Conference League: no one recovered more balls than Vertonghen

OTHER No player recovered more balls during last Conference League season than Jan Vertonghen. No fewer than 83 times he recovered the ball from an opponent. That is six times more than the number two in this list.


That second is Joseph Okumu of AA Gent with 77 ball conquests. Third is also a Gent player: Michael Ngadeu with 71. Andy Pelmard (Basel, 69) and Cristiano Biraghi (Fiorentina, 66) complete the top five.

Below is the overview of the ball conquests of Anderlecht's defenders. Between brackets the average per game and the average playing time per game. Also striking are the high figures of Wesley Hoedt and Hannes Delcroix. In terms of the number of ball conquests, they score better on average than Zeno Debast, even though the latter played more.

Jan Vertonghen: 83 (7.55 - 89 min)
Zeno Debast: 50 (5.0 - 92 mins)
Moussa N'Diaye: 38 (4.75 - 83 mins)
Wesley Hoedt: 35 (5.84 - 67 mins)
Michael Murillo: 33 (3.3 - 87 mins)
Hannes Delcroix: 17 (5.67 - 74 mins)
Killian Sardella: 17 (3.4 - 56 mins)
Noah Sadiki: 7 (2.34 - 45 mins)
Marco Kana: 4 (1.0 - 22 min)

Among the midfielders, UEFA does not give the figures in such detail. However, we do find that Amadou Diawara recovered 52 balls (in 11 games with an average of 78 playing minutes) and Kristian Arnstad 28 (in 11 games with an average of 63 playing minutes)

Source: © Internal source