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Which soccer league scores most goals?

The Bundesliga and La Liga have the highest average goals per game, with the Premier League a close third. Serie A is 4th, and Ligue 1 is last.

towardsdatascience.com - Which is the Most Exciting Soccer League in Europe?

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Which is the Most Exciting Soccer League in Europe?

Fundamentally, soccer is a simple game. You kickoff, play for 45 minutes at a stretch, take a 15 minute break, and play for 45 minutes more. But there can be substantial differences depending on where the game is played. For example: the English Premier League historically has had a reputation as a league that focuses on the physical aspects of the game at the expense of the more technical and tactical aspects, though this is changing more recently. Serie A, in Italy, has a reputation as the most tactical and defensive of the major European leagues.

In this post, I will dive into the data and analyze the differences between the leagues, with the goal to answer the following question: Which league is the most exciting to watch?

The Data

This Kaggle dataset provides granular information about 9000+ games from the five major European leagues: England, France, Spain, Italy, and Germany. It covers games played from the start of the 2011/12 season till midway through the 2016–17 season (till January 25th, 2017 to be precise). Ideally, I would have liked data that was more current, but I will work on getting that data after this analysis. I chose this dataset because it provides event-level data for each game, right down to shot attempts, bookings, and substitutions. With this level of detail, I can do a lot of analysis which I wouldn’t be able to do with a dataset that only goes down to the game level. This dataset is pretty evenly spread out among the five leagues with one exception: Germany. This is because the Bundesliga is the only league with 18 teams; every other league has 20. Having two fewer teams obviously results in fewer games being played every season. Another point: There are slightly more games from the Premier League than from Ligue 1, Serie A, and La Liga because it is the only league without a winter break. As this dataset ends in January 2017, the English teams would have played through the holiday period while the other leagues would have been off. The other leagues usually make up these games at the end of the season but this dataset doesn’t pick that up. The data is also evenly spread out over seasons, which is what you would expect. The 2016–17 season makes up only 9.7% of the dataset as opposed to the 18.1% of the other seasons because this dataset only covers until January 25th 2017.

Which league has the most goals?

For the majority of people, more goals = more excitement. So I will first look into the average goals scored per game in each of the leagues.

Average Goals Per Game

The Bundesliga’s average of 2.87 goals/game puts it a fair distance higher than the other leagues. Some of this overperformance may result from there being fewer games, as there are fewer teams in the league, but this is still a substantial difference. Ligue 1 in France has 2.52 goals/game which puts it squarely in last place. Before we give advantage Bundesliga on this count, let’s look at the distribution of the scoring, i.e. how concentrated are the goals to certain games. Are they spread out evenly or do a few games have a large percentage of the goals? This can have a big impact on a league’s watchability/excitement. For example it is reasonable to assume that the fewer goalless draws, the more exciting the league.

Distribution of goals scored in a game

What the above graphs show is the probabilities of each possible goal total in each league. So as an example, the graph shows that in Italy, there is a 17% chance that a game ends with 1 goal and a 15% chance that it ends in 4 goals. In Spain, there is a 15% chance that a game had 4 goals and a 7% chance that it has 5 goals.

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We can see that the distributions look pretty similar across the leagues. They each have an approximately normal distribution, with the most common outcome being either 2 or 3 goals scored in a game. One minor point of interest: the Premier League is the only league where it is more common for a game to have 3 goals than to have 2 goals, albeit only slightly more common. As the distributions above look similar to each other, we can say that there is no substantial difference among the leagues in terms of how concentrated the goals are across games.

Takeaways:

The Bundesliga and La Liga have the highest average goals per game, with the Premier League a close third. Serie A is 4th, and Ligue 1 is last.

Only 7–8% of games finish goalless, no matter the league.

Which league has the closest games?

Close games are tense, exciting, and stressful. They’re great. So let’s see the margin of victory for each league.

Average margin of victory, in goals, for each league

France, which had the lowest goals per game, actually has the closest games, with the margin of victory being 1.27 goals. So if you watch a Ligue 1 game, you’re likely to see slightly fewer goals but the game will usually be closer. So it’s not all doom-and-gloom for Ligue 1 fans. Italy is only slightly behind France, with a MoV 0.02 of goals. This difference is actually so slight that it is not statistically significant. The p-value from the Scipy stats f_oneway function is 0.49. This means that the difference in the margin of victory between France and Italy is likely to be just chance and not due to any fundamental difference between the leagues. Similarly, the P-value when comparing Spain and Germany is 0.66, so this difference is also not statistically significant. However, there is a significant difference between France/Italy and England and Spain/Germany.

Distribution of the margin of victory in a game

There doesn’t seem to be any significant differences among the leagues.

Takeaways:

For the closest games, watch Ligue 1 or Serie A. Their games are decided by ~1.3 goals. Bundesliga and La Liga have the greatest margin of victory at ~1.45 goals.

Which league has the most late goals?

A goal is a goal is a goal. But a goal scored in the dying embers of a game, when one team is desperately trying for an equalizer or winner, is even better. So let’s see which league gives you the most thrilling finishes. I’m going to define a late goal as one which is scored in the 75th minute or later. First order of business, not all games have the event-level data that I’ll need for this. The picture below shows the number of such games from each league. The vast majority of games without advanced stats are from the Premier League. I don’t think this should affect the analysis that much because I am more interested in the percentage of late goals, rather than the raw number, but I can’t say for sure. It would’ve definitely been ideal if I had these stats for all games but as it stands, I will do my analysis on those games for which I have this data.

Fraction of goals that are scored in 75th minute or later

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Ligue 1 has the highest percentage of late goals, well more than any other league. This was a slight surprise to me as I expected the Premier League to have the highest proportion of late goals, given its reputation as a fast and intense league. I am also interested in seeing how this changes if we include the final 5 minutes of the first half.

Goals scored in minutes 40–45 and 75+

When taking into account goals scored at the end of the first half, France still comes out on top. It also looks like Germany has relatively fewer goals scored in minutes 40–45. In the earlier graph, Germany and England were both hovering around 23%, but in this one, Germany is substantially behind England, 29.7% to more than 31%.

Takeaways:

Close to 1 out of every 4 goals (25%) in Ligue 1 is scored in the 75th minute or later

The Bundesliga has the lowest proportion of late goals at 22.75%.

The Bundesliga also has slightly fewer goals scored in minutes 40–45: 7% compared to 8% for the other leagues.

Which league has the least time between goals?

Finally, let’s look into which league has the most frequent goals. In other words, about how many minutes would you have to wait from one goal to the next. Obviously, the shorter the wait between goals, the more exciting the game is. The graph below shows the average time between goals in those games which have at least 2 goals.

Minutes between goals (in games with 2+ goals)

The Premier League comes out on top of this metric, the average game having slightly more than 22 minutes between goals. Ligue 1 games, on the other hand, go 24.5 minutes between goals. Note: For the above graph, I didn’t take into account those games which only had 1 goal. The notion of “time between goals” didn’t really work with those games. But to incorporate those games somehow, let’s look at the when the first goal of a game is scored. My assumption is that the less time you have to wait to see the first goal, the more exciting the game. Now an 89th minute goal can be just as exciting, if not more, than a 2nd minute goal, but I would think that a lot of viewers will get put off if there hasn’t been a goal in say the first 65–70 minutes. That is why I think an early goal can be important in figuring out which games, and by extension which league, can hold the viewer’s attention the most.

When is the first goal scored during a game?

As the above graph shows, the average Bundesliga game has its first goal scored at least a minute earlier than any other league, so if you want to see an early goal, Germany is the way to go.

Takeaways:

Bundesliga games have their first goal scored on average before any other league, and Ligue 1 after any other league.

Conclusion

If you want goals, La Liga and Bundesliga are the leagues to watch. If you want goals coming quick after one another, it’s the Premier League for you. If you want close games or games with late goal-scoring action, go for Ligue 1.

towardsdatascience.com - Which is the Most Exciting Soccer League in Europe?

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