The impact of scoring first on match outcome in women's professional football

The aim of this study was to explore the impact of scoring first on the final match outcome and teams' performance in women's professional football competition. Data from all matches with at least one goal (n=230) of 2015/2016 season from the first Spanish women's football league were collected using the official match reports. Logistic regression detected important relationships between team ranking and match outcome in scoring first odds. Scoring first increased from 2.8 to 11.1 times the winning chances. The better the ranking position, the higher the chances to score first. No influence of game location, quality of opposition and game surface was observed. Decision tree analyses revealed significant effects of situational variables on both match outcome and scoring first. When scoring first, teams ranked 1st to 3rd get the victory in over 90% of times whilst 3rd to 10th teams in almost the 80%. In turn, teams ranked 11th to 14th decreased to 54% the winning chances even if scoring first. Given the impact of the first goal in women's football, data provide about the influence of situational variables may help in designing teaching and training tasks and competition plans to deal with first goal situations.