The goal the score does not confirm
The pressure chart marks goals at the minute they reach us. Every so often one of those goals vanishes: the mark appears, and the score never changes.
It is a known defect, it comes from the source, and we measured its size instead of estimating it.
What the measurement showed
Five days of collection, 1101 goal episodes recorded:
- 799 resolved by themselves, with a median of 30 seconds — that was just the score arriving after the event, and there is nothing wrong with it;
- 64 persisted, which is 5.8% — the event stayed and the score never confirmed it;
- half of the persistent ones are the opposite kind: the goal happened and the matching event never arrived.
In practice, a phantom goal is left in somewhere between 2% and 3% of matches. On a Saturday with a hundred live matches, that is two or three.
Why it cannot simply be fixed
Because the error is not in our calculation: it is the event arriving wrong, or not arriving. We receive a list of events and a score, and when the two disagree there is no third party to break the tie.
What can be done is to decide which one to believe, and that decision is easy: the score wins. An event the score does not confirm is a doubtful event, not a goal.
What this means for you, right now
If the chart marks a goal, check the score on that row. If the score has not moved, wait half a minute: in three out of four cases it moves. If it is still unchanged after that, treat the mark as noise and not as a goal.
The opposite also happens: a goal in the score with no mark on the chart. It has the same origin, and the reading is the same — the score wins.
Why we publish this
A number that is wrong in 3% of matches is still useful when you know it is wrong in 3% of matches. What makes it useless is finding that out on your own, in the wrong match. The full measurement and the panel's other calculations are in the methodology.
Updated on Oct. 31, 2026.