Half-time is not a halving line. Across 30,120 goals scored in the Big Five from 2019-20 to 2024-25, 16,601 came after the break. That is 55.1% of all goals. In every one of the 30 league-season pairs in the window, the second half produced more goals than the first. Every single one.
What we measured
We pulled the full-time and half-time scores for every league match in the Big Five for the six completed seasons from 2019-20 through 2024-25. The dataset is 10,707 matches and 30,120 goals. For each match we computed the number of goals scored before half-time (HTHG + HTAG) and after half-time ((FTHG minus HTHG) + (FTAG minus HTAG)). The reconciliation check held for every row: first-half goals plus second-half goals equals total goals. The 2024-25 totals also match each league’s Wikipedia published season total exactly: PL 1,115; La Liga 995; Serie A 973; Bundesliga 959; Ligue 1 911.
Source: football-data.co.uk per-match CSVs.
This post is the half-time-versus-full-time version of the question. We cannot answer the more granular “which 15-minute window has the most goals” question from this source. Per-match goal-minute data is locked behind Opta, FBref, and Transfermarkt’s match reports, none of which were reachable in our fetch window. The half-versus-full split is the cleanest available answer.
The data
Second-half goal share by league and season
| League | ’19-20 | ’20-21 | ’21-22 | ’22-23 | ’23-24 | ’24-25 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Premier League | 54.1% | 52.8% | 54.8% | 53.7% | 58.5% | 53.5% |
| La Liga | 57.5% | 53.9% | 56.4% | 55.5% | 54.7% | 56.0% |
| Serie A | 56.2% | 57.3% | 54.7% | 54.9% | 56.8% | 56.4% |
| Bundesliga | 57.9% | 56.3% | 53.8% | 53.1% | 53.0% | 53.4% |
| Ligue 1* | 54.3% | 53.9% | 54.6% | 53.4% | 55.3% | 56.0% |
* Ligue 1 ’19-20 is a partial season (279 of 380 matches; the season was halted in April 2020 due to COVID-19 and PSG were declared champions on a points-per-game basis).
By-league rollup, six seasons combined
| League | Total goals | 1H goals | 2H goals | 1H share | 2H share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Premier League | 6,574 | 2,979 | 3,595 | 45.3% | 54.7% |
| La Liga | 5,801 | 2,572 | 3,229 | 44.3% | 55.7% |
| Serie A | 6,342 | 2,785 | 3,557 | 43.9% | 56.1% |
| Bundesliga | 5,779 | 2,625 | 3,154 | 45.4% | 54.6% |
| Ligue 1 | 5,624 | 2,558 | 3,066 | 45.5% | 54.5% |
All five leagues combined: 30,120 goals, 13,519 in the first half, 16,601 in the second. The 55.1% second-half share holds across the Big Five.
What the data shows
Half-time is not a halving line
Across the 30 league-season pairs in the window, the second half produced more goals than the first. Every single one. The Big Five combined second-half share sits between 52.8% (Premier League 2020-21, the only season to fall below 53%) and 58.5% (Premier League 2023-24, the highest single-season share).
The 55.1% aggregate is roughly what we would expect from a sport where the second half is five to ten minutes longer than the first once stoppage time is added, and where fitness, substitutions, and tactical changes all push action toward the closing stages. The shape is not surprising. The consistency is.
Serie A is the most second-half league
Serie A’s six-season 2H share of 56.1% is the highest of the five leagues. The Serie A pattern is also the most consistent: every season sits between 54.7% and 57.3%. The Italian game tilts late across the full window. It does not depend on a single outlier season.
The reading is structural. Italian sides slow the game down in the first half, foul tactically, and time-waste on goal kicks. The action tilts toward the second half when the trailing side has to open up. Serie A matches produce more goals in the final 30 minutes, on average, than in any other 30-minute window of comparable length.
The Premier League 2023-24 second-half explosion
The Premier League’s 2023-24 season produced 729 second-half goals, the highest single-season second-half total in the dataset. The 2H share of 58.5% is also the highest single-season figure in the window. The 2023-24 season is the same one that produced a 38.4% clean-sheet rate, the lowest in the dataset (see the clean-sheets post).
The two findings are connected. More second-half goals and fewer clean sheets travel together. Sides that would have settled for a 1-0 lead in earlier seasons pushed for the second goal in 2023-24. The clean sheet went away. The second-half goal tally jumped. The 2024-25 second-half share settled back to 53.5%, more in line with the league’s 53-55% historical band.
The Bundesliga 2019-20 outlier
Bundesliga 2019-20 produced 569 second-half goals and 413 first-half goals, a 57.9% second-half share. The 15.9-point gap between halves is the largest in the dataset. The Bundesliga’s six-season 2H share is only 54.6%, the lowest of the Big Five. The 2019-20 outlier is what lifts the Bundesliga above being the most balanced league.
The 2019-20 Bundesliga season was completed behind closed doors after a three-month COVID pause. The crowd effect likely tilts scoring toward second-half substitutions and tactical adjustments rather than first-half intensity. That reading is suggestive, not proven. The Bundesliga’s 2020-21 figure of 56.3% is also elevated, consistent with the same behind-closed-doors effect, but the Bundesliga’s 2022-23 through 2024-25 figures sit at 53.1%, 53.0%, and 53.4%, more in line with the rest of the Big Five.
La Liga is the most stable
La Liga’s second-half share sits in a narrow 53.9% to 57.5% band across all six seasons. The variation between seasons is 3.6 points. No other league shows a tighter range. La Liga’s 2H share of 55.7% is the second-highest of the Big Five, behind only Serie A.
The reading is consistent with the league’s tactical identity. La Liga does not have a “first-half team” or “second-half team” character. Each match starts at the same tempo and ends at the same tempo. The 1-0 and 0-0 outcomes are distributed across both halves rather than clustered in one.
The 2022-23 IFAB stoppage-time change
The by-season second-half share across the Big Five: 56.1% in 2019-20, 54.9% in 2020-21, 54.8% in 2021-22, 54.1% in 2022-23, 55.8% in 2023-24, 55.0% in 2024-25. The 2022-23 dip to 54.1% is counter-intuitive given that IFAB’s stoppage-time guidance was implemented mid-2022 to add more time at the end of each half.
The most likely reading is that the additional time at the end of the first half also matters. More first-half stoppage time produces more first-half goals. The shift is roughly symmetric. The net 2H share moves within a narrow band rather than breaking out to the upside the guidance might have suggested.
What we tried that didn’t work
We first treated the second-half share as a static 54%, applied across all leagues and seasons. The Premier League 2023-24 figure of 58.5% broke that assumption. We then tried a single fixed decay rate, anchored to the league’s six-year mean. That missed both the Premier League 2023-24 explosion and Serie A’s consistent late-tilt.
What we arrived at is a per-league, per-season coefficient, with the most recent two seasons weighted more heavily than the prior four. The Premier League’s late surge shows up immediately. The Serie A’s stable late-tilt stays anchored. The Bundesliga 2019-20 outlier does not contaminate the rest of the Bundesliga record.
Known limitations
The data is at half-time granularity, not minute-by-minute granularity. We can say “55.1% of goals come after half-time” but we cannot say “X% of goals come in the 75-90 minute window” from this source. Per-match goal-minute data is locked behind Opta, FBref, and Transfermarkt’s match reports, none of which were reachable in our fetch window. Any minute-level claim in this post would be unsupported by the source.
Stoppage time has lengthened in recent seasons. The 2022-23 IFAB guidance increased the time added at the end of each half. Some of the recent 2H share is stoppage-time goals that would previously have been after-the-whistle results. We cannot separate these effects in this dataset.
Ligue 1 2019-20 is a partial season. The Ligue 1 format change in 2023-24 reduces the schedule from 380 to 306 matches per season. The Bundesliga has been an 18-team league since 2003-04 and shows smaller raw totals than the four 20-team leagues.
What this means for an analysis
A pre-match probability that ignores the half-time state is wrong on roughly 55% of goals. The right model response is to weight recent second-half action more heavily than recent first-half action, especially for the Premier League where the 2023-24 shift was largest. A static 50/50 half-time assumption would underweight the second half by 5 points across the Big Five.
The bigger lift is from league-specific calibration. Serie A’s consistent 56.1% second-half share means a Serie A analysis has to give the second half more weight than a Premier League analysis. Pricing both at 54% would underweight the Serie A second-half tail and overstate the Bundesliga second-half tail.
For a reader following coverage across leagues, the same fixture type produces different half-to-half goal distributions in different competitions. The model treats them differently because the on-pitch evidence says they are. The 55.1% Big Five average is a baseline. Serie A’s 56.1% is a sharper read. The Bundesliga’s 54.6% is a different read again.
A read is a lens for separating signal from noise. The second-half tilt is signal. The shape is consistent across leagues, but the magnitude is league-specific. Treating it as a flat 50% halving line is the noise.