IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/umiodp/340032.html

Individual skill or just luck? Decomposing individual finishing and shot-stopping performance in European football

Author

Listed:
  • Böttger, Tom
  • Vischer, Lars

Abstract

Expected goals (xG) are widely used to evaluate football performance. However, it is unclear whether players who consistently outperform their xG do so because of skill or because of luck. To our knowledge, this paper provides the first meta-analytic estimate of between-player heterogeneity in finishing and shot-stopping overperformance, extending existing team-level skillluck decompositions provided by Holzmeister & Johannesson (2025) to the individual player level. We analyse data from the English Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A, and Ligue 1 across eight seasons (2017/18-2024/25), totalling 3,202 outfield player-seasons and 932 goalkeeper-seasons. Using restricted maximum likelihood (REML) random-effects metaanalysis, we find that between-player heterogeneity accounts for 6.753-29.945% of total variance in finishing overperformance (average I² ≈ 21%) and 7.690-34.344% in shot-stopping (average I² ≈ 25%). Skill is detectable but modest. A complementary persistence regression shows that part of this overperformance carries over to the next season, both for outfield players (Ø = 0.110, p

Suggested Citation

  • Böttger, Tom & Vischer, Lars, 2026. "Individual skill or just luck? Decomposing individual finishing and shot-stopping performance in European football," Discussion Papers of the Institute for Organisational Economics 3/2026, University of Münster, Institute for Organisational Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:umiodp:340032
    DOI: 10.17879/60948663147
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/340032/1/1968389822.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17879/60948663147?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sumit Sarkar & Sooraj Kamath, 2023. "Does luck play a role in the determination of the rank positions in football leagues? A study of Europe’s ‘big five’," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 325(1), pages 245-260, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Antonello D’Ambra & Pietro Amenta & Antonio Lucadamo, 2025. "Multivariate approaches to investigate the home and away behavior of football teams playing football matches," Computational Statistics, Springer, vol. 40(4), pages 1779-1799, April.
    2. Felix Holzmeister & Magnus Johannesson, 2025. "Skills vs. Luck: Decomposing Deviations from Expected Performance in European Football Leagues," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 26(8), pages 953-975, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C12 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Hypothesis Testing: General
    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • L83 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Sports; Gambling; Restaurants; Recreation; Tourism
    • Z20 - Other Special Topics - - Sports Economics - - - General
    • Z21 - Other Special Topics - - Sports Economics - - - Industry Studies
    • Z22 - Other Special Topics - - Sports Economics - - - Labor Issues

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:umiodp:340032. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ilmuede.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.