Gidsel and Andersson: Füchse’s offensive masterminds

In the Machineseeker EHF Champions League there are many outstanding duos in offence, such as Dika Mem and Timothey N’guessan for Barça, Magdeburg’s Felix Claar and Gísli Kristjánsson, or the Costa Brothers for Sporting CP. But none of them are nearly as important for their team as Mathias Gidsel and Lasse Andersson are for Füchse Berlin.

Even though they have both missed one match so far they rank first and third in the non-penalty top scoring list with 77 and 71 goals. Even when penalties are included, they are third and sixth.

When it comes to the top scoring list per game, with seven goals per game Gidsel is by far the best scorer excluding seven-metre penalty shots, and even including penalties he is just 0.08 goals per game behind OTP Bank - PICK Szeged’s Mario Sostaric. Andersson (6.5 goals per game) is second without seven-metre penalties, and fourth with.

Unmatched offensive responsibility

It is therefore hardly surprising that the two are also at the forefront when it comes to offensive responsibility. This refers to the proportion of attacks ended by a throw, seven-metre penalty received or turnover out of all the team's attacks. Gidsel is second here with 23.7 per cent, just behind HC Eurofarm Pelister’s Filip Kuzmanovski on an almost identical percentage. Andersson ranks fourth with 21.9 per cent.

As a duo, however, nobody comes close to them. With a combined offensive responsibility of 45.6 per cent (almost half of Berlin’s attacks) they are 6.3 percentage points ahead of the second placed Pelister duo of Kuzmanovski and Oussama Hosni. That is a bigger difference than from place two to place six.

This is of course nothing new for them. Since Gidsel arrived in Berlin at the start of the 2022/23 season just in his first season he was second in offensive responsibility in the Bundesliga last season and this season he clearly ranks first. With 24.7 per cent his offensive responsibility in the Bundesliga is even slightly higher than in the Champions League.

In Gidsel’s first Bundesliga season, Jacob Holm was ahead of Andersson by 0.05 per cent. But since their compatriot left for Paris Saint-Germain Andersson’s offensive responsibility has increased significantly. Since then, he and Gidsel have dominated the offensive responsibility statistic as a duo in Germany, similar to the Champions League this season.

Different playing styles

Nevertheless, Andersson and Gidsel are very different in terms of their play. Unfortunately, more detailed data on playing style is only available for the Bundesliga, but it shows perfectly what type of players the two are.

Both are above all scorers, as their passes per non-penalty shot numbers show. Of all 111 backcourt players with at least 20 non-penalty throws, Andersson has the fifth lowest value with 11.6 passes per non-penalty shot. Gidsel is in 11th place with 12.8, meaning that both look for their own shots first and foremost, although they also have good assist values.

However, their differences are clearly shown by their average shooting distance. Anderson is clearly more of a shooter. Of the 111 backcourt players, he has the 38th-longest throwing distance at 7.8 metres, while Gidsel, who excels in one-on-one, shoots on average from more than one metre less at 6.7.

This is also how Gidsel's consistently outstanding shooting percentages come about. In the current Champions League season, of all 31 backcourt players with at least 60 non-penalty shots, the left-hander is once again the third most efficient shooter with 68.8 per cent. Andersson is not far behind, however. With 65.7 per cent, he ranks fifth. So the two Danes not only take on a lot of responsibility but are also very efficient.

The focus has paid off so far

Relying so heavily on their Danish duo in attack is paying off for the team from the German capital so far. Füchse have the fourth best offence in the Champions League adjusted to the strength of their opponents with 29.4 goals per 50 possessions.

Rating and comparing teams fairly in competitions such as the Champions League is complicated, as they do not all play against the same opponents and there are differences in the opponents’ quality. Rating teams by numbers that are adjusted for possessions played is significantly more meaningful than just the raw number of goals (conceded) because it makes the teams actually comparable since the raw number of goals is not only influenced by efficiency, but also by the number of possessions (whether a team and their opponents play rather fast or slow).

But to even out the aforementioned problems the numbers can also be adjusted for opponent strength. The adjustment is done by calculating how many goals (conceded) per 50 possessions would be expected for each game and team by the number of goals the opponents scored and conceded per 50 possessions in their other games. So-called “garbage time”, when the game is already decided, is also filtered out. The differences to the actual goals scored and conceded can then be added to the goals scored or conceded per 50 possessions to have this adjusted rating.

However, this strong focus on two players naturally also entails risks, especially if one of the two is unable to play. Gidsel missed Berlin’s game in Lisbon against Sporting CP, which they lost, while they won at home against Sporting when Andersson was missing.

In addition, in their loss at home against Paris Saint-Germain, Andersson was officially in the squad, but did not play. So, without one of them they have one win and two losses, while when they both play their record is six wins and just three losses. A lot therefore depends on both of them staying healthy for Füchse’s continued success.

More from data analyst Julian Rux can be found at Handballytics.de. There you can read his latest articles, in which he analyses all kinds of handball topics from new, data-based perspectives. You can also find him on Instagram, Facebook, X (Twitter) and WhatsApp Channels.

Photos © Heiko Voigt / foto-laechler.de