An Expected Goals on Target (xGOT) Metric as a New Metric for Analyzing Elite Soccer Player Performance

Anselmo Ruiz- de-Alarcón-Quintero and Blanca De-la-Cruz-Torres ()
Additional contact information
Anselmo Ruiz- de-Alarcón-Quintero: Football & Handball Analyst, Street nº 12B, Office 6, Gines, 41960 Seville, Spain
Blanca De-la-Cruz-Torres: Department of Physiotherapy, University of Seville, c/Avicena s/n, 41009 Seville, Spain

Data, 2024, vol. 9, issue 9, 1-9

Abstract: Introduction: Football analysis is an applied research area that has seen a huge upsurge in recent years. More complex analysis to understand the soccer players’ or teams’ performances during matches is required. The objective of this study was to prove the usefulness of the expected goals on target (xGOT) metric, as a good indicator of a soccer team’s performance in professional Spanish football leagues, both in the women’s and men’s categories. Method: The data for the Spanish teams were collected from the statistical website Football Reference. The 2023/24 season was analyzed for Spanish leagues, both in the women’s and men’s categories (LigaF and LaLiga, respectively). For all teams, the following variables were calculated: goals, possession value (PV), expected goals (xG) and xGOT. All data obtained for each variable were normalized by match (90 min). A descriptive and correlational statistical analysis was carried out. Results: In the men’s league, this study found a high correlation between goals per match and xGOT (R 2 = 0.9248) while in the women’s league, there was a high correlation between goals per match (R 2 = 0.9820) and xG and between goals per match and xGOT (R 2 = 0.9574). Conclusions: In the LaLiga, the xGOT was the best metric that represented the match result while in the LigaF, the xG and the xGOT were the best metrics that represented the match score.

Keywords: sports analytics; soccer; expected goals on target; performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C8 C80 C81 C82 C83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2306-5729/9/9/102/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2306-5729/9/9/102/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jdataj:v:9:y:2024:i:9:p:102-:d:1466264

Access Statistics for this article

Data is currently edited by Ms. Cecilia Yang

More articles in Data from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().