Football (soccer) is a team sport where goals are scored extremely rarely. Comparing it to other disciplines like basketball, handball or even ice hockey, where points are scored, you can see that a single goal has much more value and can sometimes, even be enough for victory. What are the key stats regarding to the offensive plays to make you read the game better?

Table 1: Number of points / goals in the match. Source: The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know about Football Is Wrong; Chris Anderson and David Sally; Viking; 384 pp.; 30 May 2013;

Because goals in football are scored so rarely, predicting the final result or even the easier task: who will win, is very difficult. Fortunately, there are many other statistics in football, and focusing on the key stats, will allow you to understand football better, and be more able to predict the final result. What are these key stats? We invite you to read more.

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DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ATTACKS AND DANGEROUS ATTACKS

Fundamentally, any kind of movement with the ball towards an opponent’s goal could be classed as an attack. But when can it be considered that the attack is dangerous and creates a real threat? On the football pitch we can identify an area and call it the danger zone. This is the area from where most goals are scored. Simple put – in and around the penalty area.

When the attacking team comes into this zone with the ball, we can definitely say that such an attack is dangerous. The more often a team attacks in this area during a match,  it will have a greater chance of scoring a goal.

At the World Cup 2018 in Russia, 80% of goals were scored from the danger zone.

Dangerous attacks can be clearly seen with a graphical presentation when using our solutions. These can be easily found by clicking on the statistics’ tab.

EFFECTIVNESS OF SHOTS

Theoretically, the more a team shoots, the bigger the chance of scoring a goal is. However, how many times have we met with a situation, when one team is attacking for most of the match and it “beats it’s head against the wall”, shooting on goal time after time with no positive result, while the opponents have just one attempt, one shot on target and they are winning the match 1:0? Conclusion is that it’s not only the number of shots matters, but the effectiveness of them.

In STATSCORE’s ScoutsFeed, we provide data for up to 5 types of shots: on target, off target, woodwork, blocked and saved. You can also see the total amount of all shots and by checking the number of accurate shots in relation to all shots taken, you can analyze which team produces shots of the highest quality. If you want to, you can do even more searching and check the last few matches, to see how many shots on target a team needs to score a goal.

AMOUNT OF CORNERS

A kind of continuation for the analysis of the quality of attacks and shots can be the number of corner kicks won by a team. The  fact of winning a corner kick, indicates that the attacking team just had a shot on target or at least a dangerous attack. What’s more, corner kicks, could be another great opportunity to score a goal.

A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY

Both before and during the match it’s worth finding out what form the teams currently have and what the results were in previous matches between the two teams playing. Very often teams playing in the same league have a rich history of matches against each other. When comparing them in this way, we call the statistic, the head to head (H2H). You can find a lot of very interesting information with this type of analysis in our LivematchPro widget.

THREAT FROM THE FREE KICKS

Free kicks are one of the most dangerous set pieces in a match if they are taken from sufficiently close distance and by the right person. We have no doubts that a free kick taken by Cristiano Ronaldo from 30 meters, would be much more dangerous than a free kick from a closer distance, but in a match from one of the lower leagues. Thanks to our scouts, who are providing live coverage of the highest quality, we always have current information about dangerous free kick during the match. They are able to judge the degree of danger on an ongoing basis in the case of each free kick and they then choose the correct type of incident and you can see it clearly on our tracker in LivematchPro and ScoreFrame!

If you want to get in touch to find out more, just contact our Customer Success Team at cst@statscore.com. We will be more than happy to schedule a call and discuss how we can help your organization!