“How USA’s Chris Richards made World Cup history with a perfect night,” USA Today reported after the USA’s game against Paraguay. The newspaper referred to a statistic: the defender had completed 100% of his 84 passes. Something that hadn’t happened in the World Cup since 1966.
The percentage of correct passes by players is something that TV broadcasts have highlighted for some time, usually followed by silence from commentators and announcers. It makes sense. Alone, the number says little.
When in possession of the ball, defenders must normally hand it over to those executing more risky passes. So, they take little risk. And the number that seems to represent a gift hides only one fact: knowing his limitations, the defender is little exposed to mistakes. Of the American’s 84 passes, 74 were backwards or to the side. In other words, USA Today’s “perfect night” is simply that of those who insist on zero to zero.
To identify a good passer, this metric does not work. The most common alternative is the number of assists (passes that lead to a goal in the next play). The problem is that the outcome depends on who kicked, not just who passed. A good pass wasted by a bad shot does not turn into an assist, and a bad pass can end in a goal thanks to a good shot. Added to this is the fact that the assistance only credits the final pass, ignoring previous passes, which are often more decisive. Finally, a goal is a rare event: counting assists means ignoring a large part of the game.
To overcome this difficulty, game scholars rely on the metric that uses xT, an acronym in English for “expected threat”. It starts from the idea that not every place in the field is worth the same. A ball at the edge of the opponent’s area has a greater chance of becoming a goal in the following plays than a ball in the defense field.
Knowing the xT value of each location on the field, it is possible to answer whether a pass took the ball to a region with a greater or lesser probability of turning into a goal.
Midfielder Brahim Díaz’s pass in Morocco’s goal against Brazil is a good example: the ball was in the middle of the field (low xT) and he placed it close to the crescent (high xT) for striker Saibari to shoot.
Returning to defender Chris Richards, of the 84 passes he made in the game against Paraguay, only four (5%) led to an improvement in the team’s position. For comparison, of the 102 passes made by Swiss defender Manuel Akanji in the match against Qatar, 22 (21%) increased the team’s chances of scoring.
Not surprisingly, defenders are not the best in this metric. The midfielders appear here, such as German Toni Kroos against Sweden in the 2018 World Cup, with 53 of 128 passes increasing the chance of scoring.
But adding the danger generated still favors those who attempt more risky passes, regardless of the success rate.
The adjustment is made by dividing what a player delivered by the total danger he tried to create with his right and wrong passes. Those who delivered above what their own risk promised are rare: Tadić (2018), Griezmann, De Bruyne (2022) and Neymar (2018). At the opposite end, with little daring and little danger, a crowd of defenders, Chris Richards among them.
And that doesn’t make him a good or a bad passer, but rather a sensible player.
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