Pressing is about denying the switch, not counting the passes

The number of passes a defence allows says nothing about which passes it allowed, and only one of those matters.

A side lets its opponent make forty passes across the back and gets called passive. Another lets them make twelve and gets called aggressive. Depending on which twelve, the second side may have had a much worse afternoon.

Pass-counting metrics treat every completed pass as equivalent, which is a strange thing to do in a sport where the value of a pass varies by a factor of about a hundred. A ball rolled sideways between two centre backs standing in front of a set defence does nothing. A ball switched forty metres to a free full back on the opposite touchline does an enormous amount, because it moves the entire defensive block sideways at a speed it cannot match and produces a two against one before anybody has done anything clever.

So the press I want to measure is not how quickly the defence engages. It is whether the switch was available. Pressing sides that work properly are not really trying to win the ball with the first defender at all. They are trying to make the far side unreachable, by cutting the diagonal with the near forward and by trusting the far winger to hold a position where the receiver would be met on arrival. Win those and the opponent is confined to one half of the pitch, where you have numbers, and the ball comes to you eventually.

This is why a low pass-allowed figure can be produced by a badly organised team that fouls a lot and by a well organised one that suffocates the pitch, and the metric cannot tell you which you are watching. It is also why some very good defensive sides look statistically lazy. They are not chasing. They are standing in the passing lane that leads to the only pass they fear.

If I were building the number from scratch I would count attempted switches and completed switches per possession, weight them by how far the ball travelled laterally, and forget defensive actions entirely. It would be noisy. It would still tell me more about a pressing structure over ten matches than any ratio currently in circulation.

Let them pass it along the back forever.

Just never let them find the other touchline.