Man, football stats sites piss me off sometimes. Wanted to check the Barça vs Mallorca player stats after the match, simple thing right? But all those websites look like they’re designed to fry your brain. Ads popping up everywhere, different sites show different numbers – total chaos.
Round 1: Hunting Down Stats
So first I grabbed my laptop like “okay let’s do this clean”. Thought I’d start fresh for accuracy. Tried three popular stats sites – WhoScored, SofaScore, and this other one football nerds swear by. Propped ’em up side-by-side on Chrome tabs. Damn near choked seeing different numbers for the same players! Like Pedri’s pass accuracy was 92% on one site but 89% on another. How?!
Got frustrated and almost slammed the laptop shut. Then remembered I subscribe to this one semi-reliable stats platform (costs me 10 bucks a month, feels like robbery honestly). Logged in thinking “this better be right”. Even THERE the tackles count for Araujo wasn’t matching elsewhere. My coffee went cold during this circus.
Making Sense of the Mess
Figured fine, I’ll average out the nonsense. Pulled up Google Sheets – started dumping numbers manually from each site. Was typing like a madman:
- Lewandowski shots: 4 (site A) vs 3 (site B) – split the difference at 3.5? Stupid.
- Ter Stegen saves: All sites agreed at least! Small miracle there.
- Raphinha’s crosses: Site C said 11 crosses completed, Site A said 7. Screw this.
Spent 45 minutes cross-checking until my eyes glazed over. Realized nobody agrees how they define “key passes”. Total joke.
The Unexpected Discovery
In the middle of my spreadsheet rant, noticed something cool though. Jaume Costa (that Mallorca defender)? Every single site showed him with like 3 tackles and 5 clearances. Dude was a wall! Got sidetracked looking at his heat map – pure left-side domination. Turns out he was sneaky important despite zero goals. Threw that tidbit in my notes cause it felt way more interesting than attacking stats.
Ended up ignoring the stats websites’ drama and focused on clear standouts everyone agreed on:
- Gündogan’s pass accuracy beast mode at 93% everywhere
- Abdon Prats only had 1 shot and buried it
- Koundé getting skinned twice by Mallorca’s winger
Wrapping It Up
My “easy” stats deep dive took three hours. Still think half the numbers are made up – feels like gambling when you compare sites. Final spreadsheet looks janky with way too many “[??]” comments. Learned something though: defensive work gets buried unless you dig past the goalscorers hype.
Posting this mess anyway. Stats are useful until they aren’t – just trust your eyes sometimes. Now my cat’s judging me for yelling at pass completion percentages. Might go kick a ball against the wall instead.
