Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2018 May 8

= May 8 =

Football other hat tricks
In Football goals are sometimes categorized as right foot, left foot, header or other. Has there any been a hat tricks in the following leagues that have had the 3 goals as other: La Liga, German Bundesliga, Serie A or English top flight? (Mobile mundo (talk) 15:49, 8 May 2018 (UTC))
 * There have been many such hat-tricks. Start at Lists of hat-tricks and follow links from there to specific leagues.  -- Jayron 32 15:52, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not convinced it's really that many nor that the articles definitely answer the question. For example List of Premier League hat-tricks mentions 2 people who have scored hat-tricks with 3 headers. It doesn't mention any with 3 "others" as far as I can tell. It doesn't even mention anyone who scored a perfect hat-trick (combination of right foot, left foot and header in any order AFAIK) although it's possible it's because it's too many. Note an analysis of league 2 shows only 10% of goals were scored with "other" vs 21% for headers. I don't know how well that stands up in general but I doubt it's that far off [//footballperformanceanalysis.com/2013/02/06/header-goals-analysis-of-league-2-part-1/] Nil Einne (talk)
 * Opened this but forgot to check it. It shows of Cristiano Ronaldo's 501 goals [//www.sportskeeda.com/football/stats-analysis-cristiano-ronaldo-501-career-goals-so-far] only 2 are counted as other. Which means none of his 37 hat-tricks can be from all 'other'. Again I'm not sure this is actually that unusual. Nil Einne (talk) 19:58, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
 * What's with all this categorization? I've been following British football for many years and I have never heard of anyone showing the slightest interest in whether a hat-trick, or any goal for that matter, is scored with the left foot, the right foot or any other part of the player's anatomy. This kind of thing may be common in the USA, where sport-related statistics are everywhere, but in Britain we simply don't care about that kind of thing. See also: number of "assists". --Viennese Waltz 07:18, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
 * The accumulation of specific statistics, such as how a particular player scores a goal, may be useful in coaching, for example, when trying to understand a particular player's tendancies, it can influence how a coach may choose to instruct his players on how to best defend against that player; one who scores many more goals with their right foot may indicate a different type of defensive strategy than one who is known to frequently use their head. It has it's value, and for that reason is likely tracked, even if it doesn't have any value to you as a single fan.  -- Jayron 32 15:52, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Just to provide a point of reference here, this software is designed to help coaches track data in exactly this way, both to prepare their teams for an opponent and to help their own teams improve skills. -- Jayron 32 16:48, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I'd note that this source with the analysis of league 2 goals [//footballperformanceanalysis.com/2013/02/06/header-goals-analysis-of-league-2-part-1/] is from someone who says they are a graduate of Football Studies in Southampton Solent University. The hat-trick header thing mentioned above is sourced in our article to the British Broadcasting Corporation [//www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/38232131]. Okay their coverage of football probably has a somewhat international outlook, but I'm fairly sure 'what interests Americans' is still quite far from their minds. The Premier League website mentions perfect hat-tricks in this news report [//www.premierleague.com/news/601677]. Again maybe they have an international outlook, but not likely to be American. And I suspect these Daily Mail reports mentioning perfect hat-tricks  or hat-tricks of headers  even have an international outlook. This doesn't mean such matters are of much interest, but 'random unusual stats/factoids' are part and parcel or media reports because they get some minor interest from some people. As for why the OP is interest, well that's none of our business. Nil Einne (talk) 16:24, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

our article on hat trick mentions the term "perfect hat-trick". The sources given lead to a really good example: that of Michel Platini, who scored two perfect hat tricks in Euro 84. This is not a RS but I'd trust it anyway, and includes a bunch of examples: --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 06:37, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks. (Mobile mundo (talk) 14:37, 15 May 2018 (UTC))