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Hit Me With Your Best Shot! (or pass, or free kick, or...) - DidYouSeeThatLudicrousDisplay? - 2026-06-16
Breaking The Walls Down
Okay, so I know, I know, a Wall in soccer is a defensive formation. That's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about those players who are putting their bodies on the line to get the ball the hell away from their defensive end. The players who frustrate offensive players, making them wonder what they have to do to get past them. Over my next few independent media pieces, we're going to look at The Walls, the top 10 players from Season 25 who deflected the most soccer balls in the Majors. This time up, we're going to just focus on SSL Division 1.
When looking at these stats, we see that there are actually two different statistics for blocks for non-goalkeepers. One just called Blocks, which is any deflection they cause, be it off a pass, a free kick, etc., and Shots Blocked. There is no explanation to say specifically if Shots Blocked's numbers are included in Blocks, but a quick scan through each player, all the way down to someone with zero blocks and zero shots blocked, there's no one who has more Shots Blocked than Blocks, so I'm going to assume that it is indeed included.
To start, we're going to just look at Shots Blocked, though. Players who helped their Keeper out by keeping the balls out of harm's way. The top 10 players in this stat, we almost instantly see that there are some teams whose coaches might be teaching their players reverse dodgeball. União São Paulo leads the firing squad recipients, having three of the top 10, the trio of Slab Head, Ben Nelson, and Ryan Kerpatrick, with a combined 36 Shots Blocked between them. Reykjavik United, Xelajú Cósmico FC, and Hollywood FC all had two representatives as well. CF Catalunya had one, but it was a very special one.
CF Catalunya's Pablo Kawasaki led the SSL Division 1 in Shots Blocked with 17. That's a lot of being pelted by some of the best shooters in the world. Seventeen shots that their keeper didn't have to dive for, saving them and the team some extra wear and tear. People don't often talk about saving the goalkeeper work instead of the keeper saving balls themselves, but I feel it's a fun thing to look at. Granted, we don't know how many of these shots were indeed going to end up in the back of the net, but thinking of how CF Catalunya had a Goal Differential of -12 with these shots blocked, one has to wonder if they would have ended up losing a few more games than they had won. These 17 shots blocked alone might have kept them from finishing worse than their third-place finish, not even mentioning any from Pablo's teammates.
Now, what I found extra surprising was when I sorted the index to show me the Top 10 Blocks list. You'd expect to see the same names on that list as the Shots Blocked list, but in reality, only half of them show up on this list as well! That means five players snuck their way into the Top 10 by deflecting passes, clears, free kicks, in more regularity than shots! In fact, União São Paulo drops from three players to only one representative in the Top 10 with their defender, Slab Head.
One of those players that shows up on both lists is Reykjavik's Ilya Prusikin, with a league-leading 21 blocks! Ilya's 16 Shots Blocked were good enough for second on that list, but adding in five more deflections, and that gives them the league lead in total Blocks!
Coming soon, we'll see how Division 2 did. Will they give Division 1 a run for its money?
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