Is Karim Benzema the deadliest finisher in Europe? The data behind the world’s best goalscorers

After one of Karim Benzema’s 10 goals during the Champions League knockouts, someone on BT Sport’s commentary team declared we were watching “the best finisher in the world”.

It is hard to argue (though we will). Benzema has had an incredible season, scoring 44 goals in 45 games, including 15 in the Champions League which puts in reach Cristiano Ronaldo’s record of 17 in a single campaign – Benzema scored hat-tricks against PSG and Chelsea, and it is not unimaginable that he might leave Saturday’s final against Liverpool with the match ball under his arm and Ronaldo’s record too.

But finishing is different to goalscoring. The best finisher in the world does not necessarily score the most goals, but makes the very most of the chances they have. If every forward in Europe had exactly the same chances this season, would Benzema have scored the most goals?

We decided to try and find out.

We are defining finishing here as exclusively the final act, the shot at goal. It can be measured against expected goals: if a chance has an expected goal value of 0.2 and a player scores, they have outperformed what might be expected of them by 0.8 goals. One shot doesn’t tell us much, but if we collect enough data we start to get a picture of how successful a given player is when it comes to finishing.

The relevance of attempting to measure finishing as a skill is a point of debate in the world of data analytics. The prevailing theory is that although players can go on hot streaks where everything they touch turns to goals, and stone-cold streaks too (“he just needs one and the floodgates will open”), history tells us that if those players were to take a high enough volume of shots, eventually their finishing stats would revert to the