Was he trying to score, or just to cross the ball? FIFA thinks the latter, but Opta thinks the former. match, DeAndre Yedlin kicked the ball well wide of goal as the U.S. 1 Remove blocked shots, though, and the discrepancies drop to 4 percent and 8 percent, respectively.Īnd what about a ball crossed in the box near the goalie - does it count as a shot or a cross? In the 120th minute of the Belgium-U.S. Through the round of 16, FIFA’s official match stats - which are being collected by the Italian company Deltatre - included 68 percent more shots on target than Prozone’s, and 74 percent more than Opta’s. That disagreement is responsible for the bulk of the numbers mismatch. And the disputes are proxy battles for soccer’s more philosophical debates: If a shot is deflected in a forest of defenders, was it on target?Īccording to World Cup organizer FIFA, it was but according to Opta and Prozone, two of the companies that employ analysts to log every match of the tournament and provide data for media coverage, it wasn’t. Some teams base tactics and personnel decisions partly on stats. Advanced analyses of the sport, such as my colleague Benjamin Morris’s magnum opus on Lionel Messi this week, rely on match loggers for shot counts and characteristics. Sometimes their counts have differed by as much as two or three.Įven small discrepancies like these have repercussions beyond mere trivia. For every one of the 58 games so far, the companies can’t quite get their stories straight. At least three major soccer stats companies are logging every match, and they have yet to all agree on each team’s number of shots and shots on goal. Twitter account of the soccer stats company Opta, said it was the 32nd.Īt the World Cup, shots are in the eye of the beholder.
ESPN’s Stats & Information Group tweeted that Belgium had scored on its 31st shot of the day. It depends on which Twitter account you follow. Finally, after 31 shots, the Belgians had broken through. World Cup match, Belgium’s Kevin De Bruyne took a pass in the box, dribbled to his right and hooked the ball into the left side of the net.
In the third minute of added extra time in Tuesday’s Belgium-U.S.
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