spanish teams (Levante, Leganes, Alaves and Getafe) showing among the lowest ratios.

Mainz 05 2021 Kitsempty Spaces The Blog -

Most notably, on this measure, Napoli is in a totally different league compared to any other team in Europe. They pass the ball every 2.65 touches (passes represent 37.6% of total ball touches).

Is Napoli’s football particularly appealing? We believe it really catches the eye. Is it effective? Well, Maurizio Sarri’s Napoli are among the teams collecting most points per match in Europe, scoring the most and conceding the least, so it seems it is quite effective as well.

Talking about Napoli, Pep Guardiola said: “They are perhaps the best side I’ve faced in my career… I am in love with Napoli, with the way they make short passes and they didn’t give us time to think in the opening 20 minutes. We didn’t have the courage to play”.

Here below, we insert the Vimeo video of one of the most iconic goals scored by Napoli this season (2017/18): all eleven players touch the ball before Hamsik scores against Cagliari in the Italian Serie A.

Napoli touched the ball 39 times in total, including 19 passes and the final shot by Marek Hamsik. The ratio of passes on total touches stood at 48.7%. Impressive.

It is WHERE you touch the ball that really matters

A team playing piggy-in-the-middle in its own third would finish a match completing many passes, but scoring no goals and, probably, conceding some. This tells us that the number of passes, by itself, cannot really identify how successful a team is.

More important than the number of passes, or ball touches in a match, is therefore where on the pitch a team touches the ball. On top, we argue that the speed at which the ball is moved between the opposition’s lines is also key.

Dividing the football pitch with three hypothetical lines, we separate a team’s own third, the middle third and their opposition’s third.

Any team’s aim should be to remain in the opposition’s third most of the times, clearly. So, which are the best teams at doing that?

We looked at all the stats related to the European major leagues. In the chart below, we show the data related to percentage of ball touches in the two final thirds (middle third plus opposition third) and the stand-alone percentage of touches in the opposition third. The bars are ordered subject to the teams’ current league ranking. We show the top ranked teams in each league and the league total average. If you wish to have the numbers for a team not appearing there, do not hesitate to ask us (research@soccerment.com).

On the first metric, Napoli again comes up as the top team in Europe. On the second metric, probably unsurprisingly, Manchester City comes on top: Guardiola’s Man City is the team in Europe touching the ball most often in the opposition’s third.

Chart 4: Percentage of touches in the two final thirds (middle + opposition) and percentage of touches in the opposition third

Attacking from the central area or from the wings?

Another interesting feature we analyzed is where the attacks normally come from. The data provided by Opta and showed by WhoScored.com, offer some insights on the patterns that the team usually keep for their build-ups. We will develop this analysis through a video in part 3 of this trilogy, which we will publish in the next few weeks.

There are teams normally attacking from the right wing, others from the left wing. Others, instead, use the central area of the pitch more often than their competitors.

Napoli attack from the left flank

Mainz 05 2021 Kitsempty Spaces The Blog Free

Two European teams stand out for a much higher-than-average percentage of attacks from the left wing. Both teams play in the Italian Serie A: Napoli and Lazio, displaying a 45% and 44% percentage of attacks coming from this side, respectively.

Napoli, which plays with a 4-3-3 formation, has indeed the habit of working the ball with the left-chain (Mario Rui – Hamsik – Insigne). From the data, we see that Napoli’s left chain normally completes 50% more passes per match than the right-chain (Hysaj – Allan – Callejon): 225 passes vs 147. What normally Napoli does is, indeed, manouvring the ball from the left and look for Callejon’s fast cuts from the right, inspiring Insigne’s throughballs or crosses.

Chart 6: Napoli’s lineup and “left chain”

Right-wing driven attacks: Marseille

Marseille, playing in the French Ligue 1, really stands out as the European team attacking the most from the right wing. Marseille use a 4-2-3-1 formation, with the right chain represented by Sakai, Anguissa and Thauvin. They exploit the corridor on “la droite” 47% of the times. Why is that? It has mainly to do with the influence of one player: Florian Thauvin (to whom we will dedicate an ad-hoc post pretty soon).

Mainz 05 2021 Kitsempty Spaces The Blog Archive

Thauvin has already scored 16 times and provided 10 assists in the ongoing French Ligue 1. He makes 46 passes per 90 minutes, in line with his right-chain colleague Anguissa and 22% more than the Japanese right back Sakai. In total, Marseille’s right chain makes 128 passes per match, 11% more than the left chain, composed of Amavi, Luiz Gustavo and Ocampos. Moreover, the right chain provides 3.7 key passes per 90 minutes, two more than the left chain (1.7).

Chart 7: Florian Thauvin’s average heatmap in 2017/18

Central attacks: Hoffenheim

European teams attack way more from the flanks (37% of the times for each side), clearly because attacking from the central area of the pitch is more difficult: much less available space. That is why central attacks amount for one-quarter of total, on average.

There are a few teams well exceeding the 25% average: Chelsea, Bayern Munich and Mainz 05 attack from the central area around 31% of the times. The team using the central area the most, however, are Hoffenheim, currently seventh in the German Bundesliga, attacking 32% of the times from the centre.

This has to do with their tactical formation and approach: the young Julian Nagelsmann (30 years old, record-breaker in 2016 as the Bundesliga‘s youngest permanent head coach ever) uses a 3-1-4-2, with a high density in the central areas, exploiting fast counter-attacks. Furthermore, Hoffenheim shoot from out of box way more often than the other top German teams: 43% of the shots are taken outside the penalty area vs 35% average for the top six teams in the Bundesliga.

The 15-pass build-up rule

Ball possession, as Pep Guardiola explains in the book “Pep Confidential” (by Martí Perarnau), should not be done just for the sake of it. In the book, which describes the first year he coached Bayern Munich, Guardiola is quoted stressing over and over again how much he dislikes tiki-taka. Ball possession needs to be done with an ultimate objective in mind. He says: “It’s not possession or one-touch passing that matters, but the intention behind it. The percentage of possession a team has or the number of passes that a group or an individual makes is irrelevant in itself. What’s crucial is the reason they are doing these things, what they are aiming to achieve and what the team plans to do when they have the ball. That’s what matters!“.

This concept is underpinned by Manchester City’s stats regarding the area of the pitch they carry ball possession: Man City are, in fact, the team in Europe touching the ball in the final third the most.

In the book, Guardiola also explains the 15-pass build-up rule: “Having the ball is important if you are going for 15 consecutive passes in the middle of the field in order to maintain your shape, whilst at the same time upsetting the opposition’s organisation. How do you disorganise them? With fast, tight, focused passing as part of this 15-move sequence“.

Mainz 05 2021 Kitsempty Spaces The Blog Example

It almost sounds like the perfect description of what Napoli did in the goal against Cagliari. A patient, but fast, buildup made of one-touch or two-touch passes. Napoli’s players seem to know exactly where to find each other, until Cagliari are disorganised. Insigne finds space between the lines and Hamsik finalises it. Goal.

Credit: The data for this post were sourced from Foxsports and WhoScored.com; the line-ups were built with buildlineup.com; the heatmap is sourced from Wyscout.

For any query, comment or suggestion, do not hesitate to send us an email: research@soccerment.com.