| GF=Goals For | GA=Goals Against | GD=Goal Difference |
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With the emergence of the Internet, there has been a huge increase in the availability of information for soccer fans to pore over and dissect.
Dedicated TV channels, 24-hour coverage, and an ever-increasing spotlight on teams and players’ stats and results have resulted in more and more ways to compare results.
There are now so many ways to compare teams or league positions that abbreviations are strewn throughout.
The need to get as much information as possible onto a league table has meant the average fan almost has to speak in code to be able to assimilate every goal, every assist, every win.
Let’s delve into some of the most important stat-orientated soccer abbreviations to see what they mean, how they were created, and what effect they could have on your teams’ chances of success.
Goals Against (GA)
What Does Gf Mean In Soccer?
The dreaded Goals Against column, the one statistic that you hope is a zero, the one that tells you whether your defense is solid, or as leaky as a water-filled sock.
Every goal that your team concedes gets added to the GA column, and it’s in your best interests that this statistic remains as low as possible.
As we will discuss further on, teams have a vested interest in a low GA figure, as combined with the Goals For figure, a team could be rewarded or suffer at the end of a season.
Mathematically, the GA figure is straightforward, every goal against your team in whatever competition they are in gets added to the cumulative total, so the lower this figure, the better.
On a more emotional level, the GA stats are an indicator of how well, or poorly, your team is doing. For those loyal fans going to every home and away game, a low figure here means they don’t have to suffer the heartache or stress of watching their team conceding goal after goal.
Goals For (GF)
The only figure that matters for a soccer team? Not quite, but not only is the Goals For column vital for your team, but like hoping for a low GA score, the higher your GF figure, the better your team could be doing in their league.
And while that isn’t a given, scoring four goals in a game that you conceded five in is a quick way to the relegation zone, fans love goals, so the more your team scores, the happier the supporters are.
While three points for a win are the true judge of a team’s performance, it is usually the case at the end of the season that the team that scores the most goals or is at least very high up on the scoring table is usually one of the teams vying for silverware.
Until the 1970 World Cup Finals, Goals For played a part in a league table due to something called goal average, in which the number of goals scored was divided by the number of goals conceded, to come to a goal average.
Five years after the 1970 World Cup, the English Football League adopted a newer form of a tiebreaker, which was found to encourage a more attacking style of soccer.
Whereas when using the Goals Average system would perhaps encourage a team that had taken a lead to sit back and maintain a clean sheet, the newer tiebreaker system would be much more beneficial to a high scoring team, and that new system was to be called the Goal Difference (GD) system.
Goal Difference (GD)
Since the adoption of Goal Difference over Goal Average, this stat has become one of the cornerstones of defining a team’s success in their leagues.
In its simplest form, GD basically means goals scored, minus goals conceded. For example, Team A scored 100 goals but conceded 50 over a season, and has a GD of +50. Team B scored 75 goals but conceded 20 and has a GD of +55.
The above example shows how GD is worked out, but what if these two teams finished top of the same league on the same points? That’s where your team’s GD comes into play.
Since 1975 GD has been the de facto tiebreaker in a competition where two or more teams finish on the same points at the end of a complete season. And you would be surprised at just how often teams do end up needing a solid Goal Difference to get them over the line.
An example of GD at its finest is the 2011-2012 Premier League season, where Manchester City and Manchester United, arch rivals and runaway leaders of that year’s Premier League, went into the 38th and final game of the season tied on 86 points each.
A GD superiority of +8 for Manchester City over their cross-city rivals meant that as long as they matched or bettered Manchester United’s result, the title would go to Manchester City. Should either United or City lose and the other team win, however, then GD would not be required and the title would go to the team with the most points.
This scenario would lead to one of the most breathtaking final days for any league in the world, as a Manchester United 1-0 win meant that Manchester City had to beat Queens Park Rangers to win the league on GD.
Heading into injury time, City were, incredibly, losing 2-1 to a relegation-threatened QPR, only to score twice in as many minutes to win the league with seconds to spare.
While this nail-biting end to a season was a true epic for fans and pundits alike, it was Manchester City scoring 93 goals and conceding only 29 over the season to leave them on a +64 GD compared to Manchester United and their +56 GD that meant the blue half of Manchester would emerge with the title.
Is GD More Important Than GA And GF?
In a round-about way yes, GD is an integral marker of a team’s success, along with their final points tally.
So in this sense, GD is absolutely vital to a team, and don’t forget that GD is also relevant to teams lower down the league table too, it could be the difference between survival or relegation.
It could even mean the difference between 11th and 12th position in the league, which may mean increased prize money. So GD is very important, but the only way GD helps is if you score more than you concede.
As always in soccer, the “goal” of the game is to, well, score goals. The more you score, the better you do, the less you concede, the less you lose, right?
Subtracting your goals conceded from your goals scored is just another marker to decide whether your team is a winner or a loser.
GA and GF are also vital but come the final day of a long season, let’s hope your GD is better than your rivals.
