Going near post
Very few things in football are more satisfying than watching someone cut inside onto their strong foot and bend one into the far top corner. But, in order to maximize efficiency, shooters can’t just try this same technique every single time, right?
I know, I know — players today are becoming robots, joy is gone from the game, etc. However, I want to talk about how shooters are sprinkling in a different type of finish that can be beautiful in its own right.
Where did I start?
The cover star and initial inspiration for this piece was Kylian Mbappé, who has seemingly become the poster boy for this technique. I wanted to see if I could learn anything from the Frenchman’s shot placement, as well as investigate if he was truly deserving of his status.
I needed some potential challengers for Mbappé who were frequently getting into these kinds of positions, so I thought back to Sezer Unar’s very cool work on cutting inside.
I also wanted players who are high-volume shooters and tend to be viewed as good shooters, so I did some cross-referencing with Football Reference to rule out some names like Jack Grealish, Jadon Sancho, and Jeremy Doku.
In addition to Mbappé, I decided to look into Lionel Messi, Mohamed Salah, Riyad Mahrez, Lorenzo Insigne, and Son Heung-min. Those last two guys are a bit different — Insigne because he cuts in and shoots so much, and we’ve all seen him put in some bangers, but his finishing numbers are actually quite poor. I wanted to see if there was anything going on there.
Son, on the other hand, didn’t actually show up in the cutting inside rankings and is used a little bit differently, but the guy is such a renowned finisher that I wanted to have him in here as well.
Gathering, Filtering, and Classifying Shots
With the great resource that is Understat (even if their xG model is naive) I was able to quickly scrape the league shots for all of our subjects. Then I filtered for shots based on the following criteria:
- within the last three seasons (I don’t have all the time in the world)
- taken with the player’s strong foot
- taken in open play
- were not blocked
- taken from the player’s “weak side” of the pitch (so right side for Messi, left side for Mbappé)
- taken from behind the penalty spot
From there, I went through and watched all of these shots with the fantastic tool that is Wyscout. It sounds like a lot, but really doesn’t take that long if you have all the data ready.
This is where I used my judgement to manually exclude shots that didn’t match the situation I was looking for. I didn’t want one-on-one’s, so I didn’t count shots if the shooter was beyond the last defender. I also excluded things like first-time volleys with the ball dropping from high out of the air — looking to get only true cutting-inside situations.
Another reason I wanted to look at the shots manually was so that I could classify their placement myself. You could use end placement coordinates and say which side of the goal each shot ended up on, but there are shots hit directly at the goalkeeper that I decided not to classify as either near post or far post efforts, as there was no way of telling what the true intention was.
Still, if you wanted to look into this concept for a very large sample of shots, just using the shot end coordinates would probably be your best bet.
Statistical Findings
Now for the fun stuff. First off, does Mbappé really have a proclivity for going to the near post relative to his peers? Well, the answer appears to be yes, at least by a little bit.
I had 35.71% of Mbappé’s 56 qualifying attempts going to the near post. Messi at 30.95% and Salah at 29.09% were pretty close to each other. As expected, Son didn’t have as large a sample of qualifying shots, but he fell in between those two.
Interestingly, there was a big gap between Salah and Insigne. At the bottom of the table, Mahrez had another relatively low sample of shots (more so due to his rotated playing time at City), but his massive preference for the far post curler is clearly reflected by the tape, and actually made me chuckle a few times.
You will notice that all of these rates are still well under 50%. This should be expected, as a ball that curls from further away from the keeper to just inside the post will always be the best option theoretically.
Where the near post finish comes in is to keep the goalkeeper guessing. We often talk about decision-making and misdirection when it comes to passing, but we shouldn’t forget it in finishing as well.
Mbappé, whose intelligence in general tends to be overlooked, has the ability to scan in the blink of an eye and then decide whether to cut his finish back to the near post.
We can also look at how many shots a player takes to the far post between each near post attempt. Out of our shooters with the largest samples, Mbappé had the shortest “far post streaks” on average and the lowest standard deviation.
The longest string of far post shots I had for the Frenchman was 5, while each of the others here had at least one streak of 10 or more.
With these findings in mind, I would say that Mbappé’s reputation for this finish is deserved. I don’t have enough to say that he’s definitively the best in the world at it, but he clearly shows a knack for trying to cut that ball back to the left side of the goal. Also, it does suit the way he strikes the ball, which I will get into in this next section.
Technical Observations
Another thing I liked about going through and watching all these shots myself was being able to actually get a sense of how different factors influence the type of finish that is ultimately attempted.
- Defender orientation
Probably the most immediate thing the shooter should process is the body orientation of any immediate “blocking” defender. In the example below, you can see how Insigne has the defender with his back almost straight to goal. The defender is no longer shepherding Insigne to the outside, and the route to curl around him to the far post is wide open.
If the defender is opened up towards the sideline — like the example below — the near post is the open lane.
2. Goalkeeper positioning
Looking beyond that defender, the shooter’s decision can become a very easy one depending on how the goalkeeper is positioned. Take this Mbappé goal. Look at how far this dude was cheating to the far post!
When you have over half of the goal open like this, even a strike that wouldn’t appear special out of context becomes extremely deadly (now, in this case Mbappé did still have the challenge of putting his shot through the defender’s legs).
This reminded me of Ansu Fati’s goal against Real Betis this season. It was quite literally a slow roller, but still left the keeper stranded.
3. Shooter gravity
The movement of the shooter themselves leading up to the shot is also a big deal. Taking Mo Salah, for example — he is someone who pretty frequently runs in diagonally angled at the goalkeeper.
In my opinion, at least, it is much easier to get around the ball and guide it to the far post in these situations. Driving in on an angle like that, it seems very challenging to get your feet set and strike through the ball to the near post (feels like a recipe for the ball getting stuck under you).
However, when a player is travelling straight across (parallel to the edge of the box), I think this creates an easier setup to cut the ball back, driving it in to the near post.
Travelling horizontally like that also means the keeper is shifting and adds to the misdirection of a near post effort.
4. Shooter preference
Of course, any decision on a football pitch isn’t really one-size-fits-all deal. Players have different skill sets and tendencies, and they will be more familiar with their own ability than any of us.
Mbappé just seems to be very strong when it comes to generating power by striking through the ball. Take his goal in the World Cup final, for instance.
Even when the PSG star goes to the far post, his shots have a certain sting to them as opposed to the looping efforts of someone like Insigne.
Then there’s Riyad Mahrez who seems to live for curlers and nothing else. It was funny at times seeing the Algerian pass on one angle, pull out some extra maneuvers, and set himself up to bend one. But, hey, he’s good at it.
In the image below, do you think Mahrez took the decent near post opportunity or tried to round that next Leeds defender?
That’s right, he ended up going for the curled effort under pressure. This one was a dud, though, unfortunately.
Against Southampton here, Mahrez elects not to blast it, but to cut back behind the trailing defender and get an angle he likes better. And, well, he’s able to put it into the back of the net.
Even in this one-on-one situation below — which was not included in the data — the keeper is already essentially falling to the far post, but Mahrez doesn’t care.
The City winger’s shot squeezes by and into the goal.
I’m not saying that Mahrez adding more variation to his efforts wouldn’t help him become even more deadly in front of goal, but he would still be someone who — rightfully — has great trust in his ability to place the ball in at the far post due to his ball-striking style. Players are different!
Thanks for reading! If you disagree with anything I’ve said here, please feel free to discuss with me. If you want to build on any concept I’ve presented here, go ahead!
