Question:
Question about awarding an “assist” on a goal. If player A (from midfield, let’s say) makes a nice but short through-pass that sends Player B (a striker, let’s say) on a breakaway, and Player B has to take several touches to dribble close to the goal, and perhaps even has to evade a defender rushing back to tackle him, and Player B dribbles close to the net and scores, does player A get an assist for that?
I guess in a way, my question is, does player B have to immediately strike, volley, or head a ball into the goal for player A to get an assist?
Mind you, we don’t keep these stats. But the kids talk about it a lot, and I’m just curious to know the official answer.
Answer (October 20, 2014):
Assists are a totally unnecessary and worthless statistic, added to the list of other unnecessary statistics developed by sports statisticians (also generally unnecessary) to make their work seem important.
Here are three sources of information:
about.com
Definition: The pass or passes which immediately precede a goal; a maximum of two assists can be credited for one goal.
http://www.iahsaa.org/soccer/soccerstatmanual.pdf
http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/stats/Stats_Manuals/Soccer/2009ez.pdf
The general rule of thumb seems to be that no more than two players may be credited with assists on a goal and that the person geting the assist has some immediate “input” in the goal. I.e., the situation you posit would not qualify for an assist.
The only statistics that truly matter for a team are wins, losses, draws, goals scored, and goals against. Assists are pure vanity. (Strangely enough, no one seems to keep such statistics for own goals. If they did that, then the team scored against would have more depressing and useless statistics to show off.)
