Goal Scoring

2014 Men's DIII Individual Goal Scoring Analysis

For all the thoughtless shouts of "shoot it," and the groans when a player misses a "sitter," or faces are grasped - "how could she miss that?!" there's some grim realities that the soccer community ought to come to grips with.

It's one thing to act in the above manners when a top pro like Messi or Mueller or RvP or Ronaldo miss seemingly easy chances...they're well-compensated to make sure they make the most of their chances.

However, in amateur football, it's not just a different situation, it's blatant disregard for the actual truth of the game, and mostly just a way of showing how uneducated one is.  Stupid sports fans by far outnumber the athletes who play the games!

Check this out:

The chart shows all the men who scored 13 or more goals in 2014...yup all 61 of them from some 406 teams - that's 4466 first eleven players, with 1.3% of those starters scoring 13 or more goals.  The chart shows goals on the vertical axis, and minutes per goal on the horizontal.  The size of the dot is representative of the team's total number of minutes played.  Notice the lone bright green dot?  That's national runner-up Wheaton (IL)...the 2014 champs (Tufts) aren't in this list.  They won the title with no player scoring 13 goals...nor 12...nor 11.  One guy had 10 goals, the rest of the team, even less.

Anyway, what's the takeaway?  Scoring goals is really frickin hard.  Shoot, of the 61 guys here, 4 are from the fun-n-gun team, St. Scholastica...a team that plays in a weak league and weak non-conference teams as well: the 93rd toughest schedule, but doesn't let that stop them from hanging 7's and 10's on opponents on a regular basis.

So we have 57 guys from teams that don't score 130 goals a year...167 players who scored 10 or more goals.  A total of not quite 4% of all starters (and there's lots of churn among starters, of course).  So if in 18 or so games, a kid knocks in 10 goals, he's in the top 5% of all goal scorers.  Nick another 3 free kicks, deflections or other lucky bounce, and he's elevated to the top 1.5% of all players.

Stark stuff...but gives some context to the very special nature of a goal.  And it hints at the challenges awaiting youth players who transition to the college level: scoring bunches of goals at the prestigious East Jesus Nowhere Invitational Classic just doesn't translate to the college level.  The lowest college level.