[washingtonismoney]

MT, that's a great question. It's something that's been puzzled over by the stat people in soccer, and while they don't have a definitive answer, they do believe something counterintuitive:

Finishing -- defined here as being more likely to score a goal off of a given shot -- doesn't seem to exist at the team level. In fact, stat based people often predict certain teams to progress/regress based on weird outliers in finishing. Instead, they judge teams on whether or not they get more shots, and in particular quality shots, than their opponents.

It's not a completely satisfying answer though; they acknowledge that certain players (Messi) in fact exceed the predicted levels of finishing a given shot. So if an individual can't do it, why not a team? I haven't seen a great answer for this, but that's the thinking right now.

[washingtonismoney]

MT, that's a great question. It's something that's been puzzled over by the stat people in soccer, and while they don't have a definitive answer, they do believe something counterintuitive:

Finishing -- defined here as being more likely to score a goal off of a given shot -- doesn't seem to exist at the team level. In fact, stat based people often predict certain teams to progress/regress based on weird outliers in finishing. Instead, they judge teams on whether or not they get more shots, and in particular quality shots, than their opponents.

It's not a completely satisfying answer though; they acknowledge that certain players (Messi) in fact exceed the predicted levels of finishing a given shot. So if an individual can't do it, why not a team? I haven't seen a great answer for this, but that's the thinking right now.