By Robbie Butler

The European Cup in football (now known as the UEFA Champions League) started in the 1955–56 season. The competition was created by UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) to determine the best club team in Europe. The first-ever European Cup match was played between Sporting CP and Partizan Belgrade on 4 September 1955. The match took place at the Estádio Nacional in Lisbon and ended in a 3–3 draw. Sporting’s João Baptista Martins had the honour of scoring the first goal in European Cup history.

The inaugural tournament was won by Real Madrid, who defeated Stade de Reims 4–3 in the final. Real Madrid went on to dominate the early years of the competition, winning the first five editions of the European Cup. The Spanish giants could rightly claim to be the “Champions” of Europe – or Champion of Champions, so to speak.

For more than 40 years, the tournament remained closed to teams other than national champions. Second place in any European league – even the biggest leagues of England, Spain, and Germany – did not qualify, while first place in weaker leagues like Iceland, Wales, or Luxembourg did. It truely was a "'league of champions".

This all changed at the start of the 1997–98 season when UEFA expanded the competition to include league runners-up from stronger footballing nations such as Spain, Italy, Germany, and England. The Champions League was no longer just for “champions.” The motivations were largely economic. More games meant more money from matchday operations, merchandising, and broadcasting. This translated into higher revenues and, most likely, higher profits. Whether these teams were “champions” or not didn’t really matter.

As the years have rolled by, the competition has been expanded further. The most dramatic recent change has been the addition of a 36-team league format. Much of this change was driven by the threat of the so-called European Super League. The UEFA Champions League is now a de facto Super League. The same clubs regularly compete from the top European leagues. And an interesting dynamic has now emerged via the UEFA Europa League.

Until 2024–25, teams finishing 3rd in the Champions League Group Stage would drop into the Europa League after being eliminated from the premier competition. This is no longer the case. Under the old system, the eventual Europa League winners most likely came from one of the top European leagues. The last time a team outside of England, Spain, Germany, or Italy won the Europa League was in 2010–11, when Porto lifted the cup. I was at the game in Dublin. In fact, over the past twenty seasons, only three teams outside of the “big” leagues have won the competition.

There is an important dynamic to this. The Europa League winners began to automatically qualify for the UEFA Champions League starting with the 2015–16 season. The first beneficiaries of this were Sevilla. Since then, it has been used by other clubs in England, Spain, Germany, and Italy. While some might argue this rule increases the prestige of the Europa League and encourages teams to take it more seriously, I see it as creating an additional place for the top leagues.

The 2024–25 rule change goes even further. The Europa League is essentially “closed” from the start, as the 3rd-place route from the Champions League Group Stage no longer exists. The strongest clubs in the competition come from the top leagues. As this season proves – the final will see Manchester United play Tottenham Hotspur – the Europa League will become a de facto extra Champions League place for England or Spain. Italy or Germany might spoil this duopoly from time to time.

The likelihood of a club crowned champions from another European league, arriving from the Champions League that could challenge these clubs is now removed. Therefore, a Porto, Benfica, Monaco, Celtic, Rangers, etc. can no longer threaten the 'big league' clubs and I suspect the Europa League will not leave England, Spain Italy or Germany for sometime.

With the addition of a 5th Champions League spot for some top leagues and the Europa League winners’ spot, England and Spain will effectively have six teams in the Champions League each season on a regular basis. There were to be six English clubs in the proposed European Super League.

Imitation is the highest form of flattery.

By Daragh O'Leary

Unfortunately for me, Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal are now officially set to go another season without winning a trophy. Arsenal’s FA Cup victory in 2020 was the last major honour the Gunners secured and with their recent 2-1 loss to Paris Saint-Germain, Arteta’s men confirmed that they won’t be able to make the Champions League final in Munich this year. The European Cup was their last hope of collecting a trophy to take the bad look off what has been quite a miserable season.

Despite this, I still find myself a staunch supporter of Mikel Arteta and everything he is doing at the Emirates. Why? I believe in the use of probabilistic modelling in football. Allow me to explain.

Economists, or at least empirical economists, spend a lot of their time trying to deal with issues concerning causality. For example, given the role that technological advancement plays in determining log-run economic growth, a lot of economists study innovation to identify its causes. A firm introducing a new product could be considered an innovation, so many economists have looked to identify what leads to this happening.

Common inputs of innovation include human capital, R&D, and collaborations with external parties. All of these variables positively contribute to the probability that a firm may innovate, but it should be noted that none of these variables are deterministic inputs of innovation. What I mean by this is that they don’t guarantee that innovation will happen, they simply increase the likelihood that it might. A similar approach is taken by football coaches to winning trophies.

When Manchester City won the Champions League Final the deterministic parameters which made this happen were that they scored a goal and Inter Milan didn’t. We know that this is exactly what caused Man City to win not only because when it happened, they won the cup, but had it not happened (i.e., Inter Milan scored and Man City didn’t, Man City wouldn’t have won the cup). Econometricians call this a counterfactual proof. While this explains how Man City won the final, it isn’t all that helpful to coaches as a model for general success – just score and don’t concede!

As good as he is, Pep Guardiola didn’t buy Rodri because he knew that he’d need him to score in the Champions League Final. He bought Rodri because he knew Rodri would be a good player which would increase the overall probability that his team would have the ball when played in a certain way, thereby increasing the number of chances they might create which should maximise the probability of winning a football match.

Unfortunately for Mikel Arteta, and Pep for most his tenure at City and all his time at Bayern Munich, probabilistic modelling doesn’t guarantee a certain outcome. You can have great players, great tactics, create great chances, and still not win. Arsenal managed to create several great chances last night (see graph below) and for the most part they played quite well. 

Had Rice put his header away, Martinelli scored in the box, Ødegaard’s shot not been saved so brilliantly by Donnarumma, or Saka not missed an open goal maybe Arsenal fans would be a lot happier right now.
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Unfortunately, excellence in sport is fragile and decided by marginal wins. All Arteta can do is continue to set up his team in a way which he believes maximises their chances of winning football matches. Both Pep and Jurgen Klopp took City and Liverpool to 3 Champions League finals each and both only managed to win one of them. Maybe Arteta will come out on the right side of a trophy next season.

By Robbie Butler

In the world of football, stories of glory and collapse often unfold in decades. But in the space of just four years, Wrexham A.F.C. has gone from a forgotten fifth-tier club to a symbol of hope—and Hollywood. At the same time, Luton Town has endured one of the more dramatic recent reversals of fortune. Both clubs are emblematic of the highs and lows of the English football pyramid.

In February 2021, actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney completed the unexpected purchase of Wrexham A.F.C., a small, fan-owned club with a proud but troubled history. The club had been stuck in the National League, the fifth tier of English football, since 2008 after a 2–0 defeat to Hereford United ended their 87-year run in the Football League.

What seemed like a quirky celebrity move soon turned into one of football's most captivating comeback stories.
Backed by serious investment, strong leadership, and an authentic connection with the community, Wrexham achieved what no English professional club had done before: three consecutive promotions. By April 2025, they had reached the EFL Championship (2nd tier)—a remarkable feat by any standard.

Their story became globally recognized thanks to the Emmy-winning documentary series Welcome to Wrexham, which not only chronicled the club’s progress but also spotlighted the people and town that make Wrexham special.

Luton Town’s recent rise (addressed previously here) mirrors Wrexham’s both today (but there has been a subsequent decline). Promoted to the Premier League in 2023/24, Luton’s were relegated after just one year, and despite hopes of bouncing back, they suffered a second straight relegation in 2024/25, landing them in League One.

The juxtaposition couldn’t be more dramatic. In 2023/24, Wrexham were in League Two, and Luton were facing clubs like Liverpool, Manchester City and Arsenal. In 2025/26, Wrexham will play in a higher division than Luton Town—an amazing reversal of fortunes in just two years.

This sharp contrast underscores the unique drama of the English football system. Unlike American sports leagues, where teams are protected by closed systems, European football embraces promotion and relegation

​Reynolds and McElhenney – two US stars – have become poster boys for a system so different from their native sporting culture. They've not only embraced the challenge but thrived within it, experiencing the true elation of earning each step forward.

As for Luton Town, their fall is a reminder of how quickly fortunes can change—and how important it is to build for long-term resilience, not just short-term success. As of May 2025, Wrexham’s journey is one that few could have scripted better—even in Hollywood.

By Robbie Butler

As we move into May, the hurling season in Ireland really starts to take shape. This week regular blog contributor John Considine and his co-authors had their research profile by the Gaelic Games Association (GAA) official website. The full peice by John Harrington can be found here. A full transcript also appears below. 

That old sporting canard that there’s no such thing as a safe lead in hurling was doing the rounds again after Cork and Clare got the Munster Hurling Championship off to a flier in Ennis three weekends ago.It says a lot about how we view the game that there was no real shock about how Cork conspired to let a 12-point half-time lead slip and were perhaps fortunate to ultimately snatch a draw with the last puck of the game.

We have an image of hurling as being a sport of beautiful chaos where these sort of wild swings in matches are par for the course, but that’s not the case. Clare’s comeback against Cork that day was only the second time in the last six years that a team has come from so far behind in championship hurling.

That information comes courtesy of former Cork hurler, Dr. John Considine, who is a lecturer on Economic Decision Making and the Law and Economics of Competition at the Cork University Business School at UCC.

He along, with co-authors from UCC and Croke park (John Eakins, Peter Horgan and Conor Weir), produced a study quantifying the changes in ‘Game States’ (the ahead/behind/level state of games) of all 163 senior inter-county hurling championship matches over the last six years (2019 to 2024) and how these fluctuations impact the overall game narrative and scoring.

It’s a testament how exciting a sport hurling is that 50% of matches have had nine changes in Game States or more and that 10% of matches are decided in the final two minutes before the referee blows their final whistle.
But his research also shows that there is in fact such a thing as a pretty safe lead in hurling.

Only once had a team come back from 10 points down to win a championship match in the last six years – Limerick against Tipperary in the 2021 Munster Final. That represented .8% of all the games from 2019 to 2023. The percentage of matches that were overturned to win from nine, eight, and seven point deficits was negligible too.

It’s only when you get down to a five-point lead that you could say it’s not all that safe. 16 per cent of matches from 2019 to 2023 saw a team overcome a five-point deficit to win the game. “At the moment people are probably influenced by an availability bias,” says Considine. “They saw Clare coming back from 12 points to get a draw so they're probably saying that, 'Jesus, 12 points is no lead in hurling.'

“But actually if you look at the vast majority of games, it is! The only other time it has happened since 2019 was in 2023 when Galway reeled in Dublin. “But people will remember the Cork and Clare one for a couple of reasons. One, it was on television. So now you have this element of, it could happen, it could happen, and there's that element in there.
“People will remember that in the same way they remember All-Ireland Finals with great comebacks like Offaly's. They remember them way more than what happens on average. That's what makes sport exciting.”

If sport is all about excitement then it might seem like a strange bedfellow for Economics which has been termed ‘the dismal science’, but there has long been strong links between the two. One of the most seminal texts on Economics is ‘The Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour' by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern which was published in 1944 and was based on the premise that in parlour games like poker, competitors always play their best possible strategies.

In the decades that followed economists followed von Neumann’s lead and populated their models with decision makers that make their best possible decisions, but the economic crash of the late noughties suggested that, in fact, humans can’t be relied on to make the best possible decisions. We’ve long known that to be the case in sport, which is why economists are now using evidence from sporting contests and games to develop more realistic models.

Nobel prize winning economist, Richard Thaler, studied tv shows like Golden Balls and Deal or No Deal to prove that people don’t behave like von Neumann’s ideal, while Tobias Moskowitz examined millions of decisions by baseball umpires to show that their decisions were biased in favour of the player behind in the count. After examining All-Ireland Championship matches from the years 2016 to 2018 he found that:
1: The team behind on the scoreboard is statistically more likely to get the next free.
2: The further they’re behind the more likely again they will be to get the next free.
3: The team that has been awarded less frees is statistically more likely to be awarded the next free.

“I teach a first-year module on decision-making,” says Considine. ”It's a look at how these decisions are being evaluated, be it game-shows or games.

“When you're looking at decision-making there’s been experimental stuff where you take people to labs and ask them questions but when you take people into the lab it's not real. It’s better to see how people behave in real settings so sport is ideal. We tend to look at the big data out there on how people make decisions.

“The stuff we did on refereeing refers to work done on baseball umpires. They took data from baseball umpires, loan officers who grant loans, and asylum judges in the US and they found they all make the same type of error in that if they granted a few they’re more likely to incorrectly not grant the next one.

“Sport is ideal because the data is public, you don't have to conduct experiments, you don't have to get ethical approval, it's all out there.

“The American sports are especially brilliant for this. You can watch quarter-backs and the decisions they make. For the last 20 years there has been an explosion in the use of sports data for examining elements of Economics.Not just necessarily the Economics of the sport, it's more about decision-making and what they do. There's huge literature there. That's why it's a great help to the Economics side. It's basically a lab to see how people behave, whether it's the referee or the players. There's great stuff there.”

Considine knows that when a penalty is now taken in senior inter-county championship hurling it will be scored 84% of the time (based on the conversion ratio in the 2024 championship). Statistical analysis has long been used in Economics to make predictions and the same is now true in sport, but applying probability to human behaviour can be an inexact science.

“Probably the most famous economist of the 20th century, John Maynard Keynes, said that what we do we do on animal spirits and we should never forget that,” says Considine. “The lads who are taking penalties don't work out probabilities. It's all very well to be a Monday morning quarter-back but when you're under pressure in Croke Park then psychological factors are way bigger than thinking straight and rationality. You try to get players to behave rationally and to make good decisions, but you know full well that when the pressure comes you have to have it so burned into their system that they don't have to make decisions. You save their decision making capacity for bits and pieces but by and large they are programmed to go with the game-plan at given points in time and you're guarding against psychological issues moreso. After the All-Ireland Final I would bet a penny to a pound that what's said at half-time in the winning dressing-room isn't too much different to what was said in the losing dressing-room.But of course we want to know that someone stood up and there was a heroic speech made because that's what we want and that's what we like. We're back to animal spirit, that's what drives us."

“If you look at the stats, lads shouldn't be scoring from the corner flag. But they'll get a score from the corner-flag and the commentators will go berserk and everyone who saw it will remember it. Eamonn O'Shea had a great line about that. He said if you score from the corner-flag there will be a huge cheer and everyone will tell you that you're great. But if you miss from the centre you'll never be allowed forget it either. You should be encouraging lads to shoot from the centre and not the corner-flag, but we love the other stuff. When you collect the stats you're only measuring on balance what happens. But you don't know in a specific situation what will happen. The stats show that if you smoke there's a good chance that it will damage your health, but there's always somebody who smoked over 20 a day who lives to over 100 and that's the one that people will remember.”

Or how the time Clare came from 12 points down to draw with Cork in the 2025 Munster Senior Hurling Championship proved that there's no such thing as a safe lead in hurling

By Daragh O'Leary

Anyone familiar with my writing on this blog will know that I am an avid Arsenal fan. Naturally, this means quite a lot of my football posts centre around Arsenal. One example of this would be my research on the night owl effect in the Premier League.
 
In a previous post, I explained how watching Arsenal lose so many games away under the lights motivated me to examine whether there was a connection between late kick-offs and home advantage. Sure enough, I found some evidence to back this up empirically with econometric tests, but I found explaining the result a bit challenging because no one had ever observed it before. Accordingly, there was no real theoretical discussion in the literature on why later kick-offs may improve home advantage.
 
One of the possible explanations I put forward was that later kick-off times might facilitate greater levels of alcohol consumption among fans. My reasoning for this was that greater alcohol consumption could produce more hostile atmospheres for away teams. While this explanation was purely speculative, I was interested to see that Arsenal seemingly tried to harness it during their recent Champions League quarter final against Real Madrid.
 
In dramatic contrast to the London clubs usual revenue maximising strategy of high prices (£6.35 for a pint), Arsenal actually offered fans two-for-one beers prior to kick-off against the Spanish giants. Presumably, the reasoning behind this was to try and maximise the influence which the home fans could have on the game.
 
This notion of teams leveraging off the support of their fans to achieve key results is not at all uncommon in football. Jurgen Klopp once famously remarked that ‘even the hotdog sellers’ needed to be on top form ahead of a Liverpool-Manchester City title clash at Anfield. Madrid looked to try something similar for the return leg at the Bernabéu by closing the roof on their stadium.
 
Fortunately for Arsenal, their beer-orientated strategy seemed to outshine Madrid’s interior design choice. 

By Robbie Butler

The narrative on winning the Premier League is interesting to observe. The ease with which Liverpool will probably win the Premier League has made others question both the team and the league.

It has been fascinating to observe – as the week has passed – what others perceived Liverpool “needed” to win the league. “Liverpool need 5 more wins.” “Liverpool need 4 more wins.” “Liverpool need 3 more wins.” And so on. Now it is “Liverpool need 1 more win.”

The reality, of course, is that this was never true. Liverpool didn’t need to do anything; others did. They are the ones that are chasing. Liverpool could have lost all their remaining games – they still could – and win the league. When you are 8, 9 or 10 points ahead, as was often the case, it is up to others to win 3 games or more to catch the leaders.

As we hit this weekend we will hear “Liverpool need 1 more win.” This is not true. What I assume those saying this mean is that “Liverpool need 1 more win” to guarantee the title. This is also untrue. Liverpool are 13 points clear of Arsenal. Arsenal can get a maximum of 15 more points. Assuming Liverpool need to get 3 more points assumes that Arsenal can only get 15 more, and therefore a win guarantees the title.

This ignores the fact that Liverpool and Arsenal must play each other. Therefore, Liverpool can guarantee winning the league with just 80 points – one more point – assuming that point comes against Arsenal.

​80, of course, would be a relatively low winning amount. Leicester won the league on 81 points. However, Manchester United have been crowned champions in the 70–79 point bracket. The winners this season will be somewhere in the mid-to-high 80s, I predict. They may even reach or break 90 points. If they do, Liverpool will surpass the totals of Manchester City in 2 of the past 4 seasons. Arguably the greatest team in the history of English football – 4 league titles in a row – two of which could be lower points totals than Liverpool 2024/25.

By David Butler

According to the Telegraph, Leicester manager Ruud Van Nistelrooy and player Harry Winks have had a major disagreement. The midfielder reportedly turned down a request to stay overnight once a week at the Leicester training ground citing private reasons. 

One interesting aspect of Winks’ personal life may explain his preference for a commute - Marlowe Otilia Winks was born last month. Over the years, there has been many famous cases of paternity interfering in the work life and preparation of footballers. There is a variety of alternative views on how this should be managed and what expectations should be placed on players. They are human and experience the same emotions as all of us, equally they have statutory worker rights. Of course, these workers are extremely highly paid.

In our most recent paper, Robbie and I address the issue of paternity in football. In a nutshell, we find negative short-run performance effects for elite footballer players just prior to, and after, becoming a Dad.  This decline exists for certain measures related to pass and goal creation.  While it seems that the decision to commute or stay was left outside of Winks contract, the manager had a clear preference - perhaps Ruud's nod wasn't as good as a wink. 

Our paper is open access in Kyklos  and can be read here: The Baby Club  



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By Robbie Butler

​I have written extensively about VAR. I remain opposed to its use in football. I believe it has fundamentally changed the game and the way it is consumed.

Most of us do not know what it is like to consume the game as a professional player. It must be incredible to be part of top football leagues and compete weekly, whilst getting paid. I can only imagine the impact VAR has had on the enjoyment of those playing professionally in the game. This also extends to others professionally employed by the game such as managers, coaches and support staff.

Tottenham manager Ange Postecoglou gave a brilliant interview which endorsed what I have been saying for some time. Last week he said: “No doubt, it's not the game I loved… I am falling out of love with the game because I love celebrating goals. I paid a high price for it [against Chelsea]. I'm paying a massive price for it, but I'll make sure I won't do it again."

That is what VAR has done. People have stopped celebrating goals. I could not think of a more fundamental change to consuming the game.

I am guilty of this. I don’t celebrate when my team scores but wait. It is the risk aversion in me. Talk about killing the game.

Because that is what it is. A game! I fear those in charge have lost sight of this. I am not sure whether this is intentional or not, but “drama” is what seems to be important rather than the original concept – deciding which team was best.

When the Sheffield Rules were written in 1858, I imagine nobody in the room could have conceived of VAR. Those rules – or laws as they have become – were not scientific, but guidelines as to how the game should be played. What exists now is a ‘product’ for television, with little interest in the application of common sense.

One really has to wonder how VAR can be used so poorly. This is acutely true of the English Premier League, with poor use ranging from very strange decision-making to actual misapplication of the rules. The Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) put the incident down to "significant human error".

The most recent PGMOL apology came last. Both the match official and VAR failed to issue a red card to Everton’s James Tarkowski for the tackle below. Every pundit, player, manager and ex-referee I have heard from agreed that the tackle constituted serious foul play. This means it should have seen the Everton centre-back’s punishment upgraded, from an original yellow card to a red card via VAR review.

The referee does not have the benefit of a replay – unless told otherwise by the VAR – so when the VAR looked at this, the question is how did he, and he alone, judge this to be not a “clear and obvious error”? Only the VAR, Paul Tierney, can answer this question.

By Robbie Butler

With the Aintree Racing Festival for 2025 about to commence and the Grand National - the most icon of all horse races - set to go to post on Saturday, I thought it timely to revisit a post of mine in 2017. 

As I said in 2017 "I think most people would agree that the performance of sports teams and individuals has improved over time. One need only look at old footage of any sport, team based or individual, to witness how fitness, physique, athleticism, stamina and technique have all improved. This is in no way to dimisnish the greats of the past, who may have achieved the same results, or possibly even better, had they access to the same improvements in technology, coaching, and sports science, etc.

Improvements in individual sports are often easier to spot than team-based ones. This is because there is usually a world record time, distance, weight etc. This way it is easier to compare contestants through time. Remarkably, Jesse Owens' world record from 1936 is 0.04 short of today's Olympic qualifying time of 10.16 seconds."

Horse racing continunes to buck the trend focuing on the data below - the winning time of each race. While there has been a slight improvement on average through time - the trend appears to be downward, there has been effectively no improvement over the past quarter of a century. 

The record time remains that of Mr Frisk - the 1990 winner - winning the 4 mile 2.5 furlong race in 8 minutes 48 seconds. The 2024 winner I Am Maximus took 9 minutes and 24 seconds to complete the course which is now far easier to complete given the reduce fence size and smaller field. 

By David Butler

International careers and the topic of the League of Ireland has received a lot of media attention in Ireland recently. Below shows the data – available from Wikipedia lists of current and recent call-ups – of the number of players selected for international duty who are contracted to clubs in the countries domestic league.

The UEFA average is 17 domestic based players. Note, these numbers would likely be shaded downward if only finalised squads or competitive matches only were considered.