'Ronaldo does not feel pressure and is better than Neymar' according to scientific study

01 mar 2019

Cristiano Ronaldo has been showing his capabilities to the world of football for years and the Portuguese attacker was the subject of a study carried out by the Ku Leven University in Belgium, together with the company SciSports, whose results were presented in Boston at the Sloan Sports Analytics conference. The study was aimed at analyzing 7,000 games in seven different competitions to see how footballers react under pressure.

Jesse Davis, one of the protagonists of the project, explained: "We have developed a model that uses machine learning to estimate the amount of mental pressure experienced by the player in possession of the ball. The model analyzes how he acts under pressure. Suppose the game is blocked in the 89th minute and a player decides to try to score instead of passing. The model will analyze if it was a good decision, if the shot was well executed and how it affected the final result."

The parameters are obviously different, from home or away matches to how decisive the match is also in terms of both teams' seasons.

Researcher Jan Van Haaren added: "The ideal scenario is that they have stable performances, regardless of pressure. The analysis shows that Cristiano Ronaldo does not feel the pressure, his performances are constant, while Neymar makes worse decisions. Aguero follows Ronaldo's path, while Luis Suarez is more similar to Neymar."