Scored Goals Profitability

In a difficult time for Football when some championships were canceled and others will soon be resumed with restrictions, Football Industry returns with new articles.

Goals are Football’s life, we all know it. In addition to the spectacle it provides, it allows clubs to accumulate points to achieve their goals, sporting or financial.

Depending on their involvement, the squads they have, their game culture, the success of their sporting and business strategies and the challenges caused by opponents, they present different volumes of scored goals and, in specific cases, score less than others but manage to obtain a significant number of points allowing them to achieve comfort throughout the seasons.

Football Industry analyzed this issue verifying the performance of 73 clubs that remained in the main divisions of Germany, Spain, France, England, Italy, and Portugal between the seasons 14/15 and 18/19.

At first sight, based on the clubs and period mentioned above, Liga NOS and Ligue 1 are the championships with the highest profitability of scored goals (each scored goal represents, on average, 1.10 obtained points) followed by Liga Santander and Serie A with 1.04, Premier League with 1.02 and Bundesliga with 0.95.

These results are mainly related with the lower average number of goals scored by Portuguese and French clubs in contrast to other championships, compared to the number of points that are obtained at the end of the season. Thus, as an example, in the last 5 seasons, on average, Portuguese clubs reached 47 points scoring 44 goals, while in Germany, clubs needed to score 49 goals to achieve 47 points.

Other data can also be analyzed to further define this reality, namely, the average number of shots per game and conversion rate (percentage of shots turned into goals). In this scope, considering seasons 16/17, 17/18, and 18/19, Liga NOS has the lowest average number of shots per game, the same as Liga Santander (12.1), with Serie A having the highest value (13.4). However, Liga NOS has the highest conversion rate (11.5%) followed by Bundesliga (11.4%). Nevertheless, it is important to note that when we remove SL Benfica, FC Porto and Sporting CP from the analysis, both the number of shots per game and the conversion rate decrease to 11.3 and 9.9%, respectively.

A relationship between the points earned and conversion rates of the 73 clubs analyzed between 14/15 and 18/19, allows the observation of clubs global behavior, followed by its individual analysis compared to a prediction of its performance.

Thus, we present below a ranking of the 73 clubs according to their ability to turn their scored goals into points. We found that clubs like Nantes, Atlético de Madrid, and Juventus achieved a better average number of points than expected due to the conversion rate they showed and the relationship shown in the graph above.

Nantes:

• Average number of points between 14/15 and 18/19: 49
• Average conversion rate between 14/15 and 18/19: 7.9%
• Expected average number of points between 14/15 and 18/19: 42
• Result: 7 points higher than expected

Atlético de Madrid:

• Average number of points between 14/15 and 18/19: 80
• Average conversion rate between 14/15 and 18/19: 13.8%
• Expected average number of points between 14/15 and 18/19: 72
• Result: 8 points higher than expected

Juventus:

• Average number of points between 14/15 and 18/19: 91
• Average conversion rate between 14/15 and 18/19: 12.9%
• Expected average number of points between 14/15 and 18/19: 67
• Result: 24 points higher than expected