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Soccer Stats Explained: Shots on Target, Key Passes, PPDA and Expected Assists

Shots on target, key passes, expected assists, PPDA, tackles and points per game: what each soccer stat counts, what it rewards and what it hides.

By Published 7 min read

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Key takeaways

  • Before comparing any two numbers, check that they come from the same provider's definitions — event counts are defined, not observed.
  • Treat counting stats such as tackles and shots as descriptions of what a player was asked to do, not as rankings of quality.
  • Use key passes and expected assists together: one counts chances created, the other estimates how good those passes were.
  • Read PPDA as pressing intensity in a chosen zone — lower means more aggressive — not as a measure of whether the press worked.
  • Compare teams with unequal fixtures by points per game, and remember it describes the past rather than predicting the rest of the season.

Every soccer (association football) statistic answers a narrower question than it seems to. A shot on target, a key pass or a tackle is an event that a data provider has defined and a coder has logged, so the first thing to know about any number is what exactly it counts. The second is what it rewards — and the third, which most stat lines never mention, is what it hides.

This guide takes the common numbers one at a time, using the published definitions of Opta, Stats Perform's event-data brand, and the original definition of PPDA. Definitions differ between providers, so treat these as one reference point rather than the only one.

The quick reference

Stat What it counts Rewards Hides
Shots on target Attempts that would have scored without a save or last-line block Getting the ball to goal How good the chances were
Big chances Situations where a player should reasonably be expected to score Chance quality, in a yes/no form Everything just below the threshold
Key passes Final passes to a team-mate who shoots without scoring Creating shots Whether the shots were any good
Expected assists (xA) Probability each completed pass becomes an assist Passing into dangerous areas Passes that were never completed
Tackles and interceptions Ball won by a legal challenge, or a pass read and cut out Defensive involvement Good positioning that prevents the need
PPDA Opponent passes per defensive action in a chosen zone Pressing intensity Whether the press succeeded
Points per game Points ÷ matches played Results, adjusted for fixtures played Which fixtures are still to come

Shooting numbers

Shots and shots on target

In Opta's definitions, a shot on target is "a deliberate attempt to score that is on target": goals, shots saved by the goalkeeper, and shots blocked by a last-line defender who stops the ball going in. A shot off target misses without a deflection pushing it wide, and a shot that hits the frame of the goal counts as off target unless the ball then goes in. Shots blocked by an outfield player with other defenders or the goalkeeper behind them are a separate category.

What it rewards: making the goalkeeper work. What it hides: quality. A 35-metre drive straight at the keeper and a close-range finish both count as one. If a site uses a different label — "shots on goal" is a common one — check its definition before comparing it with an Opta count.

Big chances

Opta's "big chance" is a situation where a player "should reasonably be expected to score", usually one-on-one or from very close range with a clear path to goal and little pressure; every penalty counts as one. It is a human judgment in a yes/no form, which makes it intuitive and coarse at the same time. Expected goals is the probabilistic version of the same idea, giving each shot a value between 0 and 1 rather than a tick, as Opta's xG explainer sets out.

Creating chances

Assists, key passes and chances created

Opta's assist is "the final touch from a teammate" that leads to a goal; a key pass is the final pass to a team-mate who shoots without scoring; and "chances created" is the two added together. All three depend on what the receiver does next. A perfect through ball to a striker who then miscontrols it creates nothing on the stat sheet.

Expected assists (xA)

Expected assists fix that dependency. Stats Perform's model gives every completed pass a value between 0 and 1 for how likely it is to become an assist, "regardless of whether the receiver takes a shot or not", using a logistic regression trained on hundreds of thousands of historical passes. What it rewards: passing into dangerous areas. What it hides: ambition that failed — an incomplete pass gets no value — and the receiver's movement that made the pass possible.

Progression

A "progressive pass" count only means something alongside its definition — how far forward a pass must move the ball to qualify — and that definition is the provider's choice. Opta's published sequence statistics measure the underlying idea directly: "progress" is the distance in metres the ball moved towards the opponent's goal line during a sequence of play. When you see a progressive-pass count, look for the threshold before you compare it with anything.

Defensive numbers

Tackles, interceptions, clearances and recoveries

Opta counts a tackle when a player wins the ball from an opponent in possession with a legal, ground-level challenge — "won" if their team keeps the ball, "lost" if it goes to an opponent. An interception is a pass read and cut out; a clearance gets the ball away from danger with no particular target; a ball recovery is the moment possession changes hands in open play.

What they reward: involvement. What they hide: context. A defender who is always in the right place may need to tackle less, and a team that has the ball most of the time offers fewer chances to make any of these actions. A high tackle count can describe a busy afternoon as easily as a good one.

PPDA: passes allowed per defensive action

PPDA comes from Colin Trainor, who floated the idea in an October 2013 piece and set out the zone-based version in a 2014 StatsBomb article. It divides the passes the opposing team makes by the defending team's defensive actions — tackles, interceptions, challenges and fouls — counting only events in a chosen zone. Trainor used the area beyond Opta's x = 40 line, which covers a team's attacking half and "a little bit" of its own half.

A worked example with invented numbers: if the opponents complete 180 passes in that zone and the defending team makes 20 defensive actions there, PPDA is 180 ÷ 20 = 9. Make 30 defensive actions against the same passes and it falls to 6. Lower means more intense pressing. Trainor described it as a descriptive measure of intensity — it says nothing about whether the press won the ball, and, as he noted, teams that wait for pressing triggers will not press all the time.

Clean sheets

A clean sheet is a match without conceding, which sounds like a defensive statistic and is really a team one. Clean sheets explained covers what it does and does not measure.

Points per game

Points per game is points divided by matches played. Thirty points from fifteen matches is 2.00; thirty-three from eighteen is about 1.83 — the second team is higher in the table and behind on rate. It is the fair way to compare teams with games in hand, as how soccer league tables work explains, but it describes results so far; remaining fixtures are not interchangeable. When teams finish level on points, goal difference and tiebreakers takes over.

Which numbers actually separate results?

Research can test which indicators line up with winning, within limits. A 2024 case study by Barthelemy and colleagues tracked one French Ligue 2 team over 71 matches across two seasons using Opta data. Two chance-quality measures separated wins from losses: expected goals against (0.70 on average in wins, 1.24 in losses) and expected goal chains against (5.38 against 10.92). The physical-running measures showed no meaningful association with results.

The authors are careful about the limits: one team, a second-tier league, male players only, and players who did not complete 90 minutes excluded. It is also, in their words, a descriptive, comparative analysis, so it shows an association rather than a cause. The useful lesson is narrower and still valuable: in that sample, the quality of chances a team allowed lined up with its results, and how much it ran did not.

A checklist for reading any stat line

  1. Whose definition? Event counts depend on the provider's rules.
  2. Per what? Per match, per 90 minutes, per possession or per season changes everything.
  3. Count or quality? Shots and key passes count; xG and xA estimate quality.
  4. Role or merit? A full-back's crosses and a holding midfielder's interceptions often reflect the job they were given.
  5. Sample size? A handful of matches can make any rate look extraordinary.

Numbers and squad building

Stat lines are tempting shortcuts when building a team, and they mislead in a specific way: they measure what a player did in someone else's system. Style fit over rating makes the case that the right player for a role beats the higher number, and the guide to soccer formations explains why the role decides which numbers a player will produce.

That is the logic Pro Football GM Club Soccer is built on: you draft an XI one position at a time, fit and style count alongside the ratings, and the simulated season is scored in wins, draws and losses by the game's own rules. Football Career Soccer XI Sim follows a fictional player chasing goals, assists and clean sheets across a career. Neither game forecasts real matches, and neither is affiliated with any league or data provider. Other numbers-and-tactics explainers are linked from the soccer hub; for the games, see sports career and GM games.

Good to know

Frequently asked questions

What counts as a shot on target?
In Opta's definitions, a shot on target is a deliberate attempt that would have gone in: goals, shots saved by the goalkeeper, and shots blocked by a last-line defender. A shot that hits the post or bar counts as off target unless the ball then goes in. If a site uses a different label, such as 'shots on goal', check whether it counts the same events.
What is a key pass?
Opta defines a key pass as the final pass to a team-mate who then has a shot without scoring. A pass that leads to a goal is an assist instead. Assists and key passes together make up 'chances created'.
What does PPDA mean?
Passes allowed per defensive action: the number of passes the opposing team makes divided by the number of defensive actions — tackles, interceptions, challenges and fouls — in a chosen area of the pitch. In the zone-based version Colin Trainor published in 2014, he counted events in the defending team's attacking half plus a little of its own half. A lower number means more aggressive pressing.
What are expected assists (xA)?
Expected assists estimate how likely a pass is to become an assist. In Stats Perform's model, every completed pass gets a value between 0 and 1, whether or not the receiver shoots, so a player is credited for creating good chances even when team-mates do not finish them.
How do you calculate points per game?
Divide points by matches played. Thirty points from fifteen matches is 2.00 per game; thirty-three from eighteen is about 1.83. It is a fair way to compare teams that have played different numbers of matches, but it describes results so far rather than forecasting the rest of a season.

Sources

  1. Opta Event Definitions (opens in a new tab)Stats Perform — accessed
  2. What Are Expected Assists (xA)? (opens in a new tab)Opta Analyst (Stats Perform) — accessed
  3. Defensive Metrics: Measuring the Intensity of a High Press (Colin Trainor, 2014) (opens in a new tab)StatsBomb, now hosted by Hudl — accessed
  4. Impact of Technical-Tactical and Physical Performance on the Match Outcome in Professional Soccer: A Case Study (Barthelemy et al., 2024) (opens in a new tab)Journal of Human Kinetics, via PubMed Central — accessed
  5. What Is Expected Goals (xG)? (opens in a new tab)Opta Analyst (Stats Perform) — accessed

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