Chances created vs key passes vs shots created

Three terms, three different scopes, and none of them are the same stat wearing a different name. Here is exactly what each one counts and where it comes from.

Chances created vs shots created vs shot-creating actions

Chances created is key passes plus assists, full stop. Shots created and shot-creating actions are separate stats that measure something wider, from different sources, and neither one is another name for chances created.

Chances created: key passes plus assists

Opta defines chances created as a cumulative total of assists and key passes. That only works cleanly because key passes and assists never overlap. A key pass is the final pass that sets up a shot that does not score. An assist is the final pass that sets up a shot that does score. FootyMetrics has covered this distinction in full, including why a blocked or saved shot still counts as a key pass rather than nothing at all, in key passes vs assists.

Because the two halves never overlap, adding them together gives a clean total: every pass a player made that put a team-mate through on goal, whatever happened to the shot afterwards. That is chances created, and it is the figure to check for a single measure of a player’s overall creative output regardless of finishing.

Shots created: a betting term, not an Opta stat

Shots created is not an Opta term. It started as a Sky Bet market and now runs on other bookmakers too, including Paddy Power and Betfair, as FootyMetrics has covered separately. It adds up three Opta events for one player: key passes, assists and fantasy assists.

The practical difference is the fantasy assist. A fantasy assist credits a player for the last attacking touch before a goal in situations where the standard assist definition can’t apply to them directly, for example winning the penalty that a team-mate then converts. Chances created does not include any of that. So for a given player and match, shots created is always equal to or bigger than chances created, never smaller, because it is chances created plus those extra situations on top.

Shot-creating actions: a different metric from a different provider

Shot-creating actions (SCA) is not an Opta term either, and it is not the same idea as chances created or shots created. It comes from FBref, built on StatsBomb data, and it counts something structurally different: the two attacking actions immediately before any shot, rather than just the final pass to the shooter.

Those two qualifying actions can be a pass, a successful take-on, a foul drawn, or a defensive action that starts the move. Because SCA looks two actions deep into the build-up instead of crediting only the very last pass, it can award two different players a shot-creating action for the same single shot: the player who made the final pass and the player who set them up one step earlier can both get one. Chances created only ever credits the one player who played the key pass or the assist.

So the three terms describe three different scopes:

• Chances created: the final action only, key pass or assist, one player, one number, from Opta.
• Shots created: chances created plus fantasy assists, one player, from a betting-market convention.
• Shot-creating actions: the last two actions before any shot, up to two players per shot, from FBref/StatsBomb.

A worked example

Say a midfielder plays 90 minutes and is directly involved in four created chances. Three passes each set up a team-mate’s shot that is saved or blocked, and none of those shots go in. One pass sets up a team-mate who scores.

That midfielder’s stat line reads 3 key passes, 1 assist, 4 chances created. If none of those four situations involved a fantasy-assist scenario such as a won penalty, their shots created total for the match is also 4, the same as chances created, since there is nothing extra to add on top. Their shot-creating actions total would depend on who else touched the ball in the two actions before each of those four shots, which chances created does not track at all.

Why chances created is still the useful volume stat

Chances created strips out the part of the game a creative player does not control, which is whether their team-mate actually scores. A player can put together the same quality of pass, into the same space, to the same team-mate, in match after match, and see their assists column swing depending on whether that team-mate is finishing well. Their chances created total keeps climbing regardless, because it counts the shot created, not the goal.

That is why it holds up better than assists alone as a measure of a creative player’s output over a run of matches.

Chances created sits alongside key passes and the rest of a player’s creative numbers on the player stats hub.