Understat xG League & Team Stats Scraper

Scrape expected goals (xG), non-penalty xG (NPxG), xGA, PPDA, deep completions, and full W/D/L standings from understat.com — the canonical open xG data source for European football.

Covers all 6 understat leagues (EPL, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1, RFPL) across every available season (2014–present). One aggregated row per team per season.

Features

• 6 leagues in a single run: EPL, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1, RFPL
• All seasons from 2014/2015 onwards — back-fill historical data or track the current season
• Match-level aggregation — sums each team's per-match xG, xGA, NPxG, PPDA, deep completions into a clean season total
• PPDA ratio computed correctly as passes_attempted / defensive_actions (lower = more pressing)
• No proxy required — understat.com is open and datacenter-friendly

Use Cases

• Build football analytics dashboards (xG vs actual goals by team)
• Feed betting or fantasy football models with expected-goals standings
• Compare xG performance across leagues or seasons for research / Substack writing
• Backtest xG-based table predictions

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
leagues	array	(all 6)	Which leagues to scrape. Valid values: EPL, La_liga, Bundesliga, Serie_A, Ligue_1, RFPL
seasons	array	["2024"]	Season start years to scrape. E.g. ["2024"] = 2024/2025, ["2023","2024"] = two seasons
maxItems	integer	10	Maximum records to return (0 = unlimited)

Example input — EPL last 3 seasons

{
  "leagues": ["EPL"],
  "seasons": ["2022", "2023", "2024"],
  "maxItems": 0
}

Example input — All leagues, current season

{
  "leagues": ["EPL", "La_liga", "Bundesliga", "Serie_A", "Ligue_1", "RFPL"],
  "seasons": ["2024"],
  "maxItems": 0
}

Output

One record per team per season:

{
  "season": "2024/2025",
  "league": "EPL",
  "team_name": "Aston Villa",
  "team_id": "71",
  "games_played": 38,
  "wins": 19,
  "draws": 9,
  "losses": 10,
  "goals_for": 58,
  "goals_against": 51,
  "xg_for": 66.39,
  "xg_against": 55.0,
  "npxg": 61.71,
  "deep": 285,
  "ppda": 12.39,
  "oppda": 9.96,
  "points": 66,
  "source": "https://understat.com/league/EPL"
}

Field reference

Field	Description
season	Season label (e.g. 2024/2025)
league	League name
team_name	Team name as shown on understat.com
team_id	Understat internal team ID
games_played	Total matches played
wins / draws / losses	Season record
goals_for / goals_against	Goals scored / conceded
xg_for	Total expected goals (xG)
xg_against	Total expected goals against (xGA)
npxg	Non-penalty xG (excludes spot-kick quality)
deep	Deep completions — passes into the opposition's danger zone
ppda	Passes per defensive action by opponent (lower = team presses more aggressively)
oppda	Opponent PPDA — how much the team is pressed
points	Total league points
source	Source URL

Notes

• Data is sourced from understat.com's internal XHR API (/getLeagueData/{league}/{season}), which returns gzip-compressed JSON. All values are aggregated from per-match history.
• PPDA and OPPDA are null if a team played 0 defensive actions (extremely rare, data gap seasons only).
• The RFPL (Russian Premier League) data coverage may be incomplete for recent seasons.
• maxItems counts across all requested league × season combinations. Set to 0 to scrape everything.