Tactical fouls are a polemic subject within football. Many view them as a valid defensive resource but there are plenty more who see them as a cynical exploitation of the rules.
They are also something that I find interesting to investigate from a data standpoint. Earlier this year, on our Spanish website, I analysed tactical fouls in La Liga; now, my attention turns to the Brasileirão, the top flight of Brazilian football.
This article is also available in Portuguese.
There are various ways to define a tactical foul, but for the purposes of this article the definition will be: fouls committed within five seconds of an open-play turnover. It’s an approximation, but I've checked it against video and it seems to cover the large majority of situations that could be classified as tactical fouls.
We’ll kick off with a scatter graph displaying the percentage of open-play turnovers that are followed by a foul within five seconds (x), and the percentage of those fouls that are carded (y).
There are a number of teams concentrated around the average of both axes, but also others located towards the extremities.
Of those, two that stand out are newly promoted teams: Criciúma, who commit a high number of tactical fouls but have the lowest carded rate of any team; and AC Goianiense, who commit less tactical fouls than the average but receive a card almost once every two times. That is usually suggestive of a team who turn to these fouls as an act of desperation, something that the video confirms.
But the focus of our analysis will be the two teams who commit the most and least tactical fouls, respectively, the two great rivals of Rio Grande do Sul: Internacional and Grêmio.
Internacional
Internacional are the team who commit the highest number of tactical fouls whilst receiving the second-lowest percentage of cards, a combination that suggests they are a team for whom tactical fouls form an organised part of their defensive strategy.
Their use of them has increased further since the departure of Eduardo Coudet and the arrival of Roger Machado as their new head coach in July. No combination of team and coach this season has registered a higher percentage of tactical fouls (10.56%) or a lower percentage of cards (12.82%) than that of Internacional and Machado.
And it seems to be a characteristic of Machado’s teams. He started the season at the helm of Juventude; since his departure, they are committing far fewer of these fouls.
The footage of Internacional’s tactical fouls under Machado reinforces the impression that it is a coordinated strategy. These are not desperate lunges. In fact, the majority are more or less inoffensive: little nicks and tugs, most often in the immediate aftermath of the turnover.
Since Machado took over, only Atlético Mineiro have played with a higher defensive line than Internacional, while O Colorado have also been one of the most aggressive teams in trying to regain possession, two points that both promote and facilitate the use of tactical fouls.
That can be further appreciated if we visualise the areas in which they commit these fouls and note that the majority of the players most often responsible for them have attacking roles within the team.
Grêmio
At the other extreme of the graph, we find Renato Gaúcho’s Grêmio, by far the team with the lowest number of tactical fouls: 5.16%; less than two per match.
That doesn’t necessarily indicate a weakness on their part. It seems to be more a function of the style of play of a team that is below the league average in terms of both the height of their defensive line and the aggressiveness with which they attempt to win back the ball. They are far less proactive than Internacional, prioritising the preservation of their defensive structure over quickly regaining possession.
The fact that they are one of the teams who give up the fewest expected goals (xG) in the 15 seconds following an open-play turnover offers confirmation that defensive transitions are not a weak point.
It is a style of play that similarly to that of Machado seems to be characteristic of Gaúcho and his teams. In 2022, both of them had a spell on the bench of a Grêmio team then in Serie B, and there was a clear contrast in the numbers.
With Machado, the team committed a tactical foul 7.35% of the time; with Gaúcho, 6.05%, the lowest figure of any combination of team and coach that season.
Last season, back in the top flight, Grêmio recorded the fifth-lowest percentage of tactical fouls in the league (7.13%), something that has decreased further this season in parallel with an improvement in their defensive metrics, both in transition and overall. They now seem to be playing in a manner much closer to Gaúcho’s ideal.
Referees: Strict or Lenient with Tactical Fouls?
To conclude the analysis, we can take a look at the data from another perspective to pull out a key piece of information for clubs preparing for upcoming matches: the referees that are most strict and most lenient when dealing with tactical fouls.
Are there referees who more frequently produce a card following one of these fouls?
Even with the understanding that the distribution of matches and teams adjudicated by each referee is uneven and could, therefore, influence the results, it seems like a pretty large range of percentages.
Felipe Fernandes de Lima is the strictest in terms of the percentage of these fouls that he cards, and he is also the referee who most often plays an advantage following an attempted tactical foul. That makes him the ideal referee if your opponent commits a high number of tactical fouls.
At the other end of the chart, Gustavo Ervino Bauermann pulls out a card less than twice as often as Fernandes de Lima, and he is also one of the referees who least often plays an advantage, making him the worst possible referee if tactical fouls form a key part of the defensive strategy of your opponent.
