goals

A player, usually a striker, that’s all about the goals. The rest of their play doesn’t really matter, they might go all game with very few touches, but then appear at the right time in the box to score a goal. Shevchenko, Inzaghi, and Haaland are all great examples of goal machines that focused less on all round play and more on making the net bulge.

Bodies everywhere, defenders and the goalkeeper blocking the goal, legs flying in, arms in the air as the ball bounces around. There’s nothing quite like a goal mouth scramble where there are air kicks and a mass of bodies around the goalkeeper and in the six-yard box. Defenders do everything to block and clear, attackers try desperately to get the ball over the line, mostly it’s just chaos and a blur as the ball bounces back and forth off shins and calves and chests and heads. It usually ends up in a wild clearance to row Z or the ball being smashed into the net.

A type of run-up that some players make when striking a penalty kick. Ronaldo perfected the stutter penalty. It offers greater control over the ball but loses out on the power of a long run-up, also playing mind games with the keeper, waiting until the last moment to strike the ball, hoping that the keeper dives first.

A super sub is a player that performs well when being brought on as a substitute rather than starting a game, usually scoring a late winning goal. There are plenty of examples of players who have been given the tag of ‘Super Sub’ because of how good they were at reading the match when sitting on the bench, then coming on and exploiting the weaknesses they had picked up on. A good manager knows who and when to substitute on to change a match.

If a knock-out tournament match is level after 90 minutes it will then move on to extra time and penalties if still no winner can be found. Each team has 5 chances to score from a penalty kick, taking it in turns, the team that scores the most goals wins. The pressure builds as you reach the end of the 5 kicks. If it is level after 5 kicks each, sudden death begins. A penalty shootout could go on forever in theory, with every player taking a kick, including goalkeepers, until one team scores and the other misses. In big games like the World Cup, there is nothing quite like the intensity of a penalty shootout!

When a one-sided match ends in an exceptionally high and unexpected score it is often referred to as resembling the runs scored in a cricket match.

The final pass before a goal. It's become a major stat for measuring creativity alongside goals. Different competitions count it slightly differently - some include rebounds off your shot, others don't. There's also pre-assists (the pass before the assist) and expected assists (xA) for the analytics crowd. De Bruyne and Messi rack up assists at the same rate some players score.