Shalulile v Nomvethe: A Reconciliation
How far is the Namibian from the PSL record?
Peter Shalulile has been chasing Siyabonga Nomvethe’s PSL goal record for a while. The Namibian striker, whose top-flight career began at Highlands Park has been a consistent goalscorer in PSL football for the better part of the last decade. He’s now scored 121 goals in top-flight competitions and surpassed a few legends along the way. Yet, he’s still some way behind Siya Nomvethe’s record - and the question we’ve got lately is Just how far is he?
We have previously shared that Nomvethe scored 123 goals in his top-flight career. One of our team flagged this a while back (in 2023), and pointed out that there could be more for Nomvethe. We held on to the (widely accepted and reported) 123 for a while (we initially thought we were wrong). As Shalulile has closed the gap, we have put more effort into reconciling this (and the other Top 10 scorers) in anticipation of him equalling or breaking the record. With help from statisticians and archivists, we believe Nomvethe’s total is more than 123 (it’s 129, to be exact).
Where do discrepancies come from?
When it comes to stats from the ‘90s, we rely on secondary records - mostly written records from news articles, newspapers, and magazines, some Kick-Off Yearbooks, and records from archivists (public & private). Some records are handwritten (see the example below from 1996, and note how 23 March & 28 March may look the same).
Logic states that the same team can’t play two games on the same day, but one has to cross-check with Spurs’ records & Sundowns’ records on when they played Celtic.
Spurs 23 March checks.
Sundowns 28 March checks (the scorer is Raphael Chukwu by the way).
Part of our work is to reconcile from different sources and investigate where there are major discrepancies. An own goal from Source A can be listed as a striker’s goal in Source B. Without video evidence, it’s hard (if not impossible) to know which is which. In the last few years, with nearly all games recorded and tech-enabled data providers like OPTA, Wyscout and Statsbomb involved, things are much clearer (still not perfect). An own goal is an own goal - video verifications exists and calibrations can be drawn to decide own goals. This is not the case for late 90s and early 2000s.
Main sources of discrepancies from data sources in the early years
Own-goals
Goals scored in lower divisions (sometimes included)
Goals in the promotion playoffs for a 1st division side (sometimes included)
Goals in the promotion playoffs for a top-flight side (sometimes excluded)
Ommissions (a player’s goal wrongly awarded to someone else, e.g a light deflection)
Spelling errors in reports
Formatting errors (e.g a space at the end of a name won’t appear under that name when queried on a computer)
Human error
We could go into detail on where Nomvethe’s 6-goal difference comes from, but it’s a mix of some of the above. This newsletter is a part acknowledgment of an error, and part acknowledgment of Nick Said and Mark Gleeson’s help, who have been involved with us in this reconciliation (a conversation that started in February 2023). Hopefully, it is also an insight for the reader into the difficulties involved in what is mostly a passion project. That said, here is a breakdown of Nomvethe’s 129 goals:
Nomvethe’s goals came across 14 PSL seasons (with international stints in between), while Shalulile’s have come in eight seasons. On a game-by-game basis, the Namibian has also done his scoring at a faster rate - 0.47 goals per game, while Nomvethe got his 129 at 0.43 goals per game. Should Shalulile continue at the same rate, he’ll need about 17 games to reach 129 and 19 games to reach 130. Injury permitting, that could happen this season.
Look, others may still run with the 123, but we’ll hold off for now and make sure 129% that the record is broken. Must be exciting times for a Shalulile or Sundowns fan, but holding off a few more months shouldn’t take that excitement away.
Here’s a fun stat to lighten up the mood: Siyabonga Nomvethe’s name has all the letters that spell one, seven, eight, nine and ten in it.