on average, players had the ball for a total of 53.4 seconds and ran 191 metres with it during the course of a match. To put these numbers in perspective, the time – less than a minute – that the average player spent with the ball made up only about 1 per cent of the time he spent on the pitch. The numbers are also striking if you consider that the total distance covered by the average player in a match is around eleven kilometres – so running with the ball made up about 1.5 per cent of the total distance each one covered.
