“Baseball isn’t science” said one of the scouts to the General Manager of the club Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) in the movie Moneyball. This movie is one of the perfect examples of how data analysis is being used in sports. And the list with examples is growing.
“6 penalties the right way and I saved three, so basically the homework was very good” – Petr Čech, 19 May 2012.
The Champions League in 2012 was being decided by penalties. People have always said that in football it’s hard to find trends and links in the data when the game is not necessarily repetitive. How different is this for baseball and tennis, but also for penalties in football. And that’s what Chelsea experienced, maybe even without knowing it consciously.
From the analysis of penalties things started to move in the football industry. More and more managers and clubs have decided to believe in the data, with Leicester City FC and FC Midtjylland leading the pack.
FC Midtjylland do not see themselves as a pure football club, but more a organisation that leads the experiment that you can run a football organization based on the data analysis of the game. Of course, one could imagine that irrationality and emotional is part of the game, but this is something different. “We can’t outspend our competitors, so we have to outthink them” the 32-year-old Chairman Ankersen says.
One of the main mantras at the Danish club is to never trust your eyes. On this note, the club is even in doubt whether coaches should see the matches. Seeing means trusting your eyes on only a few moments, and you forget the bigger picture. The same goes for Billy Beane, who always preferred a work-out over de game, since he trusts the numbers.
Want to know more about data analysis in sports? Follow these links:
– http://outsideoftheboot.com
– https://decorrespondent.nl/2607/How-data-not-people-call-the-shots-in-Denmark/230219386155-d2948861
– http://outsideoftheboot.com/2016/07/20/rise-of-data-analytics-in-football-2/
– http://outsideoftheboot.com/2013/06/26/rise-of-data-analysis-in-football/
– http://www.stats.com
– http://www.optasports.com/about/what-we-do/analytics.aspx
I think, especially with football, which can be considered as a conservative sport, it is a necessity for smaller clubs to be on the frontline with sportstechnology. I was wondering if you are familiar with the company Hudl located in Lincoln, Nebraska. They are a succesfull startup where they use technology to improve the performance of sport athletes (their technology is applicable for numerous sports). Do you think we will see this in the Dutch Eredivisie anytime soon?
Hi Marcus, thank you for your reaction!
I have checked their website and I found it impressive to see that they have 125,000+ amateur teams as their clients. Also their expertise in different sports is interesting. I am not sure that one software package can be suited for different sports.
How do you see these kind of companies taking over the Dutch competition?
I think the problem for these smaller teams is that big teams with much higher revenues and resources are now also riding the soccer advanced analytics wave (i.e. Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund etc.) and obviously with richer resources they can invest more (in terms of software, infrastructure – such as cameras and player tracking devices -, and scouts on the field) than the lower tier teams. Thus the competitive advantage of teams such as FC Midtjylland will be almost leveled in the upcoming future, unless they can find new innovative ways of playing “Moneyball” in a world where the majority of the teams are also playing it.
… which, by the way, is what happened in the baseball world where now advanced statistics are the main source of evaluating players (this phenomenon has now extended to the media and in turn to the public, where fans are now familiar with complex stat formulas such as WAR) and thus the playing field has been leveled, with the Oakland Athletics back at the bottom of the standings.
You’re right to say that the playing field is leveled at the moment in baseball. Don’t you think the football industry is much more conservative?
Where do you see sports analytics going in the future?