Welcome to the Wednesday Q&A series, where we focus on one particular topic – today's being expected goals – and ask you to react, share, and discuss in the comments section. However, feel free to ask about anything game-related (MLS, USL, NASL, USMNT, CanMNT, etc.) over the next several hours.
You may have seen today's exchange between ESPN FC's Craig Burley and Gabriele Marcotti, in which they debate the relevance and value of expected goals -- which should not, in the least, be a controversial stat.
Yet somehow it is, and somehow it needs to be justified to the public at large. With that in mind, here is the best expected goals explainer I've ever seen:
That's it. "Expected goals" is looking at a shot chart and saying "we're not getting enough happening in the box." It's taking data and using it to make soccer better, much in the same way that data has ushered in a new golden age for the NBA (we're in the best era since the mid-1980s, or maybe ever). The fact that data collection and analysis has crystallized what, before, was only left to the eye test is progress, not some sort of devaluation of in-game knowhow and experience.
There is also this quote from Lord Kelvin:
I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.
Don't be afraid of science, folks. The beautiful game can survive it, I promise.
Ok folks, thanks for keeping me company! See you next week.
