Tracking the unpredictability of ball movement could better rate a soccer team's performance

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2026-02-26 06:00

Australia; VIC; SA

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A soccer team with a couple of lucky plays can beat a dominant opposition due to the low-scoring nature of the game - making it a challenge to fully evaluate a team's performance. In an attempt to improve the statistics soccer has to work with, Australian researchers have investigated how the unpredictability of a team's ball movement could be used to judge how well they're performing. They developed a method to rate the unpredictability of ball movement using data from top-tier European leagues, and found in both men's and women's leagues, a higher unpredictability rating was linked to a higher chance of winning the game - though they note the data on women's games was less complete. In men's leagues, the researchers say they also found that teams that were unpredictable across the whole field had more success than those that were mostly unpredictable in key areas of the field, and teams that won tended to become more predictable toward the end of matches.