Sport as we know it today has come a long way. There were times when watching sports on television was considered a huge step forward in terms of technology. Fast forward 60 years, watching sports on television has become the most basic thing. Today we watch sports on the go on our mobile phones or any device with a screen and internet connectivity. Proud of how far we’ve come, right? I hope I can change your mind about it at the end of this article.
What is the sport about? Sports are a group of people who come together to play a game with predefined rules and a referee to ensure that these rules are followed during the course of the game. I am a sports lover and I play sports all the time. My love for tennis and football in particular cannot be defined. My issue when it came to technology and advanced analytics was with the soccer game in particular. Soccer is such a beautiful game. The strategies that the coaching staff comes up with and the way the players execute them on the field, it’s actually a beautiful thing. I was a soccer player myself (just an average one) and was part of several teams. I know firsthand how strategies are built, how much thought goes into a single move.
Enter -> Advanced Analytics
Most of you would have seen the movie Moneyball. The movie was based on the book that Michael Lewis wrote in 2003. It talks about how an athlete turned luminary uses advanced stats to gain a competitive advantage over his better-funded opponents. This book sparked a revolution in sport. Fans and football club boards no longer wanted to settle for poor statistics or analysis. What Moneyball did was take an old cliché: “sports is business” and move us to the next logical question: “how do we do things smarter?”
Now let’s talk about advanced analytics. Advanced analytics in today’s world plays an important role in all business sectors. Advanced analytics has been a boon to us. In moving from descriptive analytics to prescriptive analytics, we’ve actually come a long way. In various businesses, where the requirement is demanding, advanced analytics is of paramount importance.
When we look at football, it’s a game that doesn’t require too much artificial intelligence, it’s a game that needs the human element. When you incorporate analytics and technology and try to reduce the human element in sports, it just crushes the spirit of the game.
Relying on analytics largely killed the Premier League’s long ball game and brought the continuous, pressing passing tiki-taka. Each league had its own style of play. The Premier League had the brash, brash style of football that was dubbed “The Way Real Men Play Football”. There were beautiful long balls, tough tackles, but all the players just hung on, walked away and it was all up to the referee on the pitch to call the offender or not. There were arguments and fights, the passion of the fans was crazy, that was the football that screamed with passion, when the players got into the faces of other players without fear of punishment. Those of Eric Cantona, those of Ivan Genaro Gattuso, those of Jaap Stam from the world of football disappeared very soon and the diving and biting began. Then there was the tiki-taka style of football that was played in the Spanish League, the silky style of play that caught everyone off guard. The legendary Pep Guardiola and his army in Barcelona were the masters of tiki-taka. There was Real Madrid, who were always a star-studded line-up with excessive parts of their game relying on lightning-quick counter-attacks that more often than not left opponents stunned. There was Manchester United, which had its own brand of football run by the legendary Sir Alex Ferguson. That United team was a team of sheer determination and character. Each of these leagues had their own beauty and the teams had their own style of play.
When you incorporate excessive technology and analytics, unfortunate technologies like VARs (Video Assistant Referees) emerge.
There are 3 stages to how VAR works:
Step 1
an incident occurs
The referee informs the VAR, or the VAR recommends to the referee that a decision/incident be reviewed.
Step 2
Review and advice by the VAR
The video is reviewed by the VAR, who informs the referee via headset what the video shows.
Step 3
A decision or action is made
The referee decides to review the pitchside video images before making the appropriate action/decision, or the referee accepts the VAR information and makes the appropriate action/decision.
Now the referee can consult with the VAR basically any doubt that he wants to clarify. What does this?
• Removes the human element from the game.
• Takes up too much time and causes too many interruptions to the game, a game that was previously free-flowing and continuous.
This makes it similar to Formula 1 racing. The analytics generated by the fuel weight management systems and the numerous pit stops eliminated the continuity of the race and the audience shrank with the increase in technology. A fairly similar trend could occur in football if this implementation becomes mandatory.
The positive side of advanced analytics in football:
Analytics aren’t that bad in football. Take the case of when Simon Wilson joined Manchester City in 2006. Initially, Simon Wilson was a consultant for an analytics startup called Prozone. He joined City to start an analytics department and hired the best data analysts under him. He wanted to change the way football teams used data. He saw that after a loss, there was no introspection about why they had lost and what to do next time. City were a mid-table club at the time. In September 2008, when the club was acquired by the Abu Dhabi United Group for Development and Investment, a private equity entity owned by a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family, the team suddenly found itself with the necessary resources to challenge for the Premier League. League Today, Wilson is Manchester City’s manager of strategic performance analysis. He has five departments in charge of him, including the performance analysis team, which is now run by a sports scientist named Ed Sulley.
After each match, the team’s performance data would be examined. The list is extensive. Line jumps (a rugby term), ball possession, passing success rates, ball loss/gain time ratio were what used to be analysed. “Instead of looking at a list of 50 variables, we want to find five, let’s say, that really matter for our style of play,” says Pedro Marques, match analyst at Manchester City.
“With the right data sources, the algorithms will generate the statistics that have a strong relationship with winning and losing.” Wilson remembers a particular period when Manchester City hadn’t scored from a corner in over 22 games, so his team decided to look at over 400 goals that had been scored from a corner. It was noted that around 75 per cent resulted from inside corners, the kind where the ball curves towards the goal. The next 12 games of the next season saw City score nine goals from the corner.
Teams are investing heavily in analytics today and it’s working in their favor. Look where Manchester City are today, sitting at the top of the Premier League table and not being threatened at all. Look at Manchester United this season, his game has been such that his possession percentages are low but his goal conversions are high. The Manchester Derby on 7 April 2018 saw United have just 35% of possession, but they managed to beat City 3–2. Each team has its set of analysts who provide information based on the strength of the team.
Advanced analysis is like Two Face’s coin in Batman: “If heads, die, tails, survive!”
It can reap crazy rewards from a team point of view, but at the same time it can disrupt the beautiful game by bringing in unnecessary stoppages, replays, and by taking away the human element. The many replays and the different angles show the fans if the referee has made a mistake or not. Let the error occur, after all, to err is human. Refereeing in soccer is not an exact science and everything is in real time. Let there be discussions about a decision, let the passion manifest in the discussion. Do you want to watch a football game like El Clasico or the Manchester Derby and sit down with your friends and say “it was a very fair game, the best team won!” Hell no! Don’t quench the passion for soccer with technology and analytics. Let football be football and technology stay away!
