Sports Reference Blog

FBref: Progressive Carries back on FBref (and tweak to dribble/take-ons)

Posted by sean on February 3, 2023

Last October, when we converted over from StatsBomb to Stats Perform Opta data one of the stats that we had to stop carrying on the site was Progressive Carries. Thanks to help from Michael Caley of the Double Pivot Podcast, we are pleased to reintroduce Progressive Carries to the site. Given our expanded data coverage from Opta, we now have this stat for over 20 competitions (for both current and historical seasons) including most of the top women's football leagues.

What is a progressive carry?

Carries that move the ball towards the opponent's goal line at least 10 yards from its furthest point in the last six passes, or any carry into the penalty area. Excludes carries which end in the defending 50% of the pitch

As part of this project and at Michael Caley's suggestion, we also tweaked our progressive passing definition to measure progression relative to the opponent's goal line rather than toward the opponent's goal. This is a subtle difference, but this increases the number of passes and carries counted as progressive.

Progressive Passes used to be

Completed passes that move the ball towards the opponent's goal at least 10 yards from its furthest point in the last six passes, or any completed pass into the penalty area. Excludes passes from the defending 40% of the pitch

Now a Progressive Pass is:

Completed passes that move the ball towards the opponent's goal line at least 10 yards from its furthest point in the last six passes, or any completed pass into the penalty area. Excludes passes from the defending 40% of the pitch

Overall this increases progressive passing totals by around 40%. There are a lot of balls played down the wings that we were excluding before.

From five days ago, here are some of the changes in the premier league.

+------------------------+-------------------------+----------+----------+
| name                   | club                    | old_PrgP | new_PrgP |
+------------------------+-------------------------+----------+----------+
| Rodri                  | Manchester City         |      101 |      155 |
| Kevin De Bruyne        | Manchester City         |      114 |      153 |
| Declan Rice            | West Ham United         |       80 |      147 |
| Ben White              | Arsenal                 |       81 |      133 |
| Pierre Højbjerg        | Tottenham Hotspur       |      103 |      132 |
| Bruno Fernandes        | Manchester United       |      100 |      130 |
| Youri Tielemans        | Leicester City          |       94 |      129 |
| Kieran Trippier        | Newcastle United        |       94 |      122 |
| Martin Ødegaard        | Arsenal                 |       80 |      121 |
| Aaron Cresswell        | West Ham United         |       67 |      118 |
| Granit Xhaka           | Arsenal                 |       70 |      116 |

Ball progression is an important part of football, so in addition to the progression tables we've always had we've also moved ball progression into the primary standard stats tables.

Progressive passes made and received and progressive carries now appear on those pages and we've re-ordered them a bit so the per 90 columns appear at the end of the table.

Most Progressive Carries at World Cup

We also changed the presentation of dribbles on the site and now refer to these as "Take-ons" as carries, take-ons and dribbles caused significant confusion. As part of this change we also added columns for times tackled during a take-on. Note that a case where a player tries a take-on, retains possession, but does not bypass the defender is an unsuccessful take-on, but is not a time tackled.

Carry - Moves the ball with their feet.
Take-on - attempts to bypass a defender with the ball at their feet.
Successful Take-on - successfully bypasses defender
Unsuccessful Take-on - does not bypass defender (may or may not lose possession).
Tackled - defender tackles a player attempting a take-on.

I know there are a lot of questions about pressures. We don't yet have a source for those, but are hopeful that Opta will consider tracking those at some point as well.

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