Shot Maps

Three encodings, read together

A shot map carries its information in three separate channels, and all three matter before a dot means anything.

• Position. Where the marker sits on the pitch is where the shot was taken from. Central and close beats wide and far, every time.
• Size. Bigger markers carry more expected goals. A shot worth 0.4 xG draws a noticeably larger dot than one worth 0.05, regardless of what either shot did next.
• Fill. A solid, filled circle is a goal. A hollow outline is anything else: saved, blocked, or off target. Fill tells you the outcome; size tells you the chance.

Read position first to locate the shot, size second to judge it, fill last to see what happened. Reading fill first is the most common mistake, and it throws away the two channels that actually describe quality.

A side table sits alongside the pitch diagram, listing every shot as a row and sortable by expected goals value. When a pitch full of dots gets hard to scan by eye, sort the table instead and the best chance of the match rises straight to the top.

Three scenarios, worked through

A cluster of small dots outside the box. A team shooting from range repeatedly, none of the markers growing past a sliver. That pattern describes a side that never worked the ball into a central, high-value area, whatever the shot count on the scoreboard says. Ten small dots rarely outweigh two large ones.

One huge dot that stayed hollow. A near-post tap-in blazed over, or a one-on-one saved by the goalkeeper. The size says this was the best chance of the match by quality. The hollow fill says it did not go in. Both facts are true at once, and the shot map is the only view that holds them together without forcing a scoreline to explain it.

Two players' shot maps side by side. One player's dots cluster inside the six-yard box and the penalty spot. The other's are scattered across the arc, further out. Even with the same number of shots, the first player is getting into better positions. A shot count alone cannot show that; the map does it in one glance.

What it settles that a count cannot

A shot count answers "how many". A shot map answers "how good", and the two questions have different winners more often than the raw numbers suggest.

Volume without quality is cheap. A team can rack up fifteen shots and create less genuine danger than an opponent with six, if those fifteen sit mostly outside the box. The map exposes that split instantly, where a tally on a stat sheet hides it completely.

Quality without a goal is not wasted. The dot size for a missed chance does not shrink after the fact. A 0.6 xG shot that a goalkeeper saves was still a 0.6 xG shot. Reaching that position again next week is the repeatable skill worth tracking, independent of whether this particular effort found the net.

Two misreadings to drop

"That big dot that missed was a wasted chance." It was a good chance that did not convert, which happens to the majority of shots even at high xG values. A shot worth 0.6 xG is still expected to miss four times in ten. One miss proves nothing about whether the position was worth reaching.

"That small dot that scored proves a special finish." A low-probability shot going in is not proof of a gifted finisher. It is what low probability means: it happens some of the time, just not most of the time. Judge finishing across many shots against cumulative xG, never off one dot on one map.

"More dots overall means the better attacking performance." A team can crowd a shot map with a dozen small, hollow markers from poor positions and still trail an opponent with four large ones. Sort the side table by expected goals before drawing a conclusion from the shot count alone.