⚽️ Leading the line for Real Madrid, star forward Kylian Mbappé has prioritised quantity over quality
My Week in Sport(s) ⚽️ 🏀 🏉 🏏 ⚾️
Welcome to My Week in Sport(s) — a regular newsletter from Plot the Ball.
Covered in this edition: ⚽️ Kylian Mbappé, 🏀 Luka Dončić, 🏉 Ireland, 🏏 Davina Perrin and ⚾️ Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
⚽️ Leading the line for Real Madrid, star forward Kylian Mbappé has prioritised quantity over quality
Concepts borrowed from basketball are certainly in favour among the online football analytics community at the moment. I used one myself when I wrote about Kylian Mbappé ahead of his move to Real Madrid last summer.
As a player who can help his team progress the ball upfield, fashion goal-scoring chances for himself and others and finish his own chances at an efficient rate, the combination of skills Mbappé displayed during his career in France made him one of football’s only true ‘unicorn’ attackers. In just over a year in Spain — adjusting for the fact that he’s now playing in a stronger domestic league — the outline of his on-field production has remained roughly similar.
Look deeper at his numbers, though, and it’s clear that something quite important about his game has changed. Early in his time at PSG, the shots that Mbappé took were from very close to the opponent’s goal, on average — and therefore of exceptionally high quality. He moved further away from goal as his career in Ligue 1 progressed, and this has continued so far in La Liga: the average quality of his non-penalty shots at Madrid has been lower than it ever was at PSG.
Mbappé is partially compensating for this reduction in xG per shot by increasing his shot volume. (He’s now taking 4.8 shots per 90 minutes in La Liga, up from 4.3 per 90 in Ligue 1.) At nearly 27 years old, it’s plausible that the French international is actually approaching the end of his attacking peak — but, per the stellar work of
at , this trade-off of shot quality for shot quantity is not necessarily typical of players in his position as they age.Can head coach Xabi Alonso get his key player on the ball in better positions than his predecessor did? It’s only three games into the season, but the early signs aren’t too promising: both Mbappé and the team in aggregate are averaging a lower rate of xG per shot than they were during the 2024-25 campaign. Fitting their attacking pieces together will once again be a key question in Madrid this season; unlike in basketball, you don’t get more points for converting shots from outside the box.
🏀 Luka Dončić is carrying a heavier load than ever for Slovenia at EuroBasket 2025
Maybe things have already changed for Luka Dončić. After an early exit from the playoffs for the Los Angeles Lakers, he’s had a busy offseason. “This summer was just a little bit different,” he told Men’s Health in a (very) sympathetic interview in July.
Athletes announcing in preseason that they’re in ‘the best shape of their life’ is certainly nothing new; I’ll reserve judgement on Dončić until he’s back on an NBA court — and we can observe whether or not he’s beating defenders off the dribble and getting to the rim like he used to. He should be in the right condition to hit the ground running when the league resumes in October, though. The Slovenian star has been putting in a shift for his country at this year’s edition of EuroBasket.
During their historic run to gold at EuroBasket 2017, the 18-year-old Dončić was an important player for Slovenia — but not a dominant one. Two tournaments later, he’s indispensable: having scored 35% of Slovenia’s total points and dished 40% of their assists so far, he has dragged them to the round of 16 almost single-handedly. As Luka prepares to take over from LeBron James as the face of the Lakers, he’s certainly spending the summer preparing himself to carry that additional load.
What else I learned last week
🏉 Ireland don’t need to dominate with the ball to top their World Cup pool
Ireland delivered one of the upsets of 2024 when they beat the Black Ferns 29-27. Can they repeat the trick in their final World Cup pool game? Having already qualified for the knockouts, a win should mean avoiding a quarter-final against favoured France.
During the WXV 1 competition in Vancouver last year, Ireland overcame New Zealand despite being outperformed in the running game; they remained competitive by progressing the ball more effectively with kicks from hand than the Kiwis did. The rematch on Sunday looks likely to follow a similar pattern. So far in the World Cup, Ireland have gained 56% of their total metres via kicks; against the same opponents, New Zealand’s kicking game has been responsible for only 38% of their metres.
🏏 Davina Perrin is already one of England’s best top-order hitters in T20
The Northern Superchargers were crowned champions of this year’s Hundred at Lord’s last Sunday. While Phoebe Litchfield might have been named tournament MVP, it was her 18-year-old teammate who ensured that the team even reached the final.
In Saturday’s Eliminator, Davina Perrin struck 101 from 43 balls to power the Superchargers to the highest total in the Hundred’s history. It’s been a stellar year for the teenager: across England’s two short-format competitions — the Hundred and the Blast — Perrin recorded an effective boundary rate 5.0 percentage points higher than the other batters in her games. Every player better than her by this metric is a capped international; it probably won’t be long before Perrin joins them in England colours.
⚾️ By one key metric, Yoshinobu Yamamoto has barely regressed in MLB
It’s an interesting time to revisit my analysis of Yoshinobu Yamamoto from last February: after receiving a 12-year, $325mn contract from the Los Angeles Dodgers, he has now pitched more than 200 innings in Major League Baseball.
One of the measures experts used to illuminate Yamamoto’s time in his native Japan was the difference between his strikeout rate and his walk rate. (In rough terms, this captures someone’s ‘pure’ pitching skill — and leaves what happens when the batter makes contact to one side.) The 27-year-old has almost maintained his performance level by this metric: his K-BB% so far in MLB is 21.2% — well above league-average, and only a single point lower than what he managed over his final three NPB seasons.
The next edition of My Week in Sport(s) will be published in two weeks, on Friday September 19th.
