That will result in a directory named according to the archive - this is wrong. It will only create a directory if it already exists inside the tarball, and with the name stored within. The name of the archive file is irrelevant. Without a directory inside the tarball the files/directories will be expanded in the current directory.

You can specify a directory to expand to with --directory/-C, but it needs to exist beforehand.

The argument --one-top-level will do what you describe.

Thanks for the correction!