Toeristen en autobezitters spekken gemeentekas

DATA - One month ago we showed what the data of one million football (soccer) games tell us. Some people complained that the competitions were not comparable. So here’s an addition to the post with only data from the top divisions of eleven countries.

Two graphs. The first shows the average score per game per year for the last twenty years. You can see that the Dutch competition (Eredivisie) is doing well. The French and Portugese were outliers, but are now catching up.

Would have loved to do it per season, but this proved to be a bit too time consuming.

The next graphs are the average scores per game per month of the year. Interesting thing to see, in line with the previous post, is the jump in April/May. This marks the end of most competitions. Check the difference with the Brazilian line.

And for dessert I’ve created a map (thx Esri!) with all the top three best scoring stadiums mentioned in the previous post. Have fun clicking!

(Or use the full screen version)

All data: Footballfans.eu
Competitions:
BE – Belgium – Pro League
BR – Brazil – Serie A
DE – Germany – Bundesliga
ENG – England – Premier League
ES – Spain – Primera División
FR – France – Ligue 1
IT – Italy – Seria A
NL – Netherlands – Eredivisie
PT – Portugal – Portuguese Liga
TR – Turkey – Süper Lig
US – United States – MLS

DATA - By digging through the basic data of one million football (soccer) games, going back to 1901, you can distill some interesting trends. The average goals scored per game is 2,77. But there’s a lot more to it.

Courtesy of the people of Footballfans.eu, a groundhopping community, I was able to analyse the outcomes of a million football games. The oldest games are from the English First Division in 1901. The database now contains competitions and cups from over 75 countries and most international championships. It’s a wealth of data, that shows for instance that the home game advantage has been declining over time. Or that players in the northern hemisphere score more goals during the summer, but players in the southern hemisphere do not. And that Morocco is the country where the least goals are scored on average.

But first, let’s look at the distributions of the scores from all the games in the data set. As you can see, 1-1 is the most common score, 11 percent of the games end that way after regular playing time.

In the section “other scores”, we find some pretty exotic results. How about 0-31 in the game between Snæfell and Haukar in Iceland? Or 24-0 in a game in Estonia between Levadia and FC Soccernet? Also worth mentioning are two very old friendly games. In 1908 Denmark defeated France with 17 to 1! More recently in 2011 San Rafael lost to Atlético Madrid with 1 to 19.