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That heatmap thread is a bit funny. I can’t lie. Apparently, if you don’t enjoy advanced metrics, you’re watching football wrong. Like, I get it. But telling me which 16th of the pitch we dominated more against X team, vs. Y team, gives me no joy and probably says very little. But because it’s a statistic…
In my mind, the two most overrated stats (in terms of how people in football commentary/punditry seem to emphasize them relative to how much they really mean when you watch the game of football they come from) are “possession percentage” and “passes completed”.
Possession is worthless without end product. If you can’t score or can’t score enough, no one gives a crap how much you have the ball. Because you won’t do any damage when you have it.
Passes completed is worse than worthless without context. Because if the opponent is winning, they will be happy to sit back and watch your goalkeeper and defensive players put together 20+ pass sequences where the ball never crosses the midfield line. If you rack up 800 completed passes but pretty much never cross midfield and never score because of it, no one cares. Because you accomplished nothing in the game by doing all those passes.
Stats are all about context. So it has always been, and so it will always be.