What is more impressive: goals or assists?

OleBoiii

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Goalscorers have seemingly always been the most valued players. Whenever people discuss who the greatest player of all time is, it's mostly great goalscorers that are brought up. Sure, players like Messi have a lot of assists on top of all his goals, but this tends to be the secondary focus. As for the Ballon d'Or, goalscorers are always favored to win, with a few exceptions. But is scoring goals the most impressive or difficult skill in football?

Personally I think it goes like this: the average goal is more impressive than the average assist, but a great assist beats a great goal any day of the week. A great assist requires way more precision, timing, vision and intelligence than a great goal.
 

Pexbo

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Goals can be scored without assists.
Assists cannot be earned without goals.
 

Chipper

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Keeping a clean sheet is statistically much harder than scoring a goal. Mind you, that's the way we want it, and is why we get 3 points for a win instead of 2 like it used to be to encourage more goals. Although even when it was 2 it was still harder than scoring.
 

RedRonaldo

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Goals=celebration
Assist=appreciation

I don't know most people, but I watch football to celebrate.
 

harms

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I remember trying to argue that a pass usually requires more technical ability than a goal. With a goal you just need for the ball to cross the line — while with the pass you have to calculate both power and accuracy more precisely, as you need the ball not only to reach, but also to stop at the exact spot. Obviously I'm talking about a technically challenging passes like Scholes' diagonal and not about a simple 5-meters pass. Hence why brilliant passers of the ball can usually score at a good rate, but tons of prolific strikers struggle to make a difficult pass. The only thing is, you have 50 more chances to make a pass than to score a goal, so excelling in the latter is considered more important.

Personally, when we're talking best assists vs best goals, I assists more. But you can't deny that without the goal, those passes would be worthless (aside from their aesthetic value).
 

Pass and Move

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The question doesn't really make sense. One isn't more impressive than the other by definition. You could dribble round 10 players and play an exquisite through ball for a tap it, and it would be just as impressive as scoring a solo goal.

Overall though, due to a multitude of factors, assists are somewhat more difficult to achieve. A forward player scoring 20 in a season is less impressive than assisting 20 in a season.
 

baskinginthesun

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The question doesn't really make sense. One isn't more impressive than the other by definition. You could dribble round 10 players and play an exquisite through ball for a tap it, and it would be just as impressive as scoring a solo goal.

Overall though, due to a multitude of factors, assists are somewhat more difficult to achieve. A forward player scoring 20 in a season is less impressive than assisting 20 in a season.
Not according the golden boot award. This is held in higher value than the assist makers. But, we can argue this one all day.....


Even with the perfect pass, there is still more pressure to put the ball in the back of the net. It's also why players get remembered for missing "sitters," even though that was an inch perfect assist.
 

Blackwidow

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It is harder to assist 10 goals then to score them! It is not about one assist, but I really value players that produce them in high numbers, especially when it happens from open play.
 

Sky1981

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Assist if you're a football hipster and wanted to be different and look more intelect

Goals for the rest.

I find assist are just that, someone lucky enough to be the last before the goal is scored. For every 1 great assist there's 10 great goals.
 

Posh Red

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Not according the golden boot award. This is held in higher value than the assist makers. But, we can argue this one all day.....


Even with the perfect pass, there is still more pressure to put the ball in the back of the net. It's also why players get remembered for missing "sitters," even though that was an inch perfect assist.
The problem with that is, sometimes the pass before the assist is the most impressive piece of skill, so where do you draw the line.
 

Demyanenko_square_jaw

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Goals are unarguably more important, a great creative through ball will often be more technically challenging than a goal scored from inside the box, but more impressive regarding assist or goal is still a case by case thing. Plenty of assists are not challenging at all and only one because of the skill and poise of the scorer
 

charlenefan

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Goals obviously

You can get an easy assist for a 2 yard pass for someone to smash it in from 30 yards, realistically the only easy goal would be a tap from a cross so while the cross may be amazing it's still only a cross. You can have amazing defence splitting assists but that still requires someone to still beat the keeper
 

CodeRed

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One goal by one assist by the same player. Can you remember who?

I remembered it on a football bloopers tv episode a while back.

You might have to watch it on youtube. It was Dean Saunders and he did the assist by a throw in an scored the goal.
 

Tom Cato

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The question doesn't really make sense. One isn't more impressive than the other by definition. You could dribble round 10 players and play an exquisite through ball for a tap it, and it would be just as impressive as scoring a solo goal.

Overall though, due to a multitude of factors, assists are somewhat more difficult to achieve. A forward player scoring 20 in a season is less impressive than assisting 20 in a season.

It actually does. Because while I 100% agree that assists are very often a more impressive effort than the goal itself. History and the score sheet remembers the goalscorers. There are plenty of examples of player being lauded for scoring a hattrick for example. And at least one of the goals being a tap-in on the goalline that was awarded because someone on the team was being impossibly selfless. The goalscorer nearly always get the plaudits in the news.

So by the medias focus, the goals are very much more impressive. By the fans? Probably the same, but assists and contributing players are more favored.

Lionel Messi is an absolute assist machine, but nearly no one talks about that.
 

SAFMUTD

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There's a reason why the are so many awards to the top goalscorer like the golden boot but not so many to the top assistant.
 

OleBoiii

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Some of you are over-complicating things and some of you are over-simplifying it.

Regardless of what you do before the assist/goal(both cases can happen after dribbling 6-7 players etc), I'm thinking more about the actual execution. To achieve a great assist, you need to consider the weight of the pass, the speed of your teammate and have the ability to see the tiny passing lane at the perfect time. A great goal mainly becomes great from the work you do before the goal. Sure, a silky finish or a screamer is also impressive, but at the end of the day the goal doesn't move. And no matter how good the keeper is, you usually have a bigger target to hit. Timing also tends to be off less importance.

I feel that it's more normal to see mediocre players score screamers than to see mediocre players play a silky, genius pass that ends in a goal. So I stand by my opinion: an average goal is more impressive than an average assist. A great assist is more impressive than a great goal.
 

Gringo

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errr goals... You don't score with assists. In other words, you can create all you want but if its not being converted they're meaningless.
 

Sandikan

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A striker is judged on goals.
Getting assists is lovely and that, but goals is what it's all about.
 

Sandikan

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errr goals... You don't score with assists. In other words, you can create all you want but if its not being converted they're meaningless.
Something is only an assist if there's a goal scored.
Otherwise it's merely a chance created. Which is a stat some people are interested by , but not what the opening poster meant.
 

giorno

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Let us celebrate the greatest assist of all time

 

Gehrman

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This thread needs more Iniesta assists video.
It's to forget how good iniesta was. He also based his game on my favourite danish footballer of all time Michael Laudrup known as the assist king.

His passing starts at 5 mins.