Calculating Home Advantage in the First Decade of the 21th Century UEFA Soccer Leagues

Abstract

Home advantage has been studied in different sports, establishing its existence and its possible causes. This article analyzes the home advantage in soccer leagues of UEFA countries in the first part of the 21st century. The sample of 52 countries monitored during a period of 10 years allows us to study 520 leagues and 111,030 matches of the highest level in each country associated with UEFA. Home advantage exists and is significant in 32 of the 52 UEFA countries, where it equals 55.6%. A decrease can be observed in the tendency towards home advantage between the years 2000 and 2010. Values between 55 and 56 were observed for home advantage in the top ten leagues in Europe. It has also been observed that home advantage depends on the level of the league evaluated using UEFA’s 2010/11 Country coefficients. The home advantage is calculated taking into account the teams’ position and the points obtained in each of the leagues. A direct relationship was observed with the number of points gained and an inverse relationship was observed with the team position.

O Mando De Campo Em Clássicos: Os Casos Bra-Pel E Gre-Nal

“…Especificamente em relação ao futebol, a maioria dos trabalhos (SAAVEDRA GARCÍA et al, 2013;CARMICHAEL;THOMAS, 2005;WASHBURN et al, 2006;GLAMSER, 1990;CLARKE;NORMAN (1995); SÁNCHEZ et al, 2009) utilizam dados das ligas nacionais europeias para avaliar empiricamente a existência de uma vantagem em uma equipe ter o mando de campo. Pollard (2006) apresenta uma resenha sobre 72 ligas em seis continentes e a sua conclusão é que possuir o mando de campo é vantajoso em qualquer local do mundo.…”

How best to quantify home advantage in team sports: an investigation involving male senior handball leagues in Portugal and Spain. [La mejor manera de cuantificar la ventaja de jugar en casa en deportes de equipo: una investigación con ligas de Balonmano senior masculino en Portugal y España].

“…Some clearly inappropriate methods of quantifying HA have also been used, usually confusing home performance with home advantage (e.g. Saavedra, Gutiérrez, Sa Marquez, Torres, & Fernández, 2013), as discussed by Gómez and Pollard (2014).…”

Inconsistencies of the Evaluation of Home Advantage in Sports Competitions Under the Three Points Per Victory System

“… A recent letter sent to the Journal of Human Kinetics’ editor (Gómez & Pollard, 2014) warned about a supposed methodology error in the calculation of home advantage in football leagues used in Saavedra et al (2013) and took the liberty of modifying the research’s data. The aim of this letter is to demonstrate that the evaluation system of the home advantage proposed by Pollard (1986) contains serious inconsistencies when applied to competitions which give three points for a win and one point for a draw, as it is the case of the UEFA football leagues in the 21th century.…”

“…If the competition gives three points for a win and one for a draw, Pollard (1986) seems to ignore the effect caused, since a point per match ended in a draw is casted aside to calculate the total points obtained, which affects the HA value. This is avoided in Saavedra et al (2013) .…”

“…The second inconsistency in the Pollard’s model ( 1986 ) lies in the fact that HA does not have a direct relationship with the number of points obtained as a local team (as long as the same number of matches is played). This problem is solved by following the model suggested by Saavedra et al (2013) . This fact is illustrated ( Table 2 ) by using the data of the study by Sánchez et al (2009) .…”