The FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 is just around the corner, and football fans around the world are rubbing their hands together in anticipation. As one of the biggest sporting events on the global calendar, not only does the World Cup offer an incredible display of entertainment, but it also provides some excellent opportunities for sports betting. We look at three key statistics to keep an eye on when betting on football at the FIFA World Cup 2022.
Per Minute Statistics
When analyzing a football match, and trying to understand how a team may perform in the future, it’s tempting to look at the raw statistics of players.
However, simply counting something like goals scored, assists or shots on goal can be a misrepresentation of how effective a player actually is. For example, if a player often plays in excess of 80 minutes per match, by the end of the season, their raw stats will likely look relatively healthy. Another player, who only comes on for 10-15 minutes each game, but consistently generates an assist may not have statistics that appear as good, despite being much more impactful.
The best way to mitigate this is by looking at per minute statistics—how many goals, or shots, or assists, did a player make for every minute they were on the field? This quickly sorts out those who are getting a good return, from those who are simply putting in time.
Expected Goals
Recent years have seen significant advances in football statistics, with many aspects of the game catching up with the advanced statistical modelling of some American sports.
One such model that has been introduced is that of expected goals, or xG. This predictive modelling looks to assign a value to each shot taken, and instead of just counting raw shots, assigns a value to each shot taken based on the likelihood of it being a goal. Factors such as speed of attack, angle and body part used for the strike are all considerations.
Based on these values, teams are then given a defense and attack rating, which can be used to model how many goals each team is predicted to score when facing off against each other.
Shots on Goal
While shots on goal may not seem like an advanced statistic, given it is one of the first stats to be measured outside of actual goals, there is still incredible merit to the simplicity of this metric.
Sometimes the best approach is to get back to basics. Punters who use www.betting.com/ will testify to the fact that often the best bet to make is the simple, straightforward one. The same goes for statistics such as shots on goal. A clear positive correlation exists between the amount of times a team fires on the goal, and the amount of goals they score.
There’s no doubt that more nuances exist in football which a model such as xG attempts to navigate. However, sometimes simply computing clear statistics such as shots on goal is all that’s needed in order to understand a team’s form ahead of their next match.
