Study shows home advantage a myth for soccer

William Atkins
Tuesday, 18 March 2008 21:07

Science - Health

Two German researchers found that playing in a home soccer stadium isn’t a necessary advantage to winning more games when compared to playing elsewhere. It really depends on the quality of the teams!         

German physicists Andreas Heuer and Oliver Rubner, both from the University of Munster, analyzed data from matches played in the German soccer (football) league Bundesliga.

They analyzed 12,546 matches between the years 1965 and 2007.

They stated that “goal difference is a better measure of the overall fitness of a team than the points.”

In other words, a team gets the same number of points whether it wins 1-0 or 8-0. However, a wider-point win is actually a better indicator of the performance of a team, and, therefore, should be recognized as such.

Thus, the two researchers argue that the point spread of a game is a more reliable gauge of a team’s performance rather than whether the game was won or lost.

Heuer and Rubner found that the home team scored 0.7 more goals per game than the visiting team. However, the data showed that teams were found not to be better at home versus when they played away.

In other words, better teams won at home just as much as when they are playing away from home. Simply: they win more games because they are just better teams than their opponents.

Thus, you might say a home advantage is only an advantage if the home team is a better playing team than the visiting team.

The abstract to their paper states, “Furthermore, beyond the general home advantage there is no statistically relevant indication of a team-specific home fitness. The overall fitness also dictates to a large extent the number of goals for a team.”

Rubner states that teams often appear to be stronger and better at home when looked over a small number of games. This is a perceived strength based on too few games.

However, when the measurements are taken over long periods of time, that perceived strength and advantage is not there. The team is equal at home or as visitors.

Their paper, “Fitness, chance, and myths: an objective view on soccer results”, appears online.