Choosing a freekicker

In Xpert the freekicker and goalkeeper are seen as the 2 most important players. Here I examing how much impact a freekick expert can have.  A while back the game underwent changes which mean freekicks aren't given out so easily or often now.

The following analysis comes from the game data for all games in the top 5 tiers of the super league season 31 and Major League S37 and Ultimate League S31 all of which finished recently - this is current data based on the game engine as it works now. I chose the top 5 tiers because that will exclude most unmanaged sides, or sides on really poor form etc. This is a total of 5208 matches.

How often are freekicks given?

Around 74% of free kicks are direct. I decided not to do analysis on set piece free kicks at this time as they are more complicated due to the skill of the player taking the final shot.

Over the sample of games there were 2290 set piece freekicks and 6435 direct free kicks. 1.7 per game. One day I plan on checking out affects creation of freekick chances.

How often do (direct) freekicks go in?

I checked all matches to see how many freekicks were awarded, how many went in. I then plotted the incidence of scoring a goal against the difference in performance between the player taking the FK and the keeper.


NOTE:
This data is based on Direct Freekicks only.
This data is for players who have the FK SQ

Perf Difference	Scored	Missed	Percent
FKer v Keeper
-10	0	13	0%
-9	0	13	0%
-8	0	34	0%
-7	1	43	2%
-6	1	89	1%
-5	3	130	2%
-4	7	161	4%
-3	9	193	4%
-2	19	259	7%
-1	26	281	8%
0	40	389	9%
1	63	345	15%
2	98	373	21%
3	102	339	23%
4	137	326	30%
5	141	229	38%
6	141	174	45%
7	130	159	45%
8	88	118	43%
9	88	66	57%
10	60	36	62%
Total	1154	3770	23%

As you can see if your FKer is less skilled (or plays to less bars) than the defending keeeper there is almost no chance of a direct freekick going in. 

I did try to plot similar data for players with shooting power and vanilla players but I don't have enough sample data to get accurate figures. What I did do is band the data to get the chart below.

Perf Diff	FK	SP	Vanilla
0-3	17%	15%	9%
4-7	38%	32%	8%

As you can see the difference between Free Kick and Shooting Power SQs isn't huge, and it would seem that if you have 2 more bars on a player with shooting power that is a better option - especially if the FKer is less skilled than the keeper.

Vanilla players don't make great FKers - but if you have a high skilled one it will be better than a low skilled FKer.

Set piece Freekicks

NOTE: This was based on the Super & Major leagu data only and i'm too lazy to redo the data at the moment.

With set piece freekicks there was a lot less data and as they are a less significant part of the game I need to present the conclusions differently.

The following table shows the distribution of freekicks according to FKer SQ. Players with Shooting Power have a slightly higher chance of taking direct freekicks and vanilla players almost always do variations (I wonder if this is a bug in the code?)

	Direct	Set Piece	% Direct
Freekick	3216	660	83%
Shooting Power	562	99	85%
Vanilla	311	643	33%

Calculating the conversion rate for set piece freekicks is complicated as it appears both the player taking the freekick and the player having the shot are considered, and if either is poor then the chance seems unlikely to go in. As a rule conversion of set piece freekicks seems slightly lower than for direct freekicks.

Who makes the best freekickers?

Here's what the rules say about the freekick SQ:

A player with this symbol is a specialist in taking freekicks. Keep in mind though that how good a player is in taking freekicks also depends a lot on his skill level. This means that a player with this quality but with low skill will not be very good in taking freekicks, This quality however makes a player twice as good on freekicks compared to a player of equal skill but without this quality. 

The key factor with players scoring from freekicks is the player's skill relative to the defending team's goalkeeper skill and I believe this "fact" to be misleading at best. Certainly a 10 skill freekicker will virtually never score against a 15 skill keeper, and there are many teams who just use their strongest player with Shooting Power or no SQs as a freekick taker and do equally as well.

The best player to choose obviously depends on your league and what you need. Conidering the above data I would say there is no point ever buying an average free kicker - he needs to be special if you are to pay significantly extra for the SQ, and overall a player with Shooting Power may be a better investment.