Are Football Matches Getting Higher Scoring? 26 Seasons of Goals

Ask most punters whether football has become more open and they will say yes, usually because they remember a few thrashings. I prefer to check. This study covers 183,724 matches across 22 European leagues from 2000/01–2025/26. It asks one plain question: has scoring actually risen, and what does that mean for over 2.5?

The short answer is yes, but modestly, and mainly at the top. In the top five leagues, goals per game climbed from 2.63 in the first five seasons to 2.81 in the most recent five, and over 2.5 now lands in 53.1% of those matches. Lower down, the picture is flat or even slipping. That is exactly why the baseline behind today's goals tips is set league by league rather than borrowed from the headlines.

01Top-five scoring climbs slowly while English lower tiers stay flat

The line chart tracks average goals per game by season for three groups of leagues. The top five dipped to their lowest point in 2006/07 at 2.48, then crept upward in fits and starts to a peak of 2.88 in 2023/24. It is a slope, not a jump, and it took the better part of two decades to build.

The English tiers 2–4 line tells a different story. They averaged 2.61 in 2000/01–2004/05 and 2.57 in 2021/22–2025/26, so the line runs essentially sideways with a slight lean downward. The other European leagues sit in between and drift without much conviction in either direction.

For me this is the first discipline: the rising tide belongs to the elite divisions. If I carried a top-five assumption into a Football League fixture, I would be pricing a game that the data does not support. I also read the 2019/20 and 2020/21 points carefully, because suspensions and empty stadiums make those seasons a little less trustworthy.

02Over 2.5 hits land in a narrow band across ten seasons

The bars show the share of top-five matches with three or more goals in each of the last ten seasons. The range is tight, from 51.5% in 2017/18 to 54.9% in 2023/24. Even the latest season, at 53.0%, sits below the 54.4% recorded in 2016/17.

Over the full span, the rate moved from 48.6% in the first five-season block to 53.1% in the last. That is a genuine shift from slightly under half to slightly over half. Within the recent decade, though, the overs have barely budged.

This is the main caveat I want every reader to keep in mind. A rising average does not make any individual over more likely than its price already implies. Markets absorb trends like this one quickly, so a result that lands slightly more than half the time is only worth backing if you are paid more than it deserves.

03League by league, risers and fallers rarely match reputation

The table compares each league's early block with its recent one, and 13 of 20 leagues scored more. The spread is wide. Ligue 1 leads at +0.53 goals per game, moving from 2.29 to 2.82, and its over 2.5 rate jumped +14.4 points. The Premier League at +0.32 and the Bundesliga at +0.30 follow some way behind.

At the other end, Scottish League Two fell by −0.31 goals per game, from 3.01 to 2.69, and its over 2.5 rate dropped −5.6 points. More surprising to me, two top-five leagues edged lower: Serie A by −0.06 and La Liga by −0.08.

So the top-five rise is carried by three leagues, not five. A Spanish or Italian fixture still lives in roughly the same goal environment as the early 2000s. I treat those markets with that in mind, however glamorous the attacking names on the teamsheet.

About the authorBeatrice Laurent

I'm Beatrice Laurent, based in Saint-Tropez, and I write the over/under 2.5 goals tips at soccerbet.tips — reading tempo, chance quality and match context rather than the size of the names on the teamsheet.

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