Moneyball’ing Football

The Americans are obsessed with stats, especially when it comes to sports. So it isn’t a surprise that when they hosted the football (soccer) World Cup in 1994, they showed (what seemed to me) ridiculous stats like how much time each team had possession of the ball, or how many fouls each team committed, or how many shots at goal were on-target. Who cared, I thought? After all, what mattered was whether your side won or not. Except that today, such stats are shown in football matches all over the world.

But does any of these sport stats have any practical use, I wondered? The Brad Pitt starrer about a true story, Moneyball, answered my question:
“The general manager of the Oakland Athletics baseball team, Billy Beane, used statistical analysis to find undervalued players according to one or two key metrics. It worked: the Athletics went on a record-breaking 20-game winning streak in 2002.”
But isn’t baseball a totally different kind of game than football? The Economist article I quoted above agrees:
“Baseball is a sport with closed, distinct plays, as well as a history of statistical analysis. Football matches are more dynamic, and the interactions between players are complex.”
All of which means that stats are useless in football, right? Not so fast. Turns out that the use that Billy Beane found for stats can probably be applied in football as well: to find undervalued players with similar skills as their more fancied, well known peers!

There are sports data companies recording each tackle, pass and other “events” in each game in the English Premier League (EPL). Crunch all that data and you may find that the league’s top scorer may just be hovering around the opponent’s goal whereas another guy who scores fewer goals might be involved in a lot more passes and build-ups leading to goals. And if the latter is priced far less, he might just be the steal you could afford on your smaller budget.

Maybe the sequel to Moneyball will be about a Brit football team manager…

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