Assist (football)

In association football, an assist is a contribution by a player which helps to score a goal. Statistics for assists made by players may be kept officially by the organisers of a competition, or unofficially by, for example, journalists or organisers of fantasy football competitions. Recording assists is not part of the official Laws of the Game and the criteria for an assist to be awarded may vary. Record of assists was virtually not kept at all until the end of the 20th century, although reports of matches commonly described a player as having "made" one or more goals. Since the 1990s, some leagues have kept official record of assists and based awards on them.

Most commonly, an assist is credited to a player for passing or crossing the ball to the scorer. It may also be awarded to a player whose shot rebounds (off a defender, goalkeeper or goalpost) to a teammate who scores. Some systems may credit an assist to a player who wins a penalty kick or a free kick for another player to convert, or to an attacking player for contributing to an own goal. A goal may be unassisted, or have one assist; some systems allow for two assists.

FIFA's Technical Study Group is responsible for awarding assist points at the FIFA World Cup. In the Technical Study Group's report on the 1986 World Cup, the authors calculated for the first time unofficial statistics for assists, developing the following criteria:

The 1990 World Cup technical report adopted similar criteria, but changed the free-kick/penalty criterion:

Planet World Cup has calculated some retrospective data on assists back to the 1966 World Cup, though the 1986 data differs from that of FIFA.

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