Step 1 of 5
The scoreline lies
Soccer is low-scoring, which means luck plays a bigger role than in most sports. A team can play brilliantly, create chance after chance, and still lose 1-0 to a team that barely showed up. The final score does not always tell you who was better.
By the numbers: Germany 1, Japan 2 (2022)
Germany dominated. They had about 74% of the ball, 26 shots to Japan's 12, and the chances to win comfortably. Japan scored twice in the second half and won anyway. If you only saw the score, you would think Japan outplayed Germany. They did not. They took their few chances and Germany did not.
So if the score can lie, how do you measure who actually played better? That is the entire reason the next stat exists.
Step 2 of 5
xG: Expected Goals
xG, short for Expected Goals, puts a number on how good a scoring chance was. Every shot gets a value between 0 and 1 based on how often shots from that exact spot and situation get scored, using a huge database of past shots.
The simplest way to think about it
A shot worth 0.10 xG means "from here, players score about 10 times out of 100." A shot worth 0.80 xG means "from here, players score about 80 times out of 100." Add up all of a team's shots and you get how many goals they "should" have scored.
Where you shoot from matters enormously. A shot from a tight angle at the corner of the box is low value. The same player shooting from the penalty spot, straight in front of goal, is high value.
Tight angle, edge of box ≈ 0.05 xG
Penalty spot, central ≈ 0.79 xG
Real shots from 2022
In that Germany-Japan game, Japan's winning goal by Takuma Asano came from a tough angle and was worth only about 0.15 xG, a chance you would expect to miss most of the time. He buried it. Germany's penalty earlier was worth about 0.80 xG, the kind you are expected to score. xG does not tell you what happened. It tells you what usually happens.
Step 3 of 5
Possession is not control
Possession is the share of the game a team has the ball, shown as a percentage. New viewers assume the team with more of the ball is winning. Often that is exactly backwards.
By the numbers: Japan 2, Spain 1 (2022)
Japan beat Spain while holding the ball just 18% of the time, the lowest share for any winning team at a World Cup since records began in 1966. Spain passed it around endlessly and went home. Japan sat back, waited, and struck fast when it mattered.
Possession tells you a team's style, not its success. Some teams want the ball and patiently break you down. Others happily give it up, defend in a block, and hit you on the counterattack. Having the ball only matters if you do something dangerous with it.
What the data showed in 2022
Across the whole tournament, having more of the ball barely predicted who won. The most useful number was not who held possession, but who created the better chances, which loops right back to xG.
Step 4 of 5
Pressing
Pressing is when a team chases the ball aggressively the moment they lose it, instead of dropping back to defend. The goal is to win the ball back high up the field, close to the opponent's goal, where a quick steal can turn straight into a chance.
Why teams do it
Winning the ball 30 yards from the other team's goal is far more dangerous than winning it next to your own. A hard press forces mistakes in bad areas. The trade-off is fitness and risk: if the press is beaten, your defense is exposed with fewer players back.
You will see it on TV as several attackers swarming a defender who just received the ball, giving him no time and no easy pass. When it works, it looks like the other team suddenly cannot get out of their own half. The next stat is how analysts actually measure it.
Step 5 of 5
PPDA: the pressing number
PPDA stands for Passes Per Defensive Action. It sounds technical, but the idea is simple: it counts how many passes the other team is allowed to make before your team tries to win the ball back (a tackle, interception, or challenge).
The whole stat in one line
A low PPDA means a team presses hard. They only let the opponent string together a few passes before disrupting them. A high PPDA means they sit back and let the opponent pass freely. Low number, high intensity.
So if a team has a PPDA of 8, they allow about eight opponent passes before challenging. A team at 18 is far more passive. When you hear that a team "forces mistakes early," a low PPDA is the number behind that phrase.
Reading it during this World Cup
Once games kick off, watch which teams post the lowest PPDA. Those are your aggressive pressers, the ones trying to suffocate opponents high up the field. It is one of the clearest single numbers for understanding how a team wants to play.
That is the journey. The scoreline can lie, xG tells you who created the better chances, possession is style not control, pressing wins the ball back high, and PPDA measures how hard a team presses. You now read the game the way analysts do.