I listened to the June 23 episode of the Fox Football Podcast, in which a question was asked about crossing.
The answer that Robbie Slater gave was a bit more philosophical – we’ve coached it out of players in Australia – and also looked at the good old days of crossing into the big man up top.
I decided to see if I could get any insight from looking into the last five years of A-League data to see if I could answer Adam Peacock’s question: where has crossing gone?
Surprisingly, the data shows that in the A-League, crossing has actually increased over the past five years. This is shown in total number of crosses.
And this also reflects in crosses per 90 minutes.
Crossing accuracy has also markedly increased this season.
Maybe it’s got something to do with an increase in crosses into the six-yard box?
How does this compare with the European leagues?
The big five European leagues do not share the same trend that the A-League has had over the past five years. In fact, they’ve generally been trending downwards.
With this data, I also created a visualisation of teams’ playing styles based on crosses and goals scored. The lines represent the 33rd and 66th percentiles, meaning the middle bands are the averages.
To provide a bit more context, I’ve categorised groups into the following.
So, where has crossing gone?
To answer the question, crossing is on the up in the A-League over the past five years.
Of course, this doesn’t address the longer time frames of when Robbie Slater was playing, and also doesn’t address the wider tactical reasoning behind why crossing may have decreased since then.
This analysis of goal-scoring effectiveness and efficiency is a bit of a simplification as there are more ways to score than through crossing.
Further analysis might be done, looking at a longer time frame, productive crosses (does a cross result in a shooting opportunity?), type of cross (set piece, cut-back across the box, deep cross, aerial versus low), crosses versus penetrative passes (what is the relative effectiveness of a team’s crossing versus their penetrative passing?), game state (is crossing more frequent when a team is losing?), home versus away stats (do teams cross more or less when home or away?), overlaying xG and xA onto crosses, and defensive situation (counter attack versus positional defence).
At work
Roar Rookie
That’s how I feel watching them, there may be plenty of crosses, and a good proportion are ‘accurate’ (i.e. it makes its way into the box), but they’re often floaty nothing balls which pose no real threat to a keeper.
At work
Roar Rookie
Thanks for providing the statistical analysis to allow us to form an opinion based on Adam Peacocks comment. :thumbup:
Marcel
Guest
Hi Nick...v interesting article. ...and a subject that has long been a pet hate of myself and those I sit on the sidelines with each week. It is so rare in the ALeague for a cross to be even threatening let alone result in a goal...I'm amazed that stat savvy coaches haven't banned the tactic.
Nick Gerver
Roar Pro
I agree – it’s certainly a multifaceted thing which has more factors than “we’ve coached it out of our players”. It’s one of the reasons I started writing – the commentary and punditry was a bit echo-chambery. I get the feeling that one of the reasons has to do with playing in summer – a high intensity press is not particularly sustainable in summer, so defences are more passive and central, resulting in easier possession forward and wide. The resumption of football in a colder climates and thenproposed shift to winter could be an interesting time to watch the trends. Maybe an analysis of pressing intensity and crosses faced is in order…watch this space!
Nick Gerver
Roar Pro
The main problem with xG as a concept is that it is only assigned a value when a shot is taken. So if no-one gets on the end of a cross, the xG value is 0. So a perfect cross that puts a scoring opportunity on a platter which the striker just can’t get to gets an xG of 0, while a hit and hope cross that a striker gets the tiniest touch on might get an xG of say 0.1…which doesn’t necessarily match the value we place on either cross. There’s a concept called non-shot xG which assigns xG values to every spot on the pitch, and looks at the probability of scoring from wherever the ball is – but that’s a bit too complicated for me! Wyscout (where I got my data from) defines it as: A cross is considered successful if the next touch is by a teammate. Someone linked an article which suggested that the six seconds after a cross delivery were just as relevant as the cross itself. https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2017/feb/12/football-crossing-premier-league
Waz
Roar Rookie
Good article highlighting the fundamental flaw in FoxSports coverage if football - Slater (and others like him) make a statement and present it as “fact”. The interesting analysis here is this - why is crossing on the increase in the A-League when it’s on the decrease in the rest of the football world? Are we out of step or something??
MarkfromCroydon
Roar Pro
Interesting article. I’d be keen to see the stats you’ve mentioned in the further analysis paragraph. I think the xG would be quite low as I think the quality of crosses is not great. I’m also interested in the “accurate crosses” stat. Does that mean the cross was actually met by a teammate, or it was able to be met but might not have been eg keeper grabbed it just before he would have headed it.