Moments before a goal, the movement that created the chance often looks chaotic. A pass goes somewhere unexpected, defenders hesitate, space opens. That sense of disorder may not be random at all. It might be one of the strongest signals that a team is about to win. A new analysis published in the journal PLOS One suggests that soccer teams perform better when they spread their play unpredictably across the entire field rather than focusing attacks in familiar areas. The research examined how ball movement patterns relate to match outcomes using data from professional competitions. “Soccer is low-scoring, so a couple of moments can swing a match, and simple statistics like possession or shot counts do not always capture who performed better,” said Dr. Sergiy Shelyag, an associate professor in applied mathematics and data science at Flinders University. “Our approach measures how unpredictably and widely a team moves the ball across a match.” Football pitch divided into 30 zones. (CREDIT: PLOS One) Measuring unpredictability instead of possession Traditional football statistics often focus on possession percentages, …