‘Fast ball is raising OG rate’
IT has been raining own goals in Euro 2020 – and there’s a very good reason for it.
Before the start of this summer’s European Championship, only nine players had put through their own net on the continental stage.
Since Turkey’s Merih Demiral beat his own keeper against Italy to open the OG floodgates on June 11, that total has doubled.
Tyler Heaps, Head of Sporting Technology and Insights at AS Monaco, says the style of play adopted by many top teams – both in international tournaments and European competition – goes some way to showing why so many balls are flying in at the wrong end.
“There were 35 own goals scored across both European competitions this season (3.1 percent) and 19 scored across the last three World Cups (3.9 percent),” he says. “So far in Euro 2020, there have been nine own goals scored or 7.3 percent of the total.
“If you look at each one and how they’ve occurred, many have come from ‘dangerous areas’.
“At AS Monaco over the last season, we looked at where and how goals were most often scored and key areas to shoot and cross from to apply in our game model.
“Four (in Euro 2020) came from these high-assist zones and were crosses hit with pace that are difficult to defend; one came from a deflected shot inside 12 yards, two from the first or second phase of set-pieces and two were very random (Slovakia off the crossbar and into the air and the passback in Spain’s game).
“Teams are looking to get to specific areas of the pitch now, particularly for crosses because it attributes to more goals statistically.”
Both the goal-resulting crosses from Luke Shaw and Jack Grealish against Germany on Tuesday were struck at pace from in the penalty area – giving defenders less time to react.