xOG At The Olympics, Vol. I, No. I

Welcome to the first edition of the Expected Own Goals newsletter, Olympics edition! All six games from the first round of the group stage are now in the books, and we saw some fun and wild data coming out of those six games. Here are the numbers that matter:

66

That’s the number of seconds it took for Mallory Swanson to score two goals for the USWNT against Zambia. This is the fastest brace in USWNT history. The goals were so sweet, too.

4.99

That’s the number of expected goals the USWNT generated. Expected goals, or xG (understand our name now?), is the percentage of how often a goal is scored based on the spot on the field where the shot was taken, whether it was shot with the foot or the head, and what type of pass was made to set up the shooter. An xG value of 1.0 means that the shot is scored 100% of the time. An xG of 0.15 means the shot was scored 15% of the time. And so forth.

The USWNT took 27 shots, and while they only scored three goals from those shots, the quality of the chances they took suggested that they probably should have scored five goals. This is a good thing! Shooting from good chances is the most important part of scoring, so they were a little unlucky.

Check out the US-Zambia shot map.

96

This is the percentage of pass attempts that were completed by US center back Naomi Girma. This was the highest passing percentage in the Olympics women’s soccer tournament since this data began being collected in 2012. Girma was flawless in staying tidy on the ball.

54

The number of hours before the US has another game to play—against Germany on Sunday. That’s an incredibly short turnaround, and makes it imperative to keep every player as fresh as possible. Germany loves to use their wingers to attack wide areas. Who should play at fullback to defend those wide areas? Emily Fox seems locked in on the right side. Crystal Dunn played on the left against Zambia. Head coach Emma Hayes will want players who can prevent Klara Bühl and Jule Brand from dribbling toward goal and passing into the penalty area. Who among the US fullbacks are strongest at stopping dribblers?

We don’t know how you feel, but Casey Kruger’s 66.7% of dribblers tackled jumps out to us as the perfect option to shut down Brand and right back Giulia Gwinn.

6

The monthly cost of our Patreon subscription tier, which launched on Monday! That low price gets you all of our bonus episodes each month, plus access to our Discord space and our live USWNT watch-alongs throughout the tournament. Sign up by August 10th and your price will be locked in forever, even as we bump you up to higher subscription tiers down the road!

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Hope to see you all on Sunday for USA-Germany!

Best,

Evan & Eric