What loves Biro but doesn't love Svatok? We revisit G+ for 2025

The number jumped out in the list of stats from Saturday night's 4-2 win over D.C. United.

As good as the four goals were for Austin FC — a total they hadn't registered since Sebastian Driussi's stoppage-time goal on April 6, 2024, allowing Verde a dramatic 4-3 victory over San Jose — D.C. United did get two goals in the game.

And as Catalina Bush ran the numbers from the match, shared on her excellent MLS Analytics Bluesky account, it was clear who event tracking attributed the goals allowed to, and how that blame was reflected in the team's goals added (G+) ratings. Go to the Austin FC column and look at who's at the bottom of the list.

I commented on Oleksandr Svatok's 19 (set against a mean score of 50) in my Sunday morning article, and since then, my friends from the North End Podcast and Moontower Soccer made arguments which could be boiled down into a few simple statements, which I mostly agree with:

• Svatok wasn't entirely to blame for the first goal (as Osman Bukari didn't track a runner, contributing significantly to D.C.'s advantage);
• Svatok actually did a great job containing Christian Benteke for most of the evening (and when he did give up the penalty late in stoppage time, it was inconsequential); and
• On the whole, Svatok's pretty good (and certainly better than that 19 indicates).

Compared to center backs in MLS and comparable leagues around the world, per his 2025 MLS spider chart, Svatok excels in clearances and interceptions if you're just looking at volume:

But if you look at G+ throughout the season, Svatok is at the bottom of the list of Verde players — which is either an indictment of Svatok's game (or at least elements of it) or an indictment of G+ as a reliable measure of a player's impact on the game).

But then again, this season, G+ loves All-Star Guilherme Biro.

But perhaps we need to revisit G+ as a concept first.

What is G+?

We covered this a while back, in the context of Riqui Puig's incredible 2024 season, but it's worth circling back.

According to John Muller — featured on the most recent Emergency Podcast — writing in American Soccer Analysis, goals added (G+) is a superstat that "measures a player’s total on-ball contribution in attack and defense. It does this by calculating how much each touch changes their team’s chances of scoring and conceding across two possessions."

As an example:

At the moment a player receives the ball at midfield, their team might have a 1.5% chance of scoring on that possession but also a 1% chance of conceding on the next possession. That situation isn’t very valuable. But if they play a throughball from there into the final third, their team is now in a much better situation and might have a 6% chance of scoring and only a 0.5% chance of conceding. The pass would be worth the difference in their team’s situation before and after it, or (0.060 - 0.005) - (0.015 - 0.010) = +0.050 goals added.

G+ is expressed as a decimal — and in 2025, just for reference, Lionel Messi leads the league with an 8.60 (meaning his actions bring his team 8.6 more total goals than they'd have without him), while Biro leads Verde with a 1.33.

I'm calling G+ a superstat because it's measuring six different components of a player's overall game and calculating a total score based on these components. Those are:

• Shooting, which is self-explanatory;
• Receiving, which is successfully receiving passes (something that registers in the FBref spider charts we share from time to time);
• Passing, which is making a pass (with easier passes scored more for the passer and harder passes splitting credit to acknowledge the receiver getting in position to successfully get on the end of a riskier pass attempt);
• Dribbling, including carries, take-ons, miscontrols, and dispossessions;
• Interrupting, including tackles, interceptions, blocks, clearances, recoveries, and contested headers; and
• Fouling, including both fouls committed and fouls received.

Here's the best of MLS, with names that won't surprise you (except for Noah Elie):

And here's the Best of Verde (with individual stats listed alphabetically left-to-right from dribbling to shooting):

Biro is best, according to this, in the receiving, interrupting, and passing categories, whereas Brandon Vázquez was best at receiving and worst at dribbling. Julio Cascante, among the perennial G+ team leaders, once again has passing as his best category, though it's not as substantial as it's been in past years (and certainly his relative lack of minutes might be contributing).

Here's Mid Verde, with Owen Wolff as the last of the positive contributors:

And here's the bottom of Verde's G+ rankings:

While it seems like the Interrupting category would be Svatok's forte, it's actually his worst category, contributing -1.32 to his overall -2.04. Part of that has to do with how G+ penalizes mistakes that lead to goals — feeding in part to the observation I made Saturday night in the post-match press conference (and several other times this season: Occasional defensive lapses leading to goals are hurting this team.

Why Svatok scored so low against D.C.

I reached out to Bush about the low Svatok score from Saturday, and she dug into the numbers. She pointed out that giving up a PK only drops a player a max of -0.25 goals added, and based on the chart of his defensive actions, puzzled as to why his score was so low.

But then I brought up his whizzing by Peglow on the first goal, and Bush then was able to put it together. Failed actions don't plot but do register, so that -0.18 came mostly from Svatok failing to interrupt Peglow (yet in position to do so) before he got off the shot. (There's also the missed tackle near midfield, marked with an X, which did plot.)

As G+ accumulates during the season, Svatok collected -0.43 G+ toward his -2.04 season total from just this match, mostly from two plays. That seems harsh, but then again, those two plays resulted in two goals scored against Verde — or 7.6% of the goals scored against Verde so far. Take those two goals off the board, and Verde's giving up just one goal more than one goal per game over the course of the season. (The 1.13 goals against match average is still among the league's best, of course ... but take away defensive lapses and it could be so much better.)

There's (statistical) hope

As you might surmise, G+, like xG, doesn't tell the whole story, and there are even modifications to G+ that are telling a more thorough story.

In 2023, Mike Imburgio sought to explain net goals added, which brings G- (goals subtracted) into the equation. This gets into way more math than you want in your life, but here's a sampling from the article to give you a sense of why G+ doesn't tell the whole story:

Defensive actions valued by g+ are things like tackles, interceptions, fouling opponents, and clearances. Valuing these types of actions is helpful and necessary for a full understanding of the game. Surely, a holistic value would allow for players that win the ball back from their opponents constantly to gain credit for it. 

However, this also means that players that prevent those situations from ever entering their area of responsibility in the first place get no credit from doing so in g+. Even worse, players that consistently allow dangerous possessions in their zone before winning the ball back or clearing it will rack up g+ defending value. Luckily for us, g- does measure this by allocating g+ allowed to the opposition across a team (for a more detailed explanation, check out the explainers for open play and set piece g-). Without g- to tell us that the player consistently allows these dangerous situations to happen in their zone, this player might look like the best defender in the league. Combining defensive g+ and g- tells the whole story. And as it turns out, both sides are necessary to see the full story: players that rate highly on defensive g+ do not tend to rate highly on g-, or vice versa.

So, that gives a fuller picture of Svatok (and, to be real, Cascante). Here's how Svatok measures up on this chart, with G- showing he's essentially at 0, with defensive G+ still dragging him down.

Just for fun, here's Cascante over his Verde career.

There's certainly an effect with the coaching change, and even with the emphasis on defense that the 2024 season brought, on Cascante's shift from offense to defense. But looking at his overall net G+ numbers, they appear to be on the decline (though this could also be a function of smaller sample size).

What it all means

Svatok is still a first-choice center back, and given that Mateja Đorđević just got here and is young, will likely continue in that role next to Brendan Hines-Ike. However, when it comes time to determine Cascante's role with the team at the end of the season, his exit could allow for a center back upgrade that would make the position more competitive.

Player evaluation is a complex matter, and it's certainly going to take more than even a comprehensive stat like G+ or net G+ to fully refute what the eye test has been telling me over the course of the season.

And yet, this is a team still in the process of being built to sporting director Rodolfo Borrell's satisfaction — if such satisfaction is ever possible — and coached to its full potential. Đorđević filled what isn't even the most glaring obvious team need, and there are still moves to be made in the summer transfer window and at season's end.

While I fully expect Svatok to be part of this team for the next few years — his contract says so — G+ provides at least some perspective as to how players are contributing, and perhaps numerical evidence that no starting outfield player Verde has should be inked into the lineup — not even All-Star Guilherme Biro.

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