When I look at the scoring charts every season, I notice something fans pretend not to see. The best goalscorers miss the most chances. The Golden Boot winner is almost always near the top of the “Big Chances Missed” table. That is not a coincidence. It is structural.
Take someone like Erling Haaland. He misses clear chances. Sometimes two or three in one half, for more context, he has the same amount of goals as big chances missed in the Premier League this season (22). Yet by May, he is competing for top scorer again and will most likely win. The surface reaction is contradiction. If he misses so much, how does he score so much? The answer is volume.
A striker cannot miss chances he does not reach. The most important ability in elite scoring is not necessarily finishing mechanics. It is repetition. It is movement that generates opportunity over and over again. I value that more than isolated moments of perfection.
The romantic idea of the “clinical” striker is misleading. Fans imagine someone who takes one shot and scores it. But if that striker only shoots once every two games, what is the value of that efficiency? Goals decide matches. And goals come from repeated exposure to danger.
When I analyze strikers, I do not start with how many they miss. I start with how often they are in positions to score. Are they attacking the near post? Are they arriving at cutbacks? Are they reacting to rebounds? If the answer is yes, the goals will usually follow across a season.
But I am not arguing that finishing does not matter. It does. Volume without eventual conversion becomes noise. The elite striker lives at the intersection of constant involvement and stable output over time. Haaland represents that model. He buys more lottery tickets than anyone else, and he wins enough of them to dominate. That is the paradox. The Golden Boot is not forged in perfection. It is forged in relentless repetition.
I think we need to separate three types of strikers clearly.
First, the low-volume finisher. Efficient, tidy, but peripheral. He might score one brilliant goal from one chance. The issue is that he disappears for long stretches. When the team struggles to create, he offers no solution because he is not forcing situations.
Second, the high-volume underperformer. Constantly involved, always threatening, but unstable in conversion. You watch him and think, “He is dangerous,” yet the output does not always match the danger. The frustration is understandable.
Third, and this is the rare category, the high-volume stabilizer. This striker combines elite movement with finishing that calibrates over time. He might miss three in September, two in October, but by April his numbers align with his threat level. That is the difference between chaos and greatness.
When I evaluate strikers, I look at long-term stabilization. Over 30 to 40 games, does the output reflect the opportunity? Temporary wastefulness does not worry me. Chronic underperformance does.
This is where the debate becomes uncomfortable. It is easy to defend a striker who misses because he is involved. It is harder to admit that involvement must eventually translate. Data helps here.
Expected goals, overperformance, underperformance across seasons, these things reveal patterns.
Haaland misses, yes. But across large samples, he converts at a rate that sustains elite production. Someone like Darwin Núñez, in many seasons, has produced elite movement but fluctuating finishing returns. That does not make him useless. It makes him volatile.
Greatness is not about never missing. It is about ensuring the misses do not outweigh the damage you inflict. The difference between “he is dangerous” and “he is decisive” is calibration over time.
I do not excuse wastefulness blindly. I contextualize it. There is a line between necessary chaos and structural limitation. The elite striker lives on the correct side of that line.
Finishing is mechanical. Scoring is psychological. I believe elite strikers must think like goldfish. Short memory. Immediate reset. If you miss in the 60th minute and carry it into the 65th, you are finished. The next chance will feel heavier.
What separates elite forwards is how they respond to failure. Average strikers hide. They drift wide. They stop attacking the same space. They subconsciously protect themselves from embarrassment.
Elite strikers do the opposite. They attack the same channel again. They demand the ball again. They treat the previous miss as irrelevant data.
This mindset is not optional. The number nine position carries scarcity pressure. In tight games, there may only be two or three clear chances. If you miss one, the stadium groans. Social media reacts instantly. But the game does not care about emotion. It only rewards persistence.
However, resilience alone is not enough. I want aggression, but I also want refinement. If a striker keeps missing the same type of chance repeatedly, adjustment must follow. Elite mentality is not stubborn repetition. It is confident adaptation.
The best strikers combine short-term memory with long-term learning. They forget the miss emotionally but remember it tactically. That balance is rare.
Fans react to what they see. Three missed sitters feel catastrophic, they in fact could be and often ARE. But when I look deeper, I ask a different question. How did those chances occur?
Expected goals models are not perfect, but they clarify process. If a striker consistently generates high xG opportunities through movement, that is repeatable. A spectacular 25-yard finish is not. I trust repeatable patterns over isolated brilliance.
There is also gravity. A striker who repeatedly threatens depth forces defenders to collapse. Even if he misses, he bends the defensive structure. That creates secondary space for midfield runners, wingers, and late arrivals.
This impact does not appear in highlight reels. But coaches see it.
Managers rarely drop strikers for missing chances. They drop them for not arriving in scoring positions. Being absent is worse than being imperfect.
That said, accountability matters. If a striker consistently underperforms expected goals across multiple seasons, selection questions become legitimate. Process gives you patience. Persistent inefficiency removes it.
I am not defending inefficiency. I am defending involvement as the foundation of elite scoring.
Football fans notably have short memories. Cristiano Ronaldo took enormous shot volume. He missed plenty. But he scored relentlessly. His greatness was built on repetition. He kept attacking the box until the numbers bent in his favor.
Edinson Cavani is another example I respect deeply. His movement was constant. He would miss one, then two, then score the third. Over 38 games, his output reflected his activity.
What has changed is visibility. In the 1990s, fans saw goals. Today, they see “Big Chances Missed” graphics during live broadcasts. Wastefulness is amplified. Context is reduced. I think modern discourse punishes visible failure more than it rewards invisible movement.
Legends were imperfect. They were simply persistent enough that their imperfections became statistical noise.
There is another extreme I reject completely. The striker who protects his numbers.
A player with one shot and one goal is labeled clinical. But if he only shoots once because he avoids risk, that efficiency is misleading.
Some attackers pass instead of shoot in dangerous areas. They avoid blame. Their percentages remain clean. But the team loses potential goals.
I value courage over aesthetic tidiness. Clinical does not mean perfect. Clinical means decisive within high involvement. It means accepting visible failure in exchange for sustained threat.
The real red flag for me is disappearance. When a striker stops attacking the six-yard box, stops making near-post runs, stops gambling on rebounds, that is when concern is most justified.
Scoring is probability management. The more high-quality attempts you generate, the more likely you are to dominate output over time.
Missing frequently does not automatically mean greatness. But refusing to miss by avoiding involvement guarantees mediocrity.
When I watch strikers now, I do not focus only on goals. I watch movement. I watch repetition. I watch how they respond to failure. Greatness is not necessarily clean. It is relentless.
If you want to identify the next elite striker, ignore the compilation of perfect finishes. Watch who keeps arriving. Watch who keeps shooting. Watch who keeps believing after missing. The best do not avoid failure. They overwhelm it with volume.
