Variance in soccer

J.R. · #1 08-07-2006, 07:27 PM

Perhaps not the most accurate title, but I am curious how often an upset occurs in major club/international soccer as opposed to other sports, notably american football.

Obviously there are issues in defining an upset or which team is "better", but does anybody have ideas on this or know of any publicly available articles addressing this general topic. Thanks.

gusmahler · #2 08-07-2006, 07:53 PM

I'm pretty sure that something about this was posted during the World Cup. But a very quick Googling came up with this: http://cnls.lanl.gov/~ebn/pubs/sports/html/

Cliff Notes: baseball and the EPL have the highest variance (in comparing MLB, EPL, NFL, NHL, and NBA).

The_Bends · #3 08-07-2006, 08:38 PM

Soccer varience in each match is pretty high. Thats why leagues are more respected than cups. Over 38 games its very difficult to just be lucky

KDawg · #4 08-07-2006, 09:20 PM

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Soccer varience in each match is pretty high. Thats why leagues are more respected than cups. Over 38 games its very difficult to just be lucky

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bingo. But the FA Cup in england always holds a special place because of the giant killing possibilites. You always see some good upsets in the FA Cup and three years ago a team from division 1(now the league championship, which is the second tier of english professional football) made it to the final

gusmahler · #5 08-07-2006, 09:48 PM

[ QUOTE ]
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Soccer varience in each match is pretty high. Thats why leagues are more respected than cups. Over 38 games its very difficult to just be lucky

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bingo. But the FA Cup in england always holds a special place because of the giant killing possibilites. You always see some good upsets in the FA Cup and three years ago a team from division 1(now the league championship, which is the second tier of english professional football) made it to the final

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I assume you talking about Millwall in 2003-04. But one reason that they made it to the final is because they played no EPL teams their entire run.

That's something that really surprised me when I started to follow soccer: the FA Cup matches are completely random. The EPL teams don't play until the Third Round. But once they are in, the matches are completely random: no seeding at all. You could theoretically have Liverpool/Chelsea and Man U/Arsenal in the Third Round of this year's FA Cup, eliminating 2 of the top 4 teams immediately. E.g., in 2003-04, the semi-final games were Man U/Arsenal (the two top teams in the EPL playing against each other) and Millwall/Sunderland (two Division 1 teams).

Victor · #6 08-07-2006, 10:31 PM

does variance include a "better" team being outplayed (and losing) on a given day.

KDawg · #7 08-07-2006, 11:04 PM

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That's something that really surprised me when I started to follow soccer: the FA Cup matches are completely random. The EPL teams don't play until the Third Round. But once they are in, the matches are completely random: no seeding at all. You could theoretically have Liverpool/Chelsea and Man U/Arsenal in the Third Round of this year's FA Cup, eliminating 2 of the top 4 teams immediately. E.g., in 2003-04, the semi-final games were Man U/Arsenal (the two top teams in the EPL playing against each other) and Millwall/Sunderland (two Division 1 teams).

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this is the beauty of the FA Cup though and what still makes it so important for many in england

J.R. · #8 08-07-2006, 11:56 PM

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does variance include a "better" team being outplayed (and losing) on a given day.

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I dunno, probably should not in theory but I don't know how you would account for this in practice. This all flows out of a discussion as to how the World Cup compares to other sporting championships, notably the NFL, in terms of crowning the best team as champion.

With the narrowing of worldwide talent gaps and the prevalence of penalty kicks deciding games, in addition to the heightened significance of each goal in determining the winner, I was thinking the world cup is less efficient in terms of crowning the best team as champion than other sports. Yes, I was a fan of Brazil [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

jstnrgrs · #9 08-08-2006, 11:02 PM

From what I can tell, american football has a lower per game variance that any other popular sport. This doesn't detract from the game's appeal at all IMO.

stealthcow · #10 08-08-2006, 11:43 PM

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From what I can tell, american football has a lower per game variance that any other popular sport. This doesn't detract from the game's appeal at all IMO.

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is tennis popular enough?