The rise of data analysis in football

It is often said that football is too fluid, too fast and too random to assess open play. Whilst this is true on the surface, hence the better data sets for set-pieces above, this view will eventually, like the belief that statistics aren’t useful at all, deteriorate. Undeniably, data will show us more. Just as science has slowly chipped away at the supernatural, good data will slowly demolish the misconceptions about the world of football as well.

The best advances seem to be coming from the Germany, which can add being at the forefront of football analytics to the list of ways in which it is better than everybody else at the moment as well. Jürgen Klinsmann, who is friends with Billy Beane too (Beane has a lot of friends, finding out a cheap way of beating almost everybody you play in sport will do that for you), consulted a data department in Cologne for information about penalties, free-kicks and open play situations in the 2006 World Cup, and during his whole tenure as Germany manager, a tradition which Joachim Löw has continued.

As well as the information the optimum distance between defenders in a back four is roughly 8-metres, and statistically the best way to dispossess Lionel Messi (a defender straight on him, and another stationed 1 yard behind him, apparently) everybody will remember a famous list that was produced by the Cologne analytics team in the penalty shoot-out between Germany and Argentina in the quarter-finals of Klinsmann’s one and only World Cup as Germany manager. Presumably the Cologne-based staff were hoping like ?ech, the Germany goalkeeper Jens Lehmann would simply remember where the Argentinean takers liked to place their kicks. He couldn’t however, and kept the list in his sock.

Up to now, football analytics isn’t widespread in football for several reasons. Firstly, as previously stated, managers. They don’t like their status challenged. If they can’t rely on their observations and their instincts, then what use are they in the first place? This instinct, usually honed as a player, would start to come into question. Essentially, the game is run by people who don’t like data.

The incident at Liverpool only made this worse. Therefore, people like Klinsmann and Löw, and the Premiership’s new golden boys David Moyes and Roberto Martínez, who definitely use data when running their football clubs, have the foresight and humility to bow to superior wisdom. Secondly, data is expensive. Institutions like Opta and ProZone have no trouble giving out some gems on twitter, but their pools of mass data aren’t something they would be willing to part with so readily.

Football has only just started to keep data (FIFA didn’t count assists until 1994), so what little there is is hoarded by a select few, driving the price up even more. This keeps it out of the hands of people who could easily make it show us something of value. Manchester City however, who have a Sports Analytics department, did distribute an entire seasons worth of collected data for free, with the hope of inspiring young bloggers with a passion, or economic students without the right numbers to take the information and find hidden values. This unfortunately hasn’t happened. The fact remains that if somebody in football finds a significant competitive edge through data, it will be a very valuable commodity indeed.

Football analytics is certainly growing however, and as more clubs and nations use it, and as long as people keep looking at numbers, murky information will start to crystalise into something of value. The latest addition to this expanding field is the aforecited, ‘the Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know About Football is Wrong‘, and it already represents a significant step in the direction of better data. The authors posit some very interesting ideas throughout the book, and tell us why Chelsea should have bought Darren Bent, why a clean sheet is more valuable than a goal, and why replacing your weakest player is so much better than getting another 30-goal-a-season man up front. This information, it seems, is finding more value in the football and new breakthroughs are emerging all the time.

No doubt about it though, the last word should go to Bill James though, the Godfather of baseball analytics, who wrote about statistical analysis whilst working his job as a night-watchman in a pork and beans factory, and the man who initiated the ‘Moneyball’ movement. In a quote cited in the beginning of Sally and Anderson’s book, James’ statement is proving ever more interesting to people within football, year after year.

’In sports, what is true is more powerful than what you believe, because what is true will give you an edge’. - Bill James