FOOTBALL? IT ALL AMOUNTS TO THE SAME THING

14-04-2008

Never mind the beautiful game, Pete Millington sees football as a numbers game. But what does it all add up to?

Soccer fans describe their beloved game in many different ways.

It’s a game of skill, a game of commitment, a game of passion and a game of tactics. Football pitches are battle fields, graveyards, theatres, dog-pits, cathedrals and circuses.

Each match described in terms of a thousand different emotions – the expectation, the ambition, the anxiety, the passion, the triumph, the humiliation, the anger, the love, hate, aggression, sorrow and deep despair.

The grounds are places of music, noise, history, prayer, culture, celebration, jubilation, colour and vibrancy.

The players and managers become artists, gymnasts, soldiers, craftsmen, dream weavers, magicians, villains and giants. It is all here, the whole gamut of the human collective consciousness from the former player who scores a penalty for the away team like a spurned lover …to the adulation of the latest striker – the genius, the knight, the champion, the king… even the God.

Football has become the beautiful game interpreted by each nation according to their own cultural traditions and values, from the technical Germanics to the magical Latinos, soccer is the universal religion that crosses borders, brings momentary peace to warring nations and unites the whole world as we watch in awe of it’s drama, comedy and pathos.

It is art, it is theatre, it is religion.

But how many of us ever stop to consider, that much more than any of this, football is actually a pastime that is all about …mathematics?

Anyone who has spent the afternoon, as I did on Sunday, firstly listening to the closing day’s action in the Premiership on the radio and later on reliving the whole experience retrospectively on Match of the Day on television, will know exactly what I’m talking about when I suggest that the whole thing is literally about numbers, figures, calculations of numbers and figures, with a whole load of statistics thrown in for good measure.

And what an extraordinary afternoon it was, firstly being an extremely rare day of Premiership fixtures in that everyone kicked off at 3 for a change and the number three also being interesting in that there were 3 issues being decided: the plight of both Chelsea and Manchester United to win the Premiership; the struggle between Everton and Aston Villa to gain the UEFA cup place in 5th position; and thirdly the dog-fight at the bottom of the Premiership between Blues, Fulham and Reading to avoid relegation.

Everything depended on everything else and at the centre of everything was numbers, goals, score lines and points.

Reading went ahead at Derby putting Blues and Fulham in danger, Blues fought on in spite of the growing certainty of relegation and finally Fulham pulled off the great escape by beating Portsmouth to put both Reading and Blues down.

The Match of the Day coverage showed one very moving image of a little lad sat on his dad’s lap at St Andrews in floods of tears and I was reminded of having to explain to my own children why convincingly winning a match (as Blues did today) isn’t always enough when we have to take into account this cruel wider context known as mathematics.

I spent the afternoon texting and receiving texts from my brother-in-law Andy, who is an Everton fan, as the fortunes of his team and my team (Villa) swung back and forth like a pendulum with Everton eventually doing the correct arithmetic and qualifying for that European spot above Villa.

The other extraordinary event in terms of interesting numbers today was Middlesboro beating Manchester City 8-1 … and who would have put money on that score line? Imagine if another team elsewhere had been relying on that result to gain them a place in Europe or keep them in the division?

At this point I should say that perhaps it’s not entirely a football thing, there are certain sports which have even greater obsessions with numbers, such as snooker, darts, golf, tennis, horse racing to name a few and perhaps the number-crazy experience of soccer fans on the last day of the season doesn’t even begin to compare with what cricket fans put up with on an average day of their season?

But here is a short summary of why and how numbers are so significant in football:

Firstly there is one ball, one pitch and one referee who is one of three (nowadays 4) match officials. Each match features two teams attacking towards one of two sets of goal posts, each team defends one of two ends of the pitch and the game lasts for two exactly equal time periods (or halves) of 45 minutes, plus extra time to be measured by the officials within set guidelines.

The game has an agreed date and kick-off time and the main aim of the whole exercise is to score goals at one end and keep them out at the other, creating a numerical score line at the end of the game that is favourable to one’s own team.

After this, the numbers are still pre-ordained by the rules of the game but in ways that may or may not have immediately obvious origins. From 1870 there have been eleven players on each side (plus substitutes), the players have squad numbers on their backs and they play in numerical formations. Each team has one goal keeper but it’s other players can be arranged in any sequence of formations (4-3-3, 4-4-2, 3-5-2, 4-2-3-1, etc.)

In this sense the game of soccer is more mathematically complex even than chess which commences with each side’s pieces in an identical formation, only altering very slowly as the game commences.

In football, the opposing formations can be totally different to one another and can radically change at any point in the game according the tactics of the manager and before anyone points out “yes but Chess has 16 players on each side so therefore has more permeations” please remember the substitutes on top of the starting 11.

In chess a powerful player such as a new queen can only be brought on in exchange for an attacking pawn, in soccer a queen, rook, bishop or knight can be brought on from the sideline at any stage.

When Manchester United play Derby County it is akin to a whole side of queens pitted against a team of pawns, Aston Villa currently play with a Knight constantly in their defence, whereas Spurs play with a King in a similar role.

Each team plays in a division made up of a set number of teams and each division is in a sequential part of a league (division 1, division 2, etc). Sometimes divisions are known by other terms such as Premiership, Championship, etc, but they still function according to a sequential hierarchy of numbers.

The teams in each division play each other twice (once at home and once away) during a season (a set period of months in a single year) and points are awarded according to the result of the game (3 for a win, 1 for a draw and 0 if you lose). The fixture calendar always obeys this balanced numerical rule, two teams never play each other more or less than twice in one season, except outside of the league - for instance in a cup game, but we will come to that in a while.

The team moves up and down the division (or table) according to the points it gathers from it’s games. The team with most points when the season ends is that year’s overall champion, a pre-ordained number of teams with the least points generally get relegated to the next lowest division.

The maths really starts to kick-in at this point, with some teams going up a division automatically by right of their leading positions and lower teams going into play-offs in order to qualify for promotion.

An additional formula known as goal difference is used as a further indicator of the numerical positioning of teams.

As each season approaches it’s omega, soccer players, managers, supporters and media commentators become veritable professors of mathematics, calculating and predicting the results and final positions according to ever changing variables and differentials.

Then of course there are the cup competitions which run alongside the league contest, some of which start off with teams arranged in small divisions, but all of which ultimately turn into a mathematically balanced knock-out tournament, reducing the overall number of contesting teams by 50% after each round (i.e. 64 teams become 32, then 16, then 8, then 4 in the semi final, 2 in the final and one winner remains to lift the trophy).

A mathematically perfect exhibition of human social interaction.

Domestic cups are played annually as are European club competitions, but competitions for international sides, such as the World Cup are played every 4 years.

These of course are just the basics, the influence of numbers in football just becomes ever more fascinating from here on in.

The greatness of a team may be based on the legends of it’s players, the reputation of it’s fans and the splendour of it’s stadium but these things are merely the meat on the bones which are actually it’s numerical achievements.

Read the front inside cover of any club’s match programme to see their past and recent glories spelt out in the numbers of trophies the club has won, or the statistics page to track their recent performance - again in numerical measurements.

How many years has the club existed? How many times has it won the league and how many times has it won the FA cup and other trophies? What is it’s average home attendance? How much money does the club have and what is the value of it’s players? How many international caps do the players have and how high are their weekly salaries?

The numerical fascination of the game continues into related areas like fantasy league, betting on match results and doing the pools. Numbers, numbers, numbers – football really is a numbers game. Here’s a few more:

More than 50 million footballers around the world play in official competitions and around 240 million people play the game on a regular basis.

The English Premiership is watched by over 550 million viewers in 140 countries every year.

The World Cup final is watched by a worldwide television audience of 1.1 billion people – one sixth of the world’s population.

The modern pitch is about 100m long and 70m wide, but back in the 1860s it could be as long as 180m.

40 million footballs are sold every year, the match ball for a professional game must weigh between 410-450 grams.

The Football Association was formed in 1863 by representatives from 12 clubs, the European governing body FIFA was formed in 1904 with 7 original founder members.

There are 6 confederations at continental level, the largest being UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) with 52 member countries which is awarded 14 out of 32 places at the World Cup finals.

Astonishingly the smallest confederation is not Oceania (OFC) with it’s 11 members but the South American confederation (CONMEBOL) whose membership of only 10 nations have produced 9 out of 17 winners of the World Cup and two of their teams, Brazil and Argentina constantly remaining in the top 5 ranked national sides in the world.

A Brazilian named Martinho Eduardo Orige holds the world record for keeping a ball in the air with simultaneous touches with his feet, legs and head, he kept it off the ground for 19 hours and 30 minutes of continuous touches.

The most goals scored by an individual player in an international match was by Australia’s Archie Thompson who bagged 13 goals in their 31-0 thrashing of American Samoa in 2001.

The largest ever attendance at a football match was when 199,854 people attended the Brazil v. Uruguay World Cup match at the Maracana Municipal Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on 16 July 1950.

The longest unbeaten run in the English Premier League is 49 by Arsenal between 7 May 2003 and 16 October 2004.

The longest FA Cup Tie was between Alvechurch and Oxford City in November 1971 which lasted for 6 games and 11 hours. After 5 draws, Alvechurch finally won 1-0.

From video evidence, the fastest goal at professional level was by Uruguayan player Ricardo Olivera who scored after just 2.8 seconds for Rio Negro against Soriano on 26 December 1998.

The world’s most expensive player was Zinedine Zidane who cost Real Madrid £47 million (13 billion Spanish pesetas) when he transferred from Juventus in July 2001.

Squad numbers were first worn on the backs of player’s shirts in 1928 and the numbers 1-11 were allocated according to the set positions of players on the pitch. However at the 1954 World Cup teams were instructed to issue a permanent number to each player in their squad, with the numbers 1-11 being their first choice line-up but not mandatory.

The mandatory rule that the starting line-up be numbered 1-11 was only dropped in domestic English football in the League Cup Final of 1993 between Arsenal and Sheffield Wednesday.

Changing from a high to a lower number usually denotes the rising importance of a player within his team, but occasionally players opt not to do this. In spite of other numbers becoming available, John Terry of Chelsea has chosen to keep the number 26 he was allocated when he first joined the first team and when Alan Smith signed for Newcastle he opted not to receive a number 8 shirt but chose number 17 which he had previously worn at Leeds.

Hicham Zerouali wore the number 0 shirt for Aberdeen after fans nicknamed him Zero and in 2003, FC Porto goalkeeper became the first player to wear the number 99 in a European competition. Other unusual numbers have included Jesus Arellano (Club de Futbol Monterrey) who was 400, Adolfo Bautista (Club Deportiva Guadalajara) number 100 and Rogerio Ceni of Sao Paulo FC who once played at number 618.

For many fans and players the number 10 shirt is of great significance because so many of the world’s greatest players have worn it, such as Diego Maradona, Francesco Totti, Roberto Baggio, Pele, Zinedine Zidane, Wayne Rooney, Rivaldo, Ronaldinho, William Gallas and Michael Owen.

At Manchester United the prized squad number is number 7 because it has been worn by players including George Best, Bryan Robson, Eric Cantona, David Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo.

The manager with the biggest reliance on numerical data in the Premiership is said to be Arsene Wenger who admits he is obsessed with the study of numbers in his training and tactical planning.

Wenger says that he studies the speed at which his players receive the ball and lay it off to the decimal point, explaining the fast one-touch passing that has been typical of Arsenal’s play.

Sam Alladyce also uses mathematical data in his methods and it is thought by many that it was this type of scientific approach to football that won him success at Bolton but rejection from Newcastle.

Scholars have even studied the mathematics of David Beckham’s free kicks. For instance, Beckham’s match winning free kick for England against Greece which helped them to qualify for the 2002 World Cup had an initial speed of 34.87 m/s and took just 1.04 seconds to reach the goal from his boot.

Further calculations have led to equations which suggest the best angles of swerve, the best positions to take free kicks from and the affect of air turbulence on the ball.

So, if like me you have been kidding yourself for all these years that soccer is a game of emotion and artistry … then think again. It is actually all about mathematics… as Birmingham City and Aston Villa supporters will testify after Sunday's afternoon of crucial number crunching!

(Pete Millington blogs at http://www.spaghettigazetti.com/)