Everybody knows the feeling: your team gives away a last-minute free kick at the edge of the box. A goal could cost you points or even worse: extra time.
How likely is it really to score a direct free kick?
I have looked through over 24,000 free kicks across the top European leagues and competitions to show you the spots a free kick is most promising and what the overall conversion rate is, i.e. how often do you actually score from such an opportunity.
To make this data more insightful I have split the pitch (or better half a pitch) into 100 equal sized boxes. If a free kick is taken inside on of these boxes I group the outcome together. Below you see a heat map plotted on top of a half pitch. The boxes with the deepest red colour have the highest conversion rates.
About half of the pitch remains green. For the 18 yard box the reason is obvious: there are no direct free kicks possible inside the box. On other parts of the pitch players don't usually opt for the direct free kick option. This does not mean that one or the other odd cross has found its way into the net. However usually these are not intended as direct shots and would lead to inflated conversion rates. I have therefore filtered out boxes with less than 30 direct free kick attempts.
The main result is not surprising: you want to have a free kick awarded not far outside the box, ideally towards the center of the goal.
I do not find clear evidence for the notion of being too close to goal. I keep hearing this comment on players attempting the Cristiano Ronaldo-type free kick which is struck with power and needs time to lower below the bar. Being closest to goal still seems the best option.
One thing that stands out to me is that there seems to be a bias towards the left half of the pitch, favouring right-footed players. My first intuition is that there are more right-footed players which also makes it more likely to have a good right-footed free kick-taker in your team. If the positions is more suited for a left-footed player, either the only lefty will take his chance or your default free kick-taker will take a hit being out his comfort zone.
Overall the conversion rate is at best a little above 10%, so a last-minute free kick may not seem as threatening any more.
I have looked through over 24,000 free kicks across the top European leagues and competitions to show you the spots a free kick is most promising and what the overall conversion rate is, i.e. how often do you actually score from such an opportunity.
To make this data more insightful I have split the pitch (or better half a pitch) into 100 equal sized boxes. If a free kick is taken inside on of these boxes I group the outcome together. Below you see a heat map plotted on top of a half pitch. The boxes with the deepest red colour have the highest conversion rates.
About half of the pitch remains green. For the 18 yard box the reason is obvious: there are no direct free kicks possible inside the box. On other parts of the pitch players don't usually opt for the direct free kick option. This does not mean that one or the other odd cross has found its way into the net. However usually these are not intended as direct shots and would lead to inflated conversion rates. I have therefore filtered out boxes with less than 30 direct free kick attempts.
The main result is not surprising: you want to have a free kick awarded not far outside the box, ideally towards the center of the goal.
I do not find clear evidence for the notion of being too close to goal. I keep hearing this comment on players attempting the Cristiano Ronaldo-type free kick which is struck with power and needs time to lower below the bar. Being closest to goal still seems the best option.
One thing that stands out to me is that there seems to be a bias towards the left half of the pitch, favouring right-footed players. My first intuition is that there are more right-footed players which also makes it more likely to have a good right-footed free kick-taker in your team. If the positions is more suited for a left-footed player, either the only lefty will take his chance or your default free kick-taker will take a hit being out his comfort zone.
Overall the conversion rate is at best a little above 10%, so a last-minute free kick may not seem as threatening any more.
What's the sources for free kick location ?
ReplyDeletePretty good job btw.
Charles
Geography Student in France.
Hi Charles, thanks for the feedback! The data is scraped from various football result sites. A good starting point is also this data set on kaggle: https://www.kaggle.com/hugomathien/soccer
Delete