What makes a soccer match exciting? There’s data for that

Egypt led 2-0 and was minutes away from a victory over Argentina on Tuesday.

Instead, Lionel Messi and the reigning World Cup champions stormed back with three goals to complete a comeback for the ages. Hours later, Colombia and Switzerland battled to a 0-0 score through extra time, with both goalkeepers making key saves late, before Switzerland prevailed in penalties, 4-3.

Two immensely exciting games. But did one game deliver more than the other? With more match data available now than ever before — completed dribbles, shot quality, save difficulty, and dozens of other metrics — can we actually measure a match’s excitement?

The answer is yes, according to Brennan Klein, director of Northeastern University’s NetSI Sport research group. For a project that combines his lifelong love of the sport and his work as a data researcher, Klein developed an algorithm that rates the excitement level of each World Cup match.

His data-driven rating system — using the Hudl Statsbomb dataset, which logs over 3,400 events per match — rests on five categories of factors that build tension before and during a match. Crunch all the data for a given match, and the algorithm delivers an “excitement rating” from 0 to 10 — 10 being the most thrilling game you could watch.

Below are the categories, the weight each carries, and some of the factors included:

Five weighted categories combine into a single 0–10 rating.