Title: Actions Speak Louder Than Goals: Valuing Player Actions in Soccer,
Abstract: Assessing the impact of the individual actions performed by soccer players
during games is a crucial aspect of the player recruitment process.
Unfortunately, most traditional metrics fall short in addressing this task as
they either focus on rare events like shots and goals alone or fail to account
for the context in which the actions occurred. This paper introduces a novel
advanced soccer metric for valuing any type of individual player action on the
pitch, be it with or without the ball. Our metric values each player action
based on its impact on the game outcome while accounting for the circumstances
under which the action happened. When applied to on-the-ball actions like
passes, dribbles, and shots alone, our metric identifies Argentine forward
Lionel Messi, French teenage star Kylian Mbappé, and Belgian winger Eden
Hazard as the most effective players during the 2016/2017 season.