Lukas Keppler, CEO of Impect, a German company that evaluates soccer teams and leagues, is looking beyond goals and assists. These stats are useful in quantifying the performance of central attacking players, but what about the others on the pitch?



Impect’s two co-founders, Stefan Reinartz and Jens Hegeler, are former Bundesliga players and share Keppler’s beliefs. Both found the stats they were receiving post-match weren’t reflective of what actually transpired in the game. Pass success percentage, for example, doesn’t influence the game if teams are relying on backward passes just to maintain control of the ball.



“They’d come off the pitch feeling good about their performance and then they saw all those subjective grades in the news, or the papers, even the stats they got from the clubs didn’t really match to their own feelings,” Keppler said, recalling original conversations with Reinartz and Hegeler.



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