Katie Sharp has joined Sports Reference and will be working both on social media and customer success for our Stathead subscription service. Katie spent seven years as a researcher with ESPN's Stats and Info Group, and since then has worked as a writer, editor and researcher on dozens of articles and books. Most recently, she has been a recurring guest on Jomboy Media's Talkin' Yanks podcast. Katie graduated from Williams College and also has an MBA from the University of Oregon. She's on twitter at @ktsharp.

A frequent suggestion we've received since launching FBref is a way to see head-to-head records between two teams and who's performed the best in those particular matchups. Well, we've heard you and released Records vs. Opponents pages and Historical Head-to-Head pages.

The Records vs. Opponents page quickly gives you a view of the teams they've played most frequently against, as well as their win-loss-draw records and goal differential with each opponent. For teams that play in both domestic and international competitions that we cover, we include results from those different competitions combined.

Once you go into the Historical Head-to-Head page for a particular series, you can see the different competitions we have record of the teams meeting in. For example, looking at El Clásico, you can see the results of Barcelona and Real Madrid facing off in La Liga, Copa del Rey, Supercopa de España and Champions League. The Head-to-Head Matches table has toggles at the top that allows you to filter victories by one team or the other, or draws. Further down, we have statistical leaderboards for the series, as well as overall player and goalkeeper statistics for the matches we have coverage for. These new features are also available for national teams, in case you want to see which teams have given the U.S. Women's National Team the hardest time.

You can see the full list of competitions and years we have coverage for on our site's Competitions index. Links to teams' Records vs. Opponents are available from their history page, and links to Historical Head-to-Head pages will also be available from upcoming fixtures tables. If you go to our daily Matches page, you can see Head-to-Head links for each of the upcoming day's matchups. If you have any suggestions or feedback on this feature or something else you want to see on FBref, you can contact us via our feedback form.

Nick Pazoles has joined Sports Reference as a DevOps engineer. Nick previously worked for Cleo in the Chicagoland area and is the first White Sox and University of Michigan football fan on staff.

Over the past few weeks, we have added a number of exciting improvements to FBref, many of which were requested by our users.

Pass Length Categories

We have adjusted the three categories for pass lengths.
Old Categories
Short: 0-5 yards
Medium: 5-25 yards
Long: 25+ yards

New Categories
Short: 5-15 yards
Medium: 15-30 yards
Long: 30+ yards

The issue previously was that the short category was including many passes that were blocked or deflected and therefore traveled fewer than 5 yards. This resulted in low completion totals for "short" passes, which is counterintuitive. To fix this, we are excluding passes traveling fewer than 5 yards in these categories. Now we see "short" passes as the most likely to be completed.

Defensive Actions included in Goal/Shot Creating Actions

We introduced the Shot and Goal Creating Actions metric earlier this year. This stat captures which events ultimately led to a shot or a goal. Previously, these actions were limited to the offensive side, such as Passes, Dribbles, and Fouls Drawn. We are now including defensive actions that lead to a shot or goal, such as Interceptions and Tackles.

Precise Ages on Current Season pages

For winter competitions, we list players' ages on August 1st of that season, to represent their age at the beginning of the competition. Likewise, we list ages on February 1st for Summer competitions. This works well for previous seasons, but it can be an issue for current seasons when players have a birthday during the competition. To fix this, we are now displaying precise ages on current season pages. These ages are in the YY-DDD format. For example, 27-123 indicates that the player is 27 years and 123 days old.

Ages on Match Reports

We have also added player ages to our match reports. These are the players' ages on the date of the match, listed in YY-DDD format.

Average Squad Age

Also regarding player ages, we have added each team's average age to the squad stats tables. These ages are weighted by minutes played.

Completed Matches

We have added Completed Matches to our Playing Time table. These are matches in which a player was in the starting XI and played the full match (eg was not subbed or sent off).

Average Shot Distance

Our Shooting tables offer a lot of detail about a player's shooting record. We have included the average distance from the goal of their shots. Note that this stat does not include penalty kicks and is listed in yards.

Opponent's Stats

Finally, we are now including opponent's stats on our squad stats tables. These are toggleable by clicking on the "Opponents Stats" buttons above each table. These stats show how opponents performed against a particular squad.

Opponent's stats are also included in squad pages, below player totals. This provides an easy way to compare a team's "For" and "Against" stats in each category.

We are proud to announce that FBref has added an enormous new data set, containing over 60,000 match reports, to our site. This represents a major update that takes our coverage of major leagues like the Premier League, Bundesliga, La Liga, and Champions League to the next level.

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FBref covers basic and advanced statistics for dozens of domestic leagues around the world, with the English Premier League, Spanish La Liga, German Bundesliga, Italian Serie A and French Ligue 1, commonly referred to as the "Big 5", being the most visited league stat pages. Up to this point, if you wanted to compare statistics between the leagues, you'd need to have a tab open for each one.

That will no longer be as necessary now that FBref has added combined Big 5 stat pages, with a combined league table, leaderboards across the 5 leagues and stat registers that include players who've played in any of the leagues. In the Player Standard Stats section, sorting by G+A-PK per 90 minutes gives you Jadon Sancho (Bundesliga), Kylian Mbappé (Ligue 1) and Lionel Messi (La Liga) at the top this season. In the Squad Goal and Shot Creation section, you can see Bayern Munich and Dortmund are leading all Big 5 teams in Goal Creating Actions per 90 minutes.

Check out our new Combined Big 5 pages and so much more that we offer at FBref! You can keep up with the latest additions of statistical coverage and new features here on the Sports Reference Blog, or by signing up for the This Week in Sports Reference mailing list. Feel free to send us any questions or suggestions through our feedback form or FBref's official Twitter account.

FBref carries a wide array of advanced stats powered by Statsbomb to help give you all the needed context and analyze a player's performance from as many angles as possible. You can look through our blog's FBref tag for a look at the most recent additions we've made to the site, and today we have another mass addition of advanced stats you can now access on player pages. Here's the list:

Passing

- Total distance of completed passes
- Progressive distance of completed passes (distance toward goal)
- Progressive Passes

Pass Types

- live-ball, dead-ball, under pressure
- corner kick types (in-swinging, out-swinging, straight)
- pass height (ground, low, high)
- by body part (left/right foot, head, throw-ins, other)
- pass outcomes (completed, offsides, out of bounds, intercepted, blocked)

Goal and Shot Creation

- Goal Creating Actions (GCA) and Shot Creating Actions (SCA), meaning the two offensive leading to a shot or goal. This includes live-ball passes, dead-ball passes, successful dribbles, shots which lead to another shot, and being fouled

Defensive Actions

- tackles by location on pitch
- pressures, successful pressures, pressures by location on pitch
- blocks (shots, shots saved, and passes)
- clearances
- errors leading to an opponent's shot

Possession

- touches, touches by location on pitch
- carries (total and progressive distance)
- pass receiving (targets and completions)
- miscontrols and dispossessions

Miscellaneous

- Aerials won/lost

From league pages, these stats can be accessed by using the Squad & Player Stats tab between Scores/Fixtures and Nationalities. Of course, you can also see this on player pages if they've played in competitions we have xG data for.

We're excited to see what analysis people can derive from this new information, which is available thanks to the hard work of Statsbomb. You can keep up with the latest additions of statistical coverage and new features here on the Sports Reference Blog, or by signing up for the This Week in Sports Reference mailing list. Feel free to send us any questions or suggestions through our feedback form or FBref's official Twitter account.

FBref already covers a wide variety of competitions around the globe, and continues to expand with its latest addition of senior national team competitions. There's a lot involved in that, but the headline is the FIFA Men's World Cup, which we now have data for from its first incarnation in 1930 to the most recent competition in 2018. That means we finally have pages for classic footballing legends Diego Maradona and Pele, while also filling out modern players who've made their mark on the global stage such as Miroslav Klose and Ronaldo. Peruse through the histories of countries that have a nicely stocked trophy case as well as some nations that have struggled historically. In addition to the World Cup, several major continental competitions such as the European Championship, Copa America and the Asian Cup are covered for recent years. International friendlies data will also be available on FBref.

The full Men's World Cup addition of course complements our existing collection of FIFA Women's World Cup history. One of the competitions included in this national team addition is the SheBelieves Cup, which we now have data for since its inaugural 2016 edition. Other continental women's national team competitions are included in this addition as well.

Here is the full list of competitions now available on FBref with this announcement:

World Cup - 1930-2018 (entire history)
European Championship - 2000-2020
AFC Asian Cup - 2000-2019
FIFA Confederations Cup - 2001-2017
UEFA Women's Championship - 2001-2017
OFC Nations Cup - 2007-2008-2016
Africa Cup of Nations - 2010-2019
CONCACAF Women's Championship - 2014-2018
AFC Women's Asian Cup - 2014-2018
International Friendlies (Men) - 2014-2020
CONCACAF Gold Cup - 2015-2019
Copa America - 2015-2020
SheBelieves Cup - 2016-2020
Africa Women Cup of Nations - 2016-2018
Copa América Femenina - 2018
OFC Women's Nations Cup - 2018
UEFA Nations League - 2018-2019
Algarve Cup - 2019-2020
International Friendlies (Women) - 2019-2020

Qualifiers
FIFA World Cup Qualification — CONCACAF - 1998-2018
FIFA World Cup Qualification — UEFA - 1998-2018
FIFA World Cup Qualification — CAF - 2002-2022
FIFA World Cup Qualification — CONMEBOL - 2002-2018
FIFA World Cup Qualification — AFC - 2002-2022
FIFA World Cup Qualification — OFC - 2014-2018
WCQ — UEFA (W) - 2019

AFC Asian Cup qualification - 2000-2019
UEFA Euro Qualification - 2008-2020
Africa Cup of Nations qualification - 2015-2021
UEFA Women's EURO Qualification - 2017-2021
AFC Women's Asian Cup Qualification - 2018

Player statistics from national team competitions can be viewed in the statistics tables of player pages by selecting the National Team tab, which will show their stats for every competition we currently cover. We are excited about this addition and hope to get to a place where we can also further fill out the statistics of the myriad of historical players we now have pages for. You can keep up with the latest additions of competitions coverage and new features here on the Sports Reference Blog, or by signing up for the This Week in Sports Reference mailing list. Feel free to send us any questions or suggestions through our feedback form or FBref's official Twitter account.

As part of our partnership with StatsBomb, FBref continues to incorporate more advanced statistics for players in the major international leagues. Additions have included expected goals, passing data and plus/minus, which you can read more about in this blog post. We have now added post-shot expected goals for goalkeepers, which uses expected goals on on-target shots to measure the shot-stopping ability of goalkeepers.

This information is available in competitions' advanced goalkeeping page. For example, here is a link to the advanced goalkeeping table for the 2019-20 English Premier League. You can read FBref's xG explainer as well as Statsbomb's PSxG explainer for more information on how these figures are calculated.

You can keep up with the latest additions of competitions coverage and new features here on the Sports Reference Blog, or by signing up for the This Week in Sports Reference mailing list. Feel free to send us any questions or suggestions through our feedback form or FBref's official Twitter account.

As part of our partnership with StatsBomb, FBref has made more advanced statistics available for players in the major international leagues. We launched expected goals data a couple of weeks ago, and you can read more in depth about the process that goes into calculating those figures at our xG explainer page.

A more recent big addition to the advanced stats we carry is a new Passing table, which tracks total number of passes attempted and completed, as well as a breakdown by pass distance. Other passing information includes key passes (passes that directly lead to a shot attempt), breakdown of left-footed and right-footed passes, through balls, and passes that enter the third of the pitch closest to the goal. In the 2018-19 UEFA Champions League, among players with at least 150 long pass attempts (25+ yards), only Sergio Busquets of Barcelona and Manuel Akanji successfully completed 90% of their long passes.

A new Playing Time table includes basic stats such as minutes per match as well as breakdowns by starts and substitutions. For seasons where we have match reports, we are also able to display points earned in standings per match played, goals scored and allowed by team while the player is on the pitch, and a plus/minus stat using that information. For example, in the 2018-19 English Premier League, Virgil van Dijk and Aymeric Laporte were tied for the league lead among non-goalkeepers in plus/minus, with their teams scoring 67 more goals than their opponents when they were on the pitch.

We have also added a Miscellaneous table that provides season-level statistics we were already providing in match reports such as fouls committed and drawn, offsides, crosses, tackles and interceptions. In 2019 Major League Soccer, Jorge Moreira of Portland led the league with 69 tackles. Zlatan Ibrahimović led the league in offsides committed, 15 more than 2nd place Sam Johnson.

You can keep up with the latest additions of competitions coverage and new features here on the Sports Reference Blog, or by signing up for the This Week in Sports Reference mailing list. Feel free to send us any questions or suggestions through our feedback form or FBref's official Twitter account.