at- towards the goal- maybe blocked or missed. on- saved or scored
at- towards the goal- maybe blocked or missed. on- saved or scored
I think it’s less about “attempt” and more about “on/off target.” If it’s on target, it will soon hit the right thing, and if it’s off target, it will miss.
"On target" is a set phrase roughly means "with good aim". He aimed at the target (he pointed his gun towards the target). His shots were on target (the shots mostly hit their mark). "Attempts at goal" is short for "kick attempts towards (at) the goal".
At goal just means an attempt to shoot it, but it could have been on target or off target. On target means that specifically the shot was in the frame of the goal, not wide or high.
Right answer
Because English is weird.
I don’t post in here often but I see this a lot when I drop in. I feel like it’s both kind of untrue and not very useful. u/casualstrawberry has a good answer that is useful: ‘on target’ is a set phrase with a specific meaning. You can shoot at a target and have that still be grammatical. There’s nothing uniquely English about this
This is one of those things, speaking as someone bilingual, that you just need to accept and internalize. There isn’t much reason to prepositions. Why do we say we listen *to* music in English, but escuchamos la musica in Spanish (without an *a*)? It just is, because *escuchar* does not require any preposition in its transitive form. But in English, we say to “listen to” something when it’s being used as a transitive verb. “On target” is part of some set phrases. If you’re *on pace* to meet some quarterly sales goals, for example, you might say that the company so far is *on target* toward *meeting goals* (no preposition). Or maybe the company is *on track* toward meeting its goals this quarter. Or the company is going to take a shot *at its goal* of exceeding $1m in sales this year. Whatever. These are sort of set phrases you just have that follow a certain pattern but which don’t follow an exact reason, per se. You just have to start recognizing them, usually through exposure like you’re doing, and you’ll get it.
Its also an American thing, it British English you would say "shots on goal"
I would disagree. As an American, "attempts ON goal" sounds more natural.
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Prepositions do not follow a logic. You are on a call but in a meeting. You are in a chair, but on a couch. Catherine of Aragon was from Aragon.