Spain is considered the main favorite of this year's World Cup. After it are the usual suspects: England, France, Argentina, Germany. But whoever wants to lift the World Cup at the end of the long tournament needs not only skill, but also luck. And the most important accomplice of luck - chance.
The secret goalscorer
If chance were a player, it would probably be the top scorer of the championship. Because over 40 percent of all goals are due to random factors.
The largest study on this issue was conducted by the German Sports University in Cologne. Daniel Memmert and his team from the Institute for Sports Informatics analyzed over 7,000 goals from several seasons in the English Premier League. The result: almost half of all goals were scored by chance. Over the years, their share has slightly decreased to 42 percent.
Memmert sees the reason for this decline in more targeted control of the game, in which increasingly intensive data analysis plays a role. "Randomness is the only thing that cannot be planned and trained", explains the head of the study. This includes, for example, deflected shots, balls that bounce off the post and then enter the net, goals after an unintentional assist from a defender. And of course - own goals.
The triumph of inaccuracy
The power of chance is embedded in the DNA of football - and is a fundamental component of the appeal of this sport. Football is the triumph of inaccuracy. Even the most brilliant technicians on the planet - Messi, Mbappe or Pedri - cannot control the ball 100%.
Professor of physics Metin Tolan from the Technical University of Dortmund has calculated that if, when kicking a goal from 16 meters, the position of the foot changes by one degree, and the speed of the kick - by one kilometer per hour, the ball deviates by half a meter. So small inaccuracies have big consequences. The ball can be controlled much more precisely with the hand, for example in handball or basketball. Added to this is the nature of the surface in football: on grass the ball does not bounce as controlled as on artificial pitches.
And because the football pitch offers a lot of space, the game is extremely complex. In most cases, possession of the ball, control of the game, creativity and even scoring chances cannot be adequately converted into goals scored. While in basketball - with its over 100 points per game - chance almost disappears, in football with its average of 2.7 goals per game it assumes a disproportionately large importance.
"In this sense, football is the only sport in which, for example, a team with 70 percent possession of the ball can still lose", says Daniel Memmert.
In attack: provoking chance
Memmert's research team has studied certain goals in more detail: own goals and goals after an assist. Two new studies address this topic, showing that a large proportion of these goals are scored from specific areas in and outside the penalty area. Teams have long been practicing strategies to turn chance into a teammate, to provoke it, to create chaos in the opponent's penalty area. Because that's where chance feels best.
A common situation: a deliberate transfer of the ball from the deep zone of midfield to the opponent's penalty area, so that the ball goes out of bounds. When it is put back into play, the attacking team saturates the opponent's field with the aim of creating chaos and a goal opportunity.
Increasing importance is also being given to corner kicks, which contain a high potential for chance. Team data analysts have long understood that criteria such as possession of the ball or distance covered are only somewhat indicative. In their place, "control of the pitch" is gaining increasing importance - a construct as complex as it is abstract. The idea behind it is that whoever controls the areas with the most randomness can attract them to their side. Maybe.