Shooting and goalkeepers response analysis in a professional football league

Objective

The main aim of this descriptive study was to analyze the situations in which goalkeepers find themselves when receiving shots, in order to design more specific training methods.

Method

A total of 2238 shots have been analyzed in 15 goalkeepers belonging to 10 different teams, from 179 matches during the 2019–2020 La Liga season (First Spanish Football Division).The study was divided by two parts. In the first one, all data was analyzed with no grouping, and the second was divided in 4 groups based on final team position when the competition was finished (Top, Middle High, Middle Low and Bottom).

Results

From all the shots obtained, information has been analyzed on: temporality, the most repeated actions by the strikers and goalkeepers, separating the actions by different situations (direction, number of contacts, game situation, cross…), and the areas of the field in which the actions occur.

Conclusions

1) First touch shots were the most dangerous given that the difficulty for defenders and goalkeepers to block and stop respectively; 2) The high percentage of deflected shots (17.6%) shows the importance of training them as they are difficult situations to analyze; 3) the more time the shooter spends preparing the shot, the more accurate it will be, but the more effective the goalkeeper's action will also be; 4) Top teams use less set pieces and crosses, and they use to make more touches than the other groups to finish the plays.