Soccer stat question ...

Goalkeeper comes out to get ball, gets beat, player shoots, ball knocked away by defender that's not the goalkeeper.

Does the defensive player get credit for a save? Had he whiffed, it was in the back of the net.

 

No save credited.

Or better yet, you could not bother tracking saves. It's meaningless.

 

Except this isn't baseball.

 

I would agree with no save credited. I'm no stat expert, but I figure that only goalies can get saves. The defender saved a goal and it should be mentioned in the story, but in a statistical sense I don't think it is technically a save.

 

Not sure what that means, Rhody. I'm just saying that the number of saves isn't terribly relevant to a soccer story. It, unlike baseball, isn't a game that lends itself to stats.

 

I know what you mean. I officiated a game last season that was a tell-tale (or is it tell-tell or tale-tell?) sign that soccer stats are meaningless. If there was time of possesion, it would have been 79:42-:18. Shots were like 29-1. The team with the one shot won. On a breakaway goal in the 80th minute. Crazy.

 

I think saves in soccer is totally relevant, especially when determining the keeper's productivity. Sure, goals allowed reflect the defensive unit, not just the keeper. But the keeper is the last line of defense, and if Sam Jones has 19 saves and allowed one goal, it gives a fairly accurate description of how valuable he's been.

The same thing can be said for a person who allows five goals on seven shots. There, you could assume, the defense played tremendously well, considering a low number of shots were attempted, and the keeper was almost completely inept.


And the save in baseball reference was made to exploit the "weak" rules for closers, who can allow two runs in a three-run ninth inning -- or so -- and still get credit for the save. At least that's one of the many reasons.

 

Our high school boxes have them, so coaches and our writers know to keep track.

 

According to this site, it's a "team save"

It's under "goalkeeper."

http://www.nmsoccer.com/users/nms/Data/official2007soccerstatisticsrules.pdf

 

When I used to help out with keeping soccer stats at my college, we credited a non-goalie save as "TEAM." For example:

Saves: Tampon Tech -- A. Phucker - 8, TEAM - 1

 

Correct in NCAA also. It's a team save, but does not count towards any individual player. It does count in the team's save percentage.

See page 8:
http://www.ncaa.org/library/statistical/soccer_stats_manual/2007/2007_soccer_stats_manual.pdf

 

That's very strange that the NCAA would do that. I can't imagine they have an equivalent stat for hockey, in which a defenseman might clear a puck off the line or be struck with a goal-bound puck just as easily as in soccer.