Understat

A free platform for expected goals (xG) and advanced football statistics for major European leagues.

Understat is a specialized football analytics platform that provides detailed, publicly accessible data on Expected Goals (xG), Expected Assists (xA), xGChain, and xGBuildup. It covers the Big 5 European leagues (English Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1) as well as the Russian Premier League, with historical data available from the 2014/15 season onwards. The platform is designed to be user-friendly for both casual fans and data analysts, offering granular statistics for every shot taken in these leagues, alongside aggregated player and team metrics.

How to Use

To use Understat, simply visit its website. Navigate to the league, team, or player pages to view detailed match data and statistics. For analysts and developers, the site's data is known to be easily accessible and can be scraped using Python libraries for deeper analysis or integration into personal projects.

Key Features

Provides Expected Goals (xG) data for every shot.
Offers Expected Assists (xA), xGChain, and xGBuildup metrics.
Aggregates detailed player and team statistics.
Maintains historical data from the 2014/15 season.
Covers the Big 5 European leagues plus the Russian Premier League.
Data is designed to be easily scrapable for analysis.

Use Cases

Football fans analyzing match performance beyond traditional stats.
Sports journalists researching and writing analytical articles.
Data scientists and analysts building football predictive models.
Fantasy football players seeking deeper insights for player selection.
Academic researchers studying sports performance metrics.

FAQ

What is xG and why is it important?

Expected Goals (xG) is an advanced metric that quantifies the quality and likelihood of a scoring opportunity, assigning it a probability value between 0 and 1. It factors in variables like shot location, angle, body part used, and defensive pressure. xG provides a more accurate and nuanced assessment of a team's attacking performance and a player's finishing ability than simply counting goals, helping to identify which shots were truly high-quality chances versus lucky finishes.

Is Understat data really free and accessible?

Yes, Understat provides its extensive database of xG, xA, and other advanced statistics completely free of charge. Furthermore, the platform's structure is well-known within the data community for being relatively easy to access programmatically, allowing users to scrape the data for personal analysis, visualization, or integration into other applications using tools like Python.

Which leagues does Understat cover?

Understat primarily covers the Big 5 European leagues: the English Premier League, Spain's La Liga, Germany's Bundesliga, Italy's Serie A, and France's Ligue 1. It also includes data for the Russian Premier League. The historical data for these leagues is available starting from the 2014/15 season.