Assist rules make no sense

dove

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Pass a ball to your teammate in your own half, he then runs 50 meters and scores. Verdict: assist.




Pass a ball to your teammate 11 meters from goal, he shoots, it rebounds off goalkeeper, you score. Verdict: no assist.


How does this make any sense?
 
Somewhat agree. Like when Busquets got one for the mildest of taps to stop the ball for Messi to then dribble past half the Real Madrid players and score against Casillias
 
Bubba123 said:
Somewhat agree. Like when Busquets got one for the mildest of taps to stop the ball for Messi to then dribble past half the Real Madrid players and score against Casillias
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He dribbled past 1 player. Another tried chasing him. The rest stood around looking at him
 
assists aren't any measure of value

it just means the pass directly before a goal

so yeah i think it makes sense
 
dove said:
Pass a ball to your teammate in your own half, he then runs 50 meters and scores. Verdict: assist.




Pass a ball to your teammate 11 meters from goal, he shoots, it rebounds off goalkeeper, you score. Verdict: no assist.


How does this make any sense?
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Agree xA is a much better statistic and fairer reflection on how creative a player is then actual assists because it removes the striker from the equation.
 
Score a tap in from a rebound into an open goal. verdict: goal scored by that player.
vs
dribbling past the whole opposition team, rounding the keeper and then scissor kicking it into the top corner. verdict: goal scored by that player.



How does this make any sense?
 
So at exactly what range do you want the assist to stop? 46? 32? 18? You get my point. The assist rules are there for "ease of judgement " (for lack of a better term), even though that my end up looking quite arbitrary at times. The same sort of logic is applied to deflections. If your shot is on target and deflected by an opponent, it's not an own goal (I.E your goal). If it's deflected by a team mate, it's his goal.
 
B20 said:
Score a tap in from a rebound into an open goal. verdict: goal scored by that player.
vs
dribbling past the whole opposition team, rounding the keeper and then scissor kicking it into the top corner. verdict: goal scored by that player.



How does this make any sense?
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Thank you. It’s the exact same for goals.
 
B20 said:
Score a tap in from a rebound into an open goal. verdict: goal scored by that player.
vs
dribbling past the whole opposition team, rounding the keeper and then scissor kicking it into the top corner. verdict: goal scored by that player.



How does this make any sense?
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Quite.
 
You could make the same argument for goals scored. What happens if a goal bounces flukily in off a players arse, having been set up by a 90 yard overhead rabona from De Gea direct from a penalty at the other end? Could happen.
 
How do clean sheets make any sense?

Face 10 shots and save all of them, but then your teammate scores an own goal - no clean sheet.

Face no shots at all - clean sheet.

How is it fair!?
 
I agree, and I don’t think the argument that “all goals count the same so nothing means anything anyway” is particularly helpful.

For me, a pass to a player in a clear goal scoring position, which then leads to that player scoring (with no other attacking player touching the ball) - as happened with Rashford’s goal - should always count as an assist, as that fits in with what we usually think an assist means.

I’m not sure there’s a similarly simple way of restricting the definition of assists at the other end of the spectrum, like with that Messi goal people have mentioned.

But I think the important thing is that contributions like Sancho’s for Rashford’s goal are suitably recognised in the stats. Taking assists away from undeserving contributions is less important. Some assists, like some goals, are always going to be flukey.
 
Any goal or assist stats have always had a lot of asterisks to them. Obsessing over them has never made sense.
 
padr81 said:
Agree xA is a much better statistic and fairer reflection on how creative a player is then actual assists because it removes the striker from the equation.
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Showing how piss poor United have been at putting the ball in the back of the net Bruno's is the highest in the league at 17 xA, but he's only got 8 :lol:
 
I see the point of your post actually.
I might be remembering things incorrectly,

but it seems to me that when I was growing up (early 00's),
This Chelsea goal would count as a goal without any assistance in it.

Very weird that you pass to someone, and they still have to do tons of stuff on their own to create a chance for themselves and score it,
and you get an assist.

My mind tells me that your pass has to be the one creating a scoring chance, in order for it to be registered as an assist.

I already saw some posts saying "An assist doesn't imply added value to the goal" and I'm quite surprised.

@Gehrman I also had this goal in mind when I wrote my post; if they gave Busquets an assist for that, then it's stupid as feck.
 
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giorno said:
He dribbled past 1 player. Another tried chasing him. The rest stood around looking at him
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In my book defenders idly standing around and not even bothering may not be a dribble but has to count on Messi's merit column, not in his detriment as bad defending.

Not in the least bit bothered about the Messi-PRonaldo wars, but that's one of the things that puts me off "statso assessments". Some players accomplish things purely by owning the oppo mentally in such way that they give up entirely without it getting reflected in a metric.

So many other examples... Keano's leadership, Maradona raising the level of everyone around him... hard to measure but smacks you in the face if you ever followed the player.

Conversely, there was a time when Joe Allen I think and some other no mark midtable midfielder who joined the scousers were being statistically compared to Xavi on equal terms against all the very visible evidence to the contrary.
 
RenegadeOfFunk said:
For fantasy purposes, he'd have gotten an assist if someone else scored the penalty. But since he scored the penalty himself, he gets the goal but no assist.
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Ah, well that in itself is stupid.

I'd say if a player scores off 2 or 3 touches after a pass that's an assist. Anything more than that and they've done too much to make the pass responsible for their efforts.
 
DOTA said:
How are these calculated?
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Basically it's how likely the pass is to end in a goal based on the difficulty of the chance it leaves the striker.
A combination of type of pass and length of the pass also factor in.

As @Baxter said for example it shows Bruno has been putting folk in in good positions but united have been fluffing their lines. If United were clinical Bruno would have kdb like assist numbers.

Bruno has 17xa this season kdb 16.3. the difference being kdb has 16 assists cause the yeti doesn't miss, Bruno has 8.

For me that shows they've both been creating at a high level and Bruno carries the can for others.

When you look at actual assists the pl's top 4 are kdb, Salah, Saka and oliseh.

When you look at expected it's kdb, Bruno, trippier and taa.

The latter 4 excel more at creating big chances I feel.
 
Opta actually have a good model to track playmaking:

https://theanalyst.com/na/2021/03/what-are-expected-assists-xa/

Note: like with xG there's a bunch of different models out there. Fbref trackd xA and xAG, the latter of which is derived directly from xG and thus carries same of the same pitfalls as actual assists, while xA is probably the better metric for creativity but i'm not sure how well it calculates the value of passes like the Ziyech one in the OP which set up a 4on3 counter attack
 
duffer said:
Nerds ruining football.
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Definitely takes something away from the game, especially the analysts working for the clubs. Football used to be a lot more entertaining when players weren't worrying about their xG.

We'll probably see stat padding like in basketball soon and players will avoid shooting unless it's an open goal so they don't mess up their xG or conversion rates.
 
Care_de_Bobo said:
Definitely takes something away from the game, especially the analysts working for the clubs. Football used to be a lot more entertaining when players weren't worrying about their xG.

We'll probably see stat padding like in basketball soon and players will avoid shooting unless it's an open goal so they don't mess up their xG or conversion rates.
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Which players are worrying about their xG? Don’t think I’ve ever heard a player even mention xG never mind worrying about it.
 
I've often thought that we should maybe dole out two assists per goal in some cases, where the "pre-assist" pass was equally vital to the goal as the assist was, e.g - for Martial's goal yesterday both Sancho and Casemiro would get one.

But I guess that leads us into grey areas where a human has to make a call as to how vital the pre-assist pass was, and given that people bet on anything these days I'm sure there'd be huge concerns there.
 
Samid said:
Which players are worrying about their xG? Don’t think I’ve ever heard a player even mention xG never mind worrying about it.
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I wasn't being entirely serious, but some managers definitely worry about it and are you telling me that players don't care what their managers think? There are definitely less screamers than there used to be and I'm not sure whether players aren't as good as they used to be or they're being instructed not to take those shots on anymore. Probably the latter though.
 
What doesn’t make sense? You get an assist if you touched the ball before your team mate scores. Just that some assist are better than others…. Some assists are made by actually playing good passes through to your team mates. Or you could get an assist if you shoot it hits your team mate and then you score after it. I don’t agree with the assist rule in the MLS though, you have 2 players that get an assist which is weird.
 
Care_de_Bobo said:
Definitely takes something away from the game, especially the analysts working for the clubs. Football used to be a lot more entertaining when players weren't worrying about their xG.

We'll probably see stat padding like in basketball soon and players will avoid shooting unless it's an open goal so they don't mess up their xG or conversion rates.
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Two things: players(and managers) definitely worry about these advanced models, but not in the way you think. They're tracking tools, and as such good for improvement

As for stat padding, did you miss the last decade of football?
 
I think if someone let's a pass go by them to another teammate, thus juking the opposition, they should get the assist rather than the passmaker fellow
 
Is this a PL fantasy football thing? That game is basic as feck and could well do with an overhaul to the points system. At the very least, key passes and tackles in the final/last third would be a much improved addition to the game.

Outside of fantasy (and betting) I don't think anybody cares about assists.
 
giorno said:
Two things: players(and managers) definitely worry about these advanced models, but not in the way you think. They're tracking tools, and as such good for improvement

As for stat padding, did you miss the last decade of football?
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When you say improvement I think you mean efficiency, which in terms of entertainment I don't think is the same thing.

In regards to stat padding I wasn't ignoring the past decade, it's actually exactly what I'm talking about. Ronaldo was a great player who then turned into a great goalscorer and embodies this trend perfeclty. I'd rather watch the Ronaldo from 2006/07 than any other period of his career, but statistically was far superior later on. Doesn't mean the football was better to watch though.

When I think back on my favourite footballing memories I think about great moments rather than numbers or some record being broken. Rooney's first season at United wasn't exactly spectacular statistically, but I'll never forget a few of the goals he scored. I can barely remember, however, any of the goals he scored in his best goalscoring season for us. The player himself even said he didn't enjoy his football as much when he was at his most prolific.
 
I guess if you wanted to turn assists into a value which is only compromised of "meaningful" actions, you'd have to have somebody appraising them for value and making the appropriate judgment calls. It would also get fairly arbitrary at times, because while the examples given look arbitrary in appearence, they're not on definition - they're absolutely clear.

But presumably you'd have to have somebody saying how far out the pass is, measuring how progressive it was, measuring the time elapsed between the pass and the goal to see if the goal was truly assisted or an individual action. It would get kind of weird.
 
DJ_21 said:
What doesn’t make sense? You get an assist if you touched the ball before your team mate scores. Just that some assist are better than others…. Some assists are made by actually playing good passes through to your team mates. Or you could get an assist if you shoot it hits your team mate and then you score after it. I don’t agree with the assist rule in the MLS though, you have 2 players that get an assist which is weird.
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Feels right sometimes. Like the Martial goal that day, Casemiro deserves an assist for his pass to Sancho.
 
elmo said:
Feels right sometimes. Like the Martial goal that day, Casemiro deserves an assist for his pass to Sancho.
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Ye when you look at it like that. Another player though could have shot but it felt like sancho didn’t want to shoot that day, he had loads of opportunity’s but kept passing. He made the right choice for that one though to play it to martial.
 
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