Two NWSL Heavyweights Demonstrated How Team Concepts Affect Player Decision Making

The Courage and the Thorns influenced their players' crossing choices

I came across an interesting thread on Twitter about the challenge of modelling certain skills in football. Decisions players make are influenced by a self-evaluation of multiple skills that they possess. But it is not easy to capture how this influence happens.

In this thread the skill being discussed was crossing:

Ben Torvaney @Torvaney

A player's decision to cross from a wide position will depend on their confidence in their dribbling as well as crossing (& more). If they are a great dribbler, they are more likely to attempt to get into the box. If they are not a confident dribbler, they might prefer to cross

I think that it’s a good thread about how often what is recorded in statistics and what is perceived as good crossing ability doesn’t account for other factors in a player’s decision making.

However, the thread only touches on the micro level of what contributes to the decision making of a player to cross in a given area.

The macro element to the decision making are the patterns that a team works on in training, and the attacking concepts that managers try to implement. Those are things that will also influence a player’s decision on where to cross.

I’ll demonstrate this using Statsbomb data from the 2018 NWSL season.

Where did NWSL players cross from?

Drawing inspiration from Tom Worville and his article last year about crossing, I found that there were four areas where players in the NWSL crossed from in open play.

Some players crossed because it was the most logical decision based on the play, but there were teams that prioritized crossing.

The North Carolina Courage Crossing

The North Carolina Courage crossed the most out of each area on both sides (left and right). Unsurprisingly, Courage players Jaelene Hinkle, Merritt Mathias, and Lynn Williams led in crossing attempts in the areas shown above.

The Courage’s crosses accounted for 27% of the total open play crosses in the NWSL.

While crosses only assisted 15% of the total goals in the NWSL, 20% of the Courage’s goals were assisted from crosses.

An emphasis on crossing led to more attempted crosses from the players.

The Portland Thorns

Underneath the Courage’s crossing dominance, there was another trend. The Thorns were second in attempted crosses from the Wide & Deep area on the left.

They also had the highest average xA in the NWSL from crosses originating from the Wide & Deep area on the right and the left (0.07 & 0.14 respectively).

A closer look at this area can be seen below:

The decisions to cross in these areas fall in line with both player profile (Meghan Klingenberg has an offensive presence from the left back position) as well as what former head coach Mark Parsons tried to emphasize.

Going into the 2019 season, Parsons encouraged early crossing in film and in training. The fact that the data shows that the Thorns created the most xA from Wide & Deep areas (early crossing areas) means that his ideas had affected his players’ decisions on crossing locations.

Conclusion

The two teams differed in terms of how many crosses were attempted, and where they were attempted from. But, it is clear that the players from both teams were influenced by team concepts in their crossing decision making.