By John Considine

Ian Graham’s How to Win the Premier League is a fine book for the way it outlines the difficulties with data and its analysis.  The subtitle of the book is “The inside story of football’s data revolution”.  I found the story of the evolution, rather than the revolution, more interesting.  It is neatly illustrated by a section called “The Ridgewell Problem”.
 
One of Graham’s earlier models rated Liam Ridgewell as one of the best defenders in Europe.  Yet, Ridgewell was on a Premier League team that ranked 19 of 20 when it came to expected goals conceded.  Graham says that “In common with other team sports, football has found it most difficult to measure and analyse defensive ability.  The problem we had was that we were unsure of the defenders’ positions when tackles didn’t happen and a dangerous chance was conceded.”  The italics are Graham’s.  How do you measure something that didn’t happen?  Let us park this for the moment.
 
Economists encounter something similar.  It is called the broken window fallacy.  Our gut instinct tells us that when a kid kicks a ball through a window it is a bad outcome.  However, if the kid employs a consultancy firm then the consultants will explain how the kid is serving the economy and should get preferential fiscal treatment.  They will explain that the expenditure of money on the replacement glass, and the person who installs it, are only the first round of a chain that will boost national income.  They will explain how the glass-shop owner and the window installer will spend the money they got and this will generate income for others.  There will be a multiple of the original expenditure circulating.  These consultants are like the data analysts that are measuring what happened rather than what did not happen.  We see the tackles just like we see the expenditure of the window owner on a replacement piece of glass.  We do not see what he would have spent the money on otherwise.  We do not see a goal if it was prevented.
 
I was reminded of this last Sunday by an excellent piece of defending in hurling.  It can be viewed here from 11:50 to 11:30 on the footage.  One of the best, if not the best, attackers in the game collected the ball in his hand.  This meant that one of the attacker’s two permitted catches was taken.  The attacker turned left towards goal and considered shooting but the defender was close enough to block any potential shot.  Therefore, the attacker elected to put the ball on his hurley and run towards goal.  The defender had positioned himself so that the attacker took the outside, and longer, route to goal.  There were two further benefits for the defender.  The attacker would be forced to strike off his relatively weaker side and from a narrower angle.
 
As they raced towards goal, the attacker tried to open up the angle a little. This required greater ball security so the attacker used his final permitted catch as he turned in.  This reduced the attacker’s advantage as he could only cover four steps with the ball in hand.  Realising he could not open the angle, the attacker tossed the ball back onto his stick and attempted to push away the defender.  But the defender had left enough of a gap that the handoff was only partly successful.  In addition, the defender had used the narrowing of the space to push the attacked the other direction.  The defender also clipped the attacker with his hurley in the way that a jockey twists his whip towards a horse’s neck to remind him of his presence.  He was unlikely to incur the wrath of the officials for excess use of the hurley.  At this stage, the attacker still had the ball but he had only one hand on the hurley that he was holding short to ensure ball control.  He could no longer catch the ball.  As a result, he tossed the ball upwards and struck it one-handed from a narrow angle and off his relatively weaker side.  The ball was struck off target (although the goalkeeper made sure at the cost of a 65m free shot).  Why did Aaron Gillane not score?  Maybe Sean O'Donoghue had something to do with it.
 
At 12:27 the commentator says, “Brilliant, from goalkeeper and forward”.  Even excellent defending that is seen is not often appreciated.  We might be a while away from being able to put the previous two paragraphs into data usable by statistical models.  Long live the Evolution.

By Robbie Butler

World Players Institute 2026 "Where Research Takes the Field: Informing decision making, bargaining, and practice in sport".

On 27-28 October 2026, the World Players Institute (WPI) will host its inaugural conference (WPI 2026) in partnership with Trinity College Dublin (TCD).

As sport continues to grow—with longer seasons, ever-increasing revenues, expanding global reach— athletes remain underrepresented in decision-making processes. This power imbalance is most effectively addressed through collective bargaining, which depends on reliable data and rigorous research to strengthen athlete voice and ensure equitable outcomes.

While significant research on such key areas as economics, labour rights, and health and safety in sport already exists, WPI 2026 provides a unique platform for this evidence to create real impact. By fostering relationships between academia and player associations, this conference bridges the gap between theory and practice through co-created research and projects that directly support athlete welfare.

Abstracts submission deadline: 31 May 2026. For more details, visit https://event.fourwaves.com/wpi2026.​

By John Considine

Was the Munster Final between Limerick and Cork the most exciting game of the 2025 senior hurling championship?  Possibly not.  More about that later but let us make the case for it being the most exciting game of the year.  The visual evidence is presented below.  The Munster Final comes out top (right) even without extra-time and penalties.

The big red bubble shows that the state of the game (Cork ahead, Level, Limerick ahead) changed more that 20 times and that the teams were within one score (3 points) of each other for close to 92% of the time.  The other red bubble is the Leinster hurling final.  A less exciting contest.  Pairwise comparisons should convince people that the picture has some validity.  The yellow/gold bubbles are the two All-Ireland quarter finals.  Dublin versus Limerick was more exciting than Tipperary versus Galway.  The green bubbles are the All-Ireland semi-finals.  Tipperary versus Kilkenny was clearly more exciting than Cork versus Dublin.

The green bubbles can be used to explain the relevance of the size of the bubble.  The bigger the bubble then the final outcome is determined closer to the end of the game.  The Tipperary v Kilkenny green bubble game went pretty closer to the wire.  The smaller green bubble shows Cork went ahead very early and never looked back.  The big blue bubble towards the bottom-left is Clare v Cork.  This game did go to the wire.  A larger bubble produces more excitment at crunch time.  So, why is it towards the bottom-left?  Before Shane Barrett was sent-off, three-quarters of the game had passed and Cork had a nine-point lead.

These are not all of the games in the 2025 championship.  These are the games that people might remember as being shown live on RTE.  There was game, not shown live on RTE, that could be deemed to be more exciting than the Munster hurling final.  It had over 30 game state changes and the teams were within one score 100% of the time.  What was that game?

Cork and Limerick renew rivalry on Sunday in the 2026 League Final.  Let us hope it is like the big red bubble rather than the earlier round robin clash between the teams.  You will find that game represented by a small, blue bubble on the bottom-left.  Limerick went ahead early and stayed ahead.  Little excitment.

By John Considine

The FIFA World Cup playoff between Ireland and Czechia will probably be remembered for the penalty kicks.  Only a few days after the event, it is relatively easy to remember that Czechia won the contest on a penalty shootout.  It is also relatively easy to recall that Ireland scored a penalty kick to go 0-1 ahead in the game and that Czechia scored a penalty kick to narrow the deficit to 1-2 (only minutes after Ireland had taken a two-goal lead).
 
The in-game Czechia penalty was awarded after an Irish player pulled the jersey of an opponent in the penalty area.  It is difficult to argue with the decision of the referee – VAR did not intervene to suggest the referee made an obvious error.  Why did the Irish player do it?  We don’t know.  But we can speculate.  When we do so we usually have some benchmark behaviour in mind and we compare the actual behaviour to this behaviour.  What would Jesus have done?  What would Homo Economicus (HE) have done?
 
At the moment of the decision, what would HE (this god-like creature) have based the decision on?  HE would know the probability of the Czechia player scoring a goal if HE does not pull the jersey.  HE would know the probability of being seen pulling the jersey, the probability of the referee deciding it is enough for a penalty, the probability of a VAR intervention, the probability of the Czechia player converting the penalty given the quality of the Irish goalkeeper in such situations, and so forth.  With this information HE would calculate the expected outcomes of the various courses of action and HE would optimise.  (For the moment, let us ignore the possibility that the individual’s costs and benefits are not aligned with those of the team.)
 
Behavioural economists might suggest that the Irish player, Ryan Manning, did not decide like Homo Economicus (and, therefore, HE is a poor guide for economic thinking).  Manning did not have the luxury of being able to stop time.  Daniel Kahneman might suggest that Manning was thinking fast rather than slow?  Behavioural economists would suggest that his decision was framed by the context.  The passage of play began with a corner kick where the blind-eye of the referees is like that used by financial regulators before the Great Recession.  Manning, and others, were using their hands to restrain opponents in the seconds before the award of the penalty.  At what millisecond did the application of the rules revert to “normal”?  Regardless, the penalty was awarded and it then became an interaction between the Irish goalkeeper and the Czechia penalty kicker.
 
Economists who use Homo Economicus to guide their thinking are more at home when it comes to the strategic interaction between the penalty taker and the goalkeeper.  It is possible to model it with a 2x2 payoff matrix for a simultaneous game.  Two players: Keeper and Kicker.  Two strategies: Left and Right.  The equilibrium occurs where players mix their strategies.  Where the kicker and keeper are HEs then their optimal behaviour is described as minimax.
 
It is, probably, not really a simultaneous game (as explained here previously) but that has not stopped economists and psychologists using the data to confirm their view of humans.  A few economists linked to Chicago have shown that kickers and keepers make good decisions – not unlike Homo Economicus.  The psychologist Michael Bar-Eli uses a 3x3 division of the scoring space to show that there is a bias in some of the decisions.  The psychologists might be unemployed in a world populated by Homo Economicus.
 
An interesting aspect of the data is the difference between in-game penalties and those in a penalty shootout.  For penalty shootouts the evidence suggests that, on balance, a team is better off shooting first.  The captain who wins the coin toss will usually select to shoot first.  Where they have decided to shoot second, there is a greater chance that the captain was a goalkeeper.  Is this a misalignment of term and individual incentives?  Possibly.  Keepers are rarely blamed for a penalty shootout loss but are given credit for saves.  It is difficult for a kicker to get away from being seen as an individual with responsibility – even if it starts with each team taking 5 penalties.  Score the winning penalty and you will be remembered forever, miss the critical penalty and they will never forget you.

By David Butler

Arsenal are again pushing to win the Premier League. One of the most interesting elements of their campaign has been their effectiveness from set pieces. According to data reported by the BBC (up until recently anyway), 215 goals have been scored from non-penalty set pieces so far this season, roughly 27.5% of all goals. This reflects a broader league-wide trend, but Arsenal have become particularly associated with this tactic.

A key figure behind this is Nicolas Jover, Arsenal’s highly regarded set-piece coach. Reports suggest that Jover’s contract includes a performance-based financial bonus tied to goals scored from set pieces. If accurate, it represents a nice example of how monetary incentives can be embedded into coaching structures. Ultimately this could, in principle, affect outcomes on the pitch.

This idea is not unique. The Brentford squad has previously been reported to have financial rewards for goals scored from set plays, again an effort by the club to connect tactics to direct economic incentives.

At the opposite end of the table, the conversation around incentives takes on a different tone. In North London, uncertainty remains over whether Spurs players have wage reduction clauses tied to relegation in their contracts. Some reports suggest these clauses exist. Other reports dispute it.

The broad question is interesting - how do financial incentives influence performance under pressure? If relegation becomes a realistic threat, would survival bonuses sharpen focus and effort? Could players be offered financial rewards for securing Premier League safety? And if that were the case, might Igor Tudor also stand to benefit from a windfall should Spurs stave off relegation? I would hazard to guess his agent necessitated a ‘survival bonus’ in his contract.

Maybe, over time, we will get more data on these incentives to study how successful they are.

By Robbie Butler

On this day in 1776, Adam Smith published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, a work widely regarded as the foundation of modern economics. Smith set out to explain how economies generate prosperity, why some nations become wealthy, and how markets organise production and exchange. Two hundred and fifty years later, many of the ideas he developed, from incentives to competition, remain central to economic thinking.

One of Smith’s most famous examples was the pin factory, used to illustrate the productivity gains that arise from the division of labour. When workers specialise in different tasks, overall output rises dramatically.

Sport is a great example of this. A modern football team comprises many specialised roles.. Rather than each player performing the same tasks, teams rely on defenders to ocus on preventing chances, midfielders organise possession and pass the ball, and forwards to concentrate on scoring. This specialisation increases the collective productivity of the team, much like the division of labour increased output in Smith’s factory.

It would take nearly two centuries before economists began systematically applying these ideas to sport when, in 1956 Simon Rottenberg, published “The Baseball Players’ Labor Market” in the Journal of Political Economy. Rottenberg analysed the labour market for professional baseball players and introduced concepts that remain central to sports economics today, including competitive balance, allocation of talent across teams and marginal product of labour.

Professional sports leagues provide rich settings for studying markets and institutions. Teams compete for talent, players respond to incentives, and league rules shape how resources are allocated. Salary caps, transfer markets, and revenue sharing all reflect questions that would have been familiar to Smith: how markets function, how competition operates, and how institutions influence outcomes.

At the same time, sport highlights an important tension that Smith himself recognised. Smith warned that producers in the same industry often have incentives to coordinate in ways that restrict competition. Sports leagues illustrate this dynamic clearly. Clubs must compete on the field, yet they must also cooperate to produce the product itself. A match requires two teams and a common set of rules. The governance of leagues therefore involves balancing competition with coordination.

Two hundred and fifty years after The Wealth of Nations, Smith’s core insight still resonates. Economic analysis provides powerful tools for understanding how incentives and institutions shape outcomes. From eighteenth-century pin factories to modern football leagues, the fundamental questions remain remarkably similar.

By Robbie Butler

This year marked the 10th Sports Economics Workshop at University College Cork, a milestone that reflects more than a decade of research, collaboration, and lively discussion in the field. The first workshop was held in 2014, and it has since become a regular fixture, bringing together scholars working at the intersection of sport, economics, and performance.

This year's event will be held on Friday 17 April in UCC. The focus this year is on football (soccer) and will showcase a range of research topics, including player pay, performance, equality, and penalties.

Reaching a tenth workshop is a significant achievement. Over the years, the series has created a space for rigorous academic exchange while maintaining a welcoming and collegial atmosphere. It has resulted in various papers being accepted for publication and has helped develop personal and professional relationships that have endured over time.
​
Here’s to the next decade.

By Robbie Butler

VAR was introduced with the promise of improvement: greater accuracy, fewer errors, and fairer outcomes. In practice, its most profound impact has not been on results, but on how football is consumed. The game now feels different, not because mistakes no longer happen, but because the nature of those mistakes, and how we respond to them, has been fundamentally altered.

Football has never been a scientific exercise. Its laws are formally codified, but their application has always been subjective. Fouls, handballs, dangerous play, and even offside judgments rely on interpretation, context, and feel. This is not a flaw; it is the essence of the sport. Football is played at speed, officiated by humans, and watched as a form of escapism. Error is not an intrusion into the game, it is part of it.

VAR attempts to impose a scientific framework onto something that is not scientific. It treats interpretation as if it can be resolved through precision, freeze frames, and replay angles. Yet in doing so, it does not remove subjectivity; it merely relocates it. Judgement still exists, but now it is mediated through screens, protocols, and delays. The human element remains, only slower and less visible.

The result is a game that feels provisional. Events seem to happen tangentially. Man City attack and score, while in a room miles away, officals are looking at a possible penalty at the other end.

Yesterday’s controversy offered a clear example. A goal was correctly ruled out after VAR intervention, yet the reaction focused less on correctness than on loss. Television pundit Gary Neville remarked: “You have just killed one of the moments of the season.” The decision may have been right, but the moment was gone. That distinction matters.

Goals were once instant emotional events. Now they are pending decisions. Players celebrate cautiously. Fans hesitate. Supporters at home wait for confirmation before allowing themselves to feel anything at all. Celebration has become conditional, and emotion delayed. Even when a goal stands, the release is diminished, filtered through waiting, checking, and explanation.

VAR does not resolve subjectivity; it extends it. Debates that once ended with the referee’s whistle now continue through replays, graphics, and studio discussion. The game stops, restarts, and sometimes rewinds. Matches last longer, not only in minutes played but in mental bandwidth demanded from the viewer. Football becomes something to be assessed rather than absorbed.

This is not an argument against rules being applied, nor a defence of poor officiating. It is an observation that football’s appeal has never rested on perfect accuracy. Its power lies in flow, momentum, and shared emotional experience. By trying to make football scientific, VAR overlooks what makes the sport distinctive.

Errors are human. Football is human. As a form of escapism, it thrives on immediacy, not verification. VAR adds another layer of process to a game that was never designed for it. In doing so, it hasn’t changed what football is played for. But it has changed how it is felt.

Football remains football. But it is now watched with caution, consumed with delay, and celebrated only once permission has been granted. At least that is how I now consume the game. 

By Robbie Butler

One of the parties in government in Ireland recently took to X to highlight what it believes is the ‘unfair’ pricing of the Republic of Ireland football jersey. The tweet – accompanied by a short video – read: “The price of Irish football jerseys is too high. That’s why Senator Gareth Scahill is calling on the FAI and kitmakers to review the pricing structure for their jerseys.” It is an interesting intervention.

Market dynamics in this space have changed quickly. Until Troy Parrott’s heroics against Portugal and Hungary, demand for Republic of Ireland jerseys appeared relatively muted. Events in November, however, sent supporters scrambling for the latest kit, which quickly sold out. I wrote about this in late November.

Supply chain issues now appear to have been resolved and prices set accordingly. The Adults Ireland Home Replica Jersey is currently priced at €105. Expensive? Certainly. Too high? That is for the market to decide, not a politcal party.

There is also some historical perspective worth considering. The Republic of Ireland failed to qualify for the 1998 World Cup – the peak of my own jersey-wearing days. Instead, I bought a Brazil jersey, which I still own. It cost £50 at the time. Adjusted for inflation, that would be equivalent to almost €115 in December 2025, around €10 more than what Castore are charging today.

Those interested in reading more about the economics of football jerseys might enjoy our paper in the Journal of Instiutional Economics - free to read here.

By David Butler

​There was bad news recently for researchers interested in football (soccer) data. FBref.com announced that, as of January 20, its data agreement with Stats Perform would be terminated. Further details were reported in the New York Times. This development represents a significant setback for the analytics, Sports Econ and Sports Management community interested in football, particularly for those working on the women’s game. The platform represented an unprecedented free resource for researchers that has now lost it’s teeth.

Over the past seven years, FBref.com democratised access to advanced performance data. Lone scholars, students, and researchers without institutional budgets were able to access detailed performance metrics that would otherwise sit behind  very expensive paywalls (which media companies often pay for). For women’s football in particular, the past two years marked a step change in data availability and research potential. That progress has now been interrupted.

Historically, FBref’s advanced statistics were first powered by StatsBomb and Data Sports Group (DSG). Within the analytics community, StatsBomb’s expected goals (xG) and expected assists (xA) models were often regarded as higher quality than those produced by Stats Perform (Opta), largely due to method. Under the StatsBomb/DSG agreement, FBref provided unusually granular data, including information on pressing actions and their locations, passing by body part and height, carry distances, carries into the final third, and even nutmegs!

When FBref later switched from StatsBomb/DSG to Stats Perform (Opta), many of these variables disappeared. Data quality was traded off with quantity, and coverage expanded in other dimensions: more leagues were included, xG data became more widely available, and, most notably, women’s football data increased substantially.

Perhaps more worryingly, the recent FBref announcement is not an isolated case. Earlier this season, at the start of the 2025/26 campaign, FotMob briefly published physical performance metrics such as sprint counts and distances covered by players. These features were switfly removed. Together, these episodes may suggest a broader tightening of control over performance data distributed through online/public platforms.

Why is this happending? One possible explanation lies in the commercial value of this football data, particularly in gambling markets. Betting firms have historically played a significant role in funding data collection and dissemination, sometimes enabling free availability. Perhaps their incentives may be shifting toward restriction rather than openness. This interpretation is of course speculative.

For researchers the implications are concerning. The erosion of freely accessible data is a step backwards.  Women’s football, which has only recently begun to benefit from improved data coverage, may be especially vulnerable. The “good times” of open access football analytics are not fully over as ‘basic statistics’ are still freely available in lots of places, and advanced stats on xG and xA are available elsewhere, but the free data movement is clearly under pressure.