Six from six: De Giglio and Vlietstra lift Bayern’s figures
FC Bayern München have won all six games with Niccolò De Giglio and Sil Vlietstra together, scoring more and conceding less than when either is absent.
Six games, six wins. FC Bayern München’s season so far has a clear statistical split: with Niccolò De Giglio and Sil Vlietstra paired as strike partners, Bayern score 2.7 goals a game and concede 0.2. Without one of them, across 30 games, the rates are 1.6 scored and 0.6 conceded. The partnership is strong; the arithmetic is not shy about saying so.
The six matches together have brought a 6-0-0 record. The other 30 have produced 20 wins, five draws and five defeats. That makes the contrast more than a scoring quirk: Bayern have won every game with the pair, while they have dropped points in a third of the games without one. The sample with both is smaller, by a factor of five, but its perfect return is still the sort of detail that tends to stay in a team’s conversation.
The partnership figures show a higher scoring rate and a lower rate of goals conceded. In football, an argument can be made with less.
De Giglio, 36, has been at Bayern since 2048, having moved from 1. FC Köln for £68.1m. The Italian can come deeper to collect the ball, a useful variation for a pair whose value is measured in more than the goals column. Vlietstra arrived from sc Heerenveen in January 2060 for £64.6m.
On Saturday, they beat DSC Arminia Bielefeld 5-1 in the Bundesliga. Bayern have won eight league games in a row and are unbeaten in 12; their league record is 21 wins, three draws and three defeats from 27 games, worth 66 points. That result belongs to the league, not to the six-game partnership split as presented here; the figures describe the season’s games with and without one of the pair, not a separate league table.
On 17 March, Bayern’s continental defeat was part of a German week without a win, and the club had work to do on Wednesday. It is a different competition and a different measure. The partnership figures offer no European answer, but they do offer a sturdy domestic-season case for keeping two strike partners together when available.
Six out of six is the perfect part. The more telling number may be 0.2: Bayern’s goals conceded per game with both in the side, against 0.6 without one.