Lead durations

SoccerSTATS.com - updated on: 10 Jun 2020

Objective

The Lead Durations tables provides an overview of how long on average a team has been in the lead, how long it has been level in goals with their opponents, and how long it has been trailing an opponent's lead.

Description

The table lists for each team:

• Games played
• Average minutes per game in the lead, level in goals, trailing
• Percentage of minutes per game in the lead, level in goals, trailing
• Total minutes per game in the lead, level in goals, trailing

Below is a view of some of the columns of the Lead Durations table:

Calculations

The number of minutes that a team has been in the lead, level in goals or trailing is calculated based on the goal-events data, which include the minute each goal has been scored.

For example, if there has been a 1-1 draw between Team A and Team B, with Team A scoring the first goal on the 10th minute, and Team B equalizing on the 70th minute, the lead duration values are calculated according to the following:

• During minute 1 to minute 10, the score was 0-0: both teams have a 10-minute "Level in goals" time segment.
• During minute 11 to minute 70, the score was 1-0: Team A has a 60-minute "Leading" time segment, Team B has a 60-minute "Trailing" time-segment (any added-time is not taken into account)
• During minute 71 to 90, the score was 1-1: both teams have an addional 20-minute "Level in goals" time segment (any added-time is not taken into account).

The combined values result in a 60-minute Leading Duration for Team A, a 60-minute Trailing Duration for Team B, and a 30-minute "Level in goals" duration for both teams.

For this Lead Durations table, to allow for averaging duration values based on a total of 90 minutes per match, goals scored on the 45th minute and during added time of the first half are all considered to be scored on the 45th minute, and all goals scored on the 90th minute and during added time of the second half are considered scored on the 90th minute.

Example

You can view an example on the Lead Durations page for the Bundesliga.

Avoiding pitfalls

As mentioned in the Description section, to allow for averaging duration values based on a total of 90 minutes per match, the goals scored in added time are all considered scored on the 45th regarding added-time in the first half, and on the 90th minute regarding added-time time of the second half.

The goal is to allocate the same duration to each match (in this case 90 minutes), to avoid situations where matches with a very long added-time durations would be over-represented in the calculation of the combined average durations, compared to other matches.

Related statistics

As the lead duration calculations are affected by team statistics related to scoring the first goal, ability to equalize and ability to defend a lead, you may want to take a look at the following pages:

• First Goal stats
• Goal types
• Lead-taking goals
• Equalizers