| Total Shots |
Shots (attempted) on the opposing goal, including shots that are not “on goal” |
(Liu et al., 2015), (Liu et al., 2016), (Alves et al., 2019) |
| Shots from Penalty Area |
Shots attempted from within the penalty box area |
(Wright et al., 2011), (Harrop and Nevill, 2014), (Liu et al., 2015) |
| Shots from Goal Box |
Shots attempted from within the goal box (“6-yard box”) |
(Yiannakos and Armatas, 2006), (Armatas and Yiannakos, 2010), (Wright et al., 2011) |
| Shots on Goal |
Shots on goal including goals. Excludes crossbar and goalpost contacts that do not lead to a goal |
(Clemente et al., 2015), (Liu et al., 2015), (Alves et al., 2019) |
| Shooting Efficiency |
The ratio of goals scored out of shots taken |
(Yue et al., 2014), (Rathke, 2017) |
| Penalty Box Entries |
An entry into the penalty area was defined by previous literature as an event that took place either when the team in possession of the ball passed it into the opponents’ penalty area (regardless of whether the pass was received by a teammate) or when a player in possession of the ball went into that area of the pitch. |
(Tenga et al., 2010), (Ruiz-Ruiz et al., 2013), (Gómez et al., 2012),(Kite and Nevill, 2017) |
| Ball Possession Metrics |
Duration of Possession in a Game: Sum off all times in ball possession of a team during a game |
(Acar et al., 2008), (Collet, 2013), (Casal et al., 2017) |
| Total Number of Passes In the Opponent’s Half: Completed passes within the offensive team prior to a) the ball going out of play; b) the ball touches a player of the opposing team (e.g. by means of a tackle, an intercepted pass or a shot being saved). A momentary touch that does not significantly change the direction of the ball is excluded; c) an infringement of the rules takes place (e.g. a player is off-side, or a foul is committed). |
(Harrop and Nevill, 2014), (Kite and Nevill, 2017) |
| Total Number of passes completed per game: The sum of all completed passes |
(Pena and Touchette, 2012) |
| Passing Networks: Networks are constructed from the observation of the ball exchange between players. Network nodes are players and links account for the number of passes between any two players of a team. |
(Pena and Touchette, 2012), (Grund, 2012; Gyarmati et al., 2014), (McHale and Relton, 2018) |
| Crosses |
A cross constitutes as a pass from the wide area of the pitch between the edge of the goal box and the sideline that travels into a more central area in the penalty box. |
(Taylor et al., 2008), (Lago-Peñas et al., 2010), (Mitrotasios and Armatas, 2014), (Sarmento et al., 2014) |
| Expected Goals |
Expected goals is a predictive model used to assess every shot, and the likelihood of scoring. A xG model computes for each chance (shoot on goal) the probability to score based on what we know about it (event-based variables). The higher the xG - with 1 being the maximum, as all probabilities range between 0 and 1, the higher the probability of scoring. |
(Lucey et al., 2014), (Ruiz et al., 2015), (Eggels and Pechenizkiy, 2016), (Rathke, 2017) |
