Over the on the Haiti post-game grumbling threads in USA Men, the old -- I dunno -- complaint? about the USA not taking long distance shots has once again surface. This has always seemed to me a red-herring, and doesn't take into account the realities of the way the modern game is now played. Here is my theory about why so few shots are taken from outside the area. Can this theory be supported by statisical analysis? ************************ The lines on the field are there for a reason which is why there are so few of them. The penalty area is THE danger area, and that's where you want to be when you shoot. I can't remember the exact numbers, but I believe around 8 out of 10 goals are scored inside the penalty area. Shooting from outside the area increases the odds of NOT scoring. Run of play goals are scored primarily when you have --numbers up situations, where working close in combinations can wrong-foot the keepr. --front runners put through so they get behind the defense --balls re-directed inside the area to take advantage of a keeper in a vulnerable position. --deflected saves, resulting from dangerous free kicks/set pieces, or close-in shots that can't be handled cleanly. Run of play shots from outside the area have inherent disadvantages. --They are more likely to be deflected by marking defenders, since defenders in almost all such instances are behind the ball. Deflections might occur all the way back into midfield at times, triggering counterattacks. --They are more easily caught by the keeper since he has a longer time to react --They are more likely to be off frame because (a) they are more likely to be one-timers since the sliver of space to shoot is often closed down quickly and (b) longer shots have a wider directional "arc" of possible vectors outside the goal mouth(Trig, part one.) --Shots from the top of the area SHOULD be taken between the edges of the penalty arc so you have the maximum amount of goal mouth exposed. (Trig, part II). This is the area of toughest marking, making such shots difficult to get off, and therefore rare. That's not to say you should NEVER shoot from outside the area...there's a time and a place for it. But the infrequency of such shots is appropriate give the nature of packed modern defenses.
As a kind of aside, what about shots that become deflections and rebounds, which then are put in? Oxymoronic perhaps, but think of it as a cross from the front? Then that train of thought lead to the question whether crossing the ball was overemphasized. As to where I'm going with this, I don't know.
Sorry I missed this for so long, Karl. I don't have a direct response to your questions - I think they're a little too hard to answer so easily. I think there's a chance that long-range shots, although they have a pretty low chance of going in, makes it either easier to get off closer shots and/or make closer shots more likely to go in (because the defense has to watch out for long-range shots). Although this doesn't answer that problem, I think a good place to start with answering this question would be soccernet's gamecasts, which record where a shot was taken, who it was taken by, and whether or not it went in. It would certainly be a good way of determining what kind of a percentage you should expect from various shots. I tried to record some of these things, but got hung up on how I should classify shots - maybe somebody else can think of a good way.
I think it'd be smart to draw a grid on a transparency sheet and use that record the X and Y coordinates of the square in which a shot was taken. Then you could do the slicing and dicing later, figuring out things in terms of shot distance, angle, etc.
This is definitely a better idea than mine, but I'm not sure how you would make sure you were being consistent with your placement of the dots (the Gamecasts don't give you x or y coordinates)? It also seems like you would run out of room pretty quickly, do you define the coordinates and then keep a running tally?
Not sure if I'm being clear, so apologies if this is too pedantic. The idea isn't to mark up the transparency sheet; it's just to have a grid that lines up with the Gamecast's outline of the field. The actual recording of x- and y-coordinates would happen in an Excel spreadsheet, or some such thing.
Well, you probably aren't being too pedantic, but I still don't understand. Are you suggesting writing some kind of computer program? Where could one get access to such a grid?
Looking at the MatchCast for Arsenal-ManU, I see that there actually is a not-quite-perfect grid formed by the two tones of the field. It's probably good enough to use, anyway. I envision using these two tones to identify rows and columns on the field ... so data for this match is this: (At Arsenal end) col,row,outcome 0,6,off 0,8,goal 2,4,on 2,5,off 2,6,off 2,7,on 2,8,on 2,9,off 2,10,on 3,5,on 3,10,on 4,5,off 4,9,on (At ManU end) 0,8,off 1,6,off 1,6,on 2,4,off 2,6,off 2,6,on 2,8,off 2,8,on 2,9,on 3,4,on 3,5,on 3,9,off 4,2,on 4,6,on 4,8,goal A really ambitious thing would also be to record the shooters for every shot. You can then convert these row and column numbers into distances and angles from the center of the goal line.
One thing I would like to see is an analysis of whether or not teams that take more long-range shots (shots from outside the box) actually score on a higher percentage of their short-range shots (from inside the box). One of the most commonly-cited reasons for taking long-range shots is to "keep the defense honest." I'm especially interested in this because it's probably the only reason I've ever gotten any playing time myself.
Well that looks like a really good solution, Numerista. The initial reason I was doing this was in an attempt to resolve a discussion about shooting percentages of different positions - I wanted to see how much of that was simply a product of shot selection. So, obviously, I'll be doing that, although I'm afraid English players may be quite different from those in MLS.
Some figs. i unfortunately haven't got shot percentages for inside & outside the area,but these show the respective amounts of goals scored by each EPL team from shots inside & outside the box for the 2001-2002 season. .............goals from inside the box.....goals from outside. Arsenal............64..................................8 AVilla...............27.................................3 Blackburn.........29.................................14 Bolton.............20.................................12 Charlton..........24..................................3 Chelsea...........41.................................16 Derby..............25.................................4 Everton...........27..................................9 Fulham............21..................................6 Ipswich...........22..................................7 Leeds.............33..................................8 Leicester.........18..................................2 Liverpool.........46..................................9 ManU..............61................................12 Mbro...............21.................................5 Newcastle.......47..................................9 Soton.............27..................................4 Sunderland......15..................................6 Spurs..............32.................................6 West ham........30.................................8 Every team seems to be scoring at least 10% of their goals with their feet from outside the box. T
Thanks for providing on this info, tachyon -- you wouldn't happen to have data for goals allowed from outside the box, would you?
Hi Numerista, EPL 2001-2002. ..........goals allowed inside the box.....goals allowed outside. Arsenal............19..................................7 AVilla...............33.................................5 Blackburn.........36.................................7 Bolton.............33.................................11 Charlton..........32..................................7 Chelsea...........22..................................6 Derby..............42.................................14 Everton...........36..................................8 Fulham............33..................................6 Ipswich...........43..................................6 Leeds.............22..................................4 Leicester.........38..................................9 Liverpool.........22..................................2 ManU..............24.................................9 Mbro...............32.................................7 Newcastle.......32..................................9 Soton.............34..................................9 Sunderland......27..................................8 Spurs..............31.................................10 West ham........39.................................7 T1
Thanks much ... at a quick glance, it looks like defense and goalkeeping don't play much of a role in these numbers.
All I do is correlations now, it seems, but I get -.21 between goals allowed and percent of outside the box goals. Which means that teams that allow more goals have fewer (proportionally) being scored from outside - which really isn't surprising at all, and implies that one problem with poor defenses is that allow too many opportunities from close in.
From the 2003 MLS Playoff Guide, which, unfortunately didn't contain the same stats for the Crew and the Burn, who didn't make the playoffs: Goals Scored Team...........Gls. IG...Pct.....IP....Pct....OP...Pct. New England....55...10..18.2%....37...67.3%....8..14.5% Chicago........53....9..17.0%....35...66.0%....8..15.1% Kansas City....48...10..20.8%....30...62.5%....8..16.7% San Jose.......45...14..31.1%....27...60.0%....4...8.9% Colorado.......40....5..12.5%....30...75.0%....5..12.5% MetroStars.....40....7..17.5%....30...75.0%....3...7.5% DC United......38....9..23.7%....24...63.2%....5..13.2% Los Angeles....35....6..17.1%....21...60.0%....8..22.9% TOTALS........354...70..19.8%...234...66.1%...49..13.8% Goals Allowed Team...........Gls. IG...Pct.....IP...Pct.....OP...Pct. San Jose.......35...11..31.4%....22...62.9%....2...5.7% Los Angeles....35....6..17.1%....21...60.0%....8..22.9% DC United......36...11..30.6%....20...55.6%....5..13.9% MetroStars.....40....5..12.5%....30...75.0%....5..12.5% Chicago........43....9..20.9%....30...69.8%....4...9.3% Kansas City....44...11..25.0%....25...56.8%....8..18.2% Colorado.......45...10..22.2%....33...73.3%....1...2.2% New England....47....8..17.0%....36...76.6%....3...6.4% TOTALS........325...71..21.8%...217...66.8%...36..11.1% Gls=Goals IG=Inside Goal Area IP=Inside Penalty Area OP=Outside Penalty Area Pct.=Percentage Missing: The 79 goals scored and 108 goals allowed by the Crew and the Burn. While it's not spelled out, I'm going to guess that Inside the Goal Area (IG) means inside the six, Inside the Penalty Area (IP) means between the six and the 18, and OP means everything outside the 18. We also don't have definitions of everything, but since the totals match for the teams, it must include own goals and PK's. Anyway, in this incomplete sample, we see only about 20% of goals coming from inside the six, about 66% coming from between the six and the 18, and the other 14% or so coming from outside the box. LA scored 23% of their goals from outside the box (granted, it was only 8, but that was the league-leading figure along with NE, CHI and KC), while the Metros scored just 7.5% of theirs from outside. All the teams we have data for scored between 60% (LA) and 75% (COL and MET) of their goals from inside the penalty area. I guess that makes sense - there's more room there. By the time you get to the real estate inside the six, somebody has hopefully put a body on you. And San Jose scored 31% of their goals from inside the 6, while Colorado scored just 12.5% in close. LA allowed 23% of their goals from outside, while Colorado allowed just 2% of theirs from outside (just 1). The Revs allowed 77% of their goals from inside the penalty area, while DC's 56% was the low figure. And the Quakes allowed 31.4% of their goals from in close, while the Metros allowed just 12.5%. I'm sure someone could take PK's and OG's out of the equation if they desired, but I'm tired. I hope I haven't done anything incorrectly. I don't know how useful this information is, but it seemed like it would be part of this particular discussion.
Yeah Kenn during your hiatus these numbers were discussed quite a bit. A damn shame that MLS doesn't provide them on more of a game by game basis, or at least all of the teams on a yearly one.
Nice catch, Chris. Incidentally, when relatively few goals are allowed, the ratio becomes very unstable ... for that reason, it's particularly interesting to see what happens when we omit Liverpool (fewest goals allowed *and* lowest outside-to-inside ratio). Without them, the correlation jumps to -0.42.
Hi Maxim, found the site totally by accident.I was doing a Google search on sabermetrics & though wouldn't it be cool if there was a soccer sabermetrics site... I've been formulating soccer event based odds for around ten years,ever since the range of betting markets increased exponentially.Whereas formerly you could only bet on win/draw/lose outcomes you suddenly found yourself able to bet on times of first goal,number of corners,total goals etc. If you wanted to bet you really needed to work out your own odds.So you either worked out a mathematical model,analysed data or reverse engineered the bookies odds.Hence the need to collect seemingly useless facts. T1
Thats phenominal. I'm so much of a dork with this stuff while we've been trying to develop this forum I specifically asked Huss to change the subtitle of this forum so that hopefully it'd come up under a search for "soccer and stats." It doesn't really but obviously we've done enough talk where some stuff does. That makes me tremendously pleased to know that we're reaching out to people off of bigsoccer.
Apparently MLS is putting all of that "where the goals came from" stuff in their weekly game guides that you can download from their site. So we can track it for all the teams.
yeah someone mentioned that the game guides were going to be in .pdf form but i didn't notice them on the site. that's great news though.
Where are these, kenn? I don't know if anyone noticed this, but it was posted by genpabloescobar in the resources thread. MSNBC is posting up seriously expanded boxscores, that include individualized C/P's, G, A, shots, sog, off, ck, fc, fs, yc, and rc's.
I noticed MSNBC doing that last year, I think. MLS Game Guides are downloadable from the game previews. There's a game preview page for each game right off the main page. Then on the top it says "Download the Game Guide." They're about 9 page PDFs and the first page lists the lineups and the goal scoring information. They're very useful.