Stats&Links: Miasanrot Awards Reader’s Choice

In the comments section below our ranking, the discussion was already heating up: That’s too harsh on Neuer. I’d have Lizarazu. Where’s Thomas Müller? Schweinsteiger’s been overrated. How does Scholl get into a top 15? So we gave you all the chance to choose your best players in Bayern’s history yourselves. Here is the result of the reader survey.

Reader's ranking	Name	Position	Average ranking	Miasanrot's ranking
1	Gerd Müller	Forward	1.62	1
2	Franz Beckenbauer	Defense	2.16	2
3	Philipp Lahm	Defense	4.46	3
4	Oliver Kahn	Goalkeeper	4.78	4
5	Karl-Heinz Rummenigge	Forward	6.46	5
6	Lothar Matthäus	Midfield	7.10	6
7	Bastian Schweinsteiger	Midfield	7.49	7
8	Arjen Robben	Forward	8.14	9
9	Paul Breitner	Midfield	8.94	8
10	Sepp Maier	Goalkeeper	9.82	11
11	Klaus Augenthaler	Defense	11.52	10
12	Franck Ribéry	Midfield	12.18	12
13	Manuel Neuer	Goalkeeper	12.49	13
14	Georg Schwarzenbeck	Defense	14.16	14
15	Thomas Müller	Forward	14.70	16
16	Mehmet Scholl	Midfield	14.71	15
17	Stefan Effenberg	Midfield	16.46	17
18	Franz Roth	Midfield	16.82	19
19	Uli Hoeneß	Forward	17.08	23
20	Michael Ballack	Mittelfeld	18.89	25

In total, 332 lists were sent back, giving a sufficiently good statistical basis for the results. Before the survey, twenty players were specified who then had to be put in order by the readers. The general selection could have been expanded arbitrarily, but too many players would have put off readers or the lower places might not have been filled in. A free selection wasn’t implemented because otherwise the results would have been too strenuous to collate.

That inevitably means that some deserving players, who some would have liked to see in their list, weren’t available. An unfortunate situation that is hopefully more understandable thanks to the above explanation.

Winners and losers

Now the votes have to be counted and the user list compared with the Miasanrot editorial list. The table shows the user list, with the average position in the user ranking as well as the original position in the Miasanrot ranking list shown too.

The first thing to note is that the user list doesn’t differ a great deal from the Miasanrot ranking list. No individual position of a player changed by more than one place. In total there were just three position changes in the top 15: Arjen Robben overtakes Paul Breitner and comes in eighth, Sepp Maier and Klaus Augenthaler swap places, Thomas Müller narrowly goes ahead of Mehmet Scholl into the top 15.

This congruency of the list of 15 experts and the order of over 300 readers also speaks for the balance in the choice of experts. Although individual expert lists varied more strongly from the end result, these were all important to find a good means of having widespread opinions.

It’s interesting that between Müller and Scholl the gap is only 0.01 points on average after over three hundred lists. Müller was voted into the top 15 by 125 readers, Scholl by just 106. In contrast, the readers see Robben clearly ahead of Breitner and Maier even more clearly ahead of Augenthaler.

The four other additional players – Effenberg, Roth, Ballack, Hoeneß – trail comparatively far behind the top 15. None was put in the top 15 more often than 60 times by the readers. Hoeneß with 57 votes got the most nominations. Only 15 users see Ballack as among the best Bayern players.

Here it should be mentioned that to a certain extent this is certainly due to the type of survey. In the survey the selection was already pre-sorted corresponding to the Miasanrot list. Particularly with tight decisions between specific players that can lead to a tendency not to change the pre-given order.

Curious details

A somewhat more detailed analysis shows that the distances between the players are in places rather different. In the Miasanrot rankings, for example, Philipp Lahm was comparatively far ahead of Oliver Kahn, while the two were only separated by 0.3 places on average among the readers. As a result Karl-Heinz Rummenigge trails far behind in fifth place in the user ranking list.

While in the Miasanrot list Lothar Matthäus and Bastian Schweinsteiger came out almost exactly the same down to the decimal points, the readers see the last German world player of the year more clearly ahead of the fußballgott. And that despite Schweinsteiger getting six nominations for the best Bayern player of all time.

Gerd Müller is the only player who is in the top 15 in all 332 user lists. A whole 218 times saw the Bomber listed as the best Bayern player. Following him are Beckenbauer (73x) and Lahm (15x). In total eleven players got votes as the best Bayern player. Among them, curiously, are also Ballack and Scholl.

The double double winner from 2005 and 2006 was, however, also put by far the most times in the twentieth and thus last position. A total of 21 users have Ballack there. Oddly enough, both Beckenbauer and Lahm got at least one vote for last place.

Links of the week

The Greatest Teams in Football History – Week Two: Bayern Munich (1967-1976) | Jack Capzizzi | The Special One

Callum Hudson-Odoi and the challenges of developing possible stars | Mike Goodman | StatsBomb

Bayern Munich’s James Rodríguez dilemma | Manuel Veth | Forbes

Can Franck Ribéry not have his gold-leaf steak and eat it? | Barney Ronay | The Guardian

Benjamin Pavard: FC Bayern’s Rebuild Is Just Getting Started | Manuel Veth | Forbes

Oliver Batista Meier: The next big Bayern player? | Tobias Hahn | Total Football Analysis

Current Miasanrot-Articles

The chase is on: Three Takeaways from 1899 Hoffenheim v FC Bayern | Rick

Telekom Cup 2019: Bayern wins title | Christopher | Dennis

Exclusive interview with David Krecidlo (U19) | Martin | Sam

Miasanrot Awards: Closure | Maurice | Sam

Telekom Cup 2019: Bayern wins title | Christopher | Dennis

Club Crawl: Rot-Weiss Brazil | Marc

Current Statistics and Visualizations