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| Is playing at home in the 2nd leg an advantage? | |
| Author: ferdi
Date: 30-04-2010, 11:02 Edited by: ferdi at: 30-04-2010, 11:05 | It is sometimes said that playing the second leg at home is an advantage. My personal opinion has always been that it may instead be an advantage to play the second leg away, since it is then easier to play for a desired result, as Inter did in Barcelona, or Bayern did in Manchster. So I made some statistics about the QF and SF in CL an UC, and also about the round of the last 16 in UC. CL QF/SF UC QF/SF UC R16 The probability that if you throw a coin 200 times and there is a deviation of 6 or more to either side (i. e. the result is by coincidence not between 95-105 and 105-95) is about 44%. So these results suggest that even if slightly more teams advanced which had home advantage in the secong leg, there is no proof that playing the first/second game at home gives you an advantage or disadvantage. Comments? |
| Re: Is playing at home in the 2nd leg an advantage? | |
| Author: Zhund0r
Date: 30-04-2010, 11:46 | Totally what I expected. I observed some ties this season and I came to the conclusion that it doesn?t matter at all. Hamburg almost every time played at home at first and managed to reach the semis. The same thing with Bayern (in Turin, Florence, Manchester and Lyon). |
| Re: Is playing at home in the 2nd leg an advantage? | |
| Author: dzomba
Date: 30-04-2010, 11:46 | If i understood correctly, teams playing away first have slightly better score, right ?! I think playing first leg away IS an advantage. Not a big one though. First, a conclusion depends on many things, which competition, which stage, which teams, when, how imortant a competition is, how good are teams, how good are refereees ... So there may be different answers for various circumstances. I guess your focus is on mostly on CL and a bit less on EL, but only on spring knock-out rounds. So i will comment only this, only one situation (out of many). CL spring knock-out matches are the most extreme case. Everywhere else home advantage is greater than in these circumstances. Playing first away is much greater advantage when smaller teams are included, like in qualifying rounds. Reason for that is money. Rich clubs can afford to give the best treatment to their players in away matches. They stay at the best hotels, in peaceful enviroment, they choose their food, they travel by plane (very imortant !, to reduce tiredness), they have the best doctors, therapeuts, etc. CL teams are very experienced. Experience is important here. All those players played hundreds of "important" games, so they do not fear opponent fans etc. Young, unexperienced players may face much bigger problems in these situations. Playing first away is an advantage, because you try to play your best, knowing that whatever happens there will be an another chance for you. When you play first at home, you have to choose, between risking or not. Your decision may turn out to be very wrong, if you play too cautious, or too offensive. Usually home team attacks. So they can force red card or other advantage during the match, which can be used in extra-time. It's a big advantage to play extra-time at home (although it doesn't happen often enough to influence overall view a lot). Sometimes, when two teams are very, very balanced, it may be advantage to play first at home, because of pressure. When there is a too huge pressure for one team, then it may be better to play first at home, because pressure will be reduced. Sometimes players broke under too huge pressure (unexperienced players, or when they have a chance to do something that team hadn't done for years, decades or never). |
| Re: Is playing at home in the 2nd leg an advantage? | |
| Author: spoonman
Date: 30-04-2010, 12:32 Edited by: spoonman at: 30-04-2010, 12:32 | Some time ago, I posted a link to long-time statistics about this matter. Don't know if it was in Forum 1 or 2, and I'm too lazy to look it up now.  But I think that about 53% of teams with the 2nd leg at home advanced to the next round. |
| Re: Is playing at home in the 2nd leg an advantage? | |
| Author: nemesys
Date: 30-04-2010, 12:52 | My answer to the topic question is: I don't know. Sorry. Two quick consideration: - GS 1sts play away the first match vs GS 2nds, so considering 1sts (theorically) stronger than 2nds (I mean 1sts favourite to win the clash), in the R16 (1/8 final) of CL (the same in the EL R32) there is more quality in the clubs playing the first match away. In consequence the stats cannot be exactly precise: overall (considering the whole season) this might be not so important, but (theorically) there's a little bit more quality in clubs playing first match away in each season, just because this is a consequence of the GS 1st vs. 2nd rule. - If the aggregate is a draw after 180' (90'+90'), the club that plays home the 2nd leg has 30' extra playing home, while the club that plays away the 2nd leg has 30' extra where its goals count more (Liverpool-Atletico is a good example). I can't say what is better. neme. |
| Re: Is playing at home in the 2nd leg an advantage? | |
| Author: ferdi
Date: 30-04-2010, 13:11 Edited by: ferdi at: 30-04-2010, 13:16 | Of course in my statistics I only included those rounds where there was no seeding (like 1st placed in GS had their second game at home). That's why the first knockout round after the GS in CL and UC/UL/EL is not evaluated. As for extra time: Remember that in extra time, if the away team scores then the home team must score twice. I.e. the away team has 120 minutes to score away goals which are more valuable, and the home team of the second leg only had 90 minutes. |
| Re: Is playing at home in the 2nd leg an advantage? | |
| Author: nemesys
Date: 30-04-2010, 13:50 Edited by: nemesys at: 30-04-2010, 13:52 | Of course in my statistics I only included those rounds where there was no seeding (like 1st placed in GS had their second game at home). That's why the first knockout round after the GS in CL and UC/UL/EL is not evaluated. Oooops, sorry. I was reading fast, I missed that, my bad.  As for extra time: Remember that in extra time, if the away team scores then the home team must score twice. I.e. the away team has 120 minutes to score away goals which are more valuable, and the home team of the second leg only had 90 minutes. It sound to me exactly the same that what I said in my previous post: while the club that plays away the 2nd leg has 30' extra where its goals count more (Liverpool-Atletico is a good example) Did I miss something?  neme. |
| Re: Is playing at home in the 2nd leg an advantage? | |
| Author: Wak
Date: 30-04-2010, 14:21 | Teams seem to manage the two legs (and their rules) better. I don't have any statistical data, but I remember myself combing the 1970's and 1980's results, and I found much more goals on 1st leg than now. I see the advantage in matches with 2 legs and the away goals rule as such: * first leg: home team (pitch advantage) * second leg: home team (pitch advantage) * second leg extratime: away team (new goals have to be outnumbered) |
| Re: Is playing at home in the 2nd leg an advantage? | |
| Author: amirbachar
Date: 30-04-2010, 14:59 Edited by: amirbachar at: 30-04-2010, 15:00 | "So these results suggest that even if slightly more teams advanced which had home advantage in the second leg, there is no proof that playing the first/second game at home gives you an advantage or disadvantage." You right that the results you looked at are not statistically significant. That's why you should take more matches into consideration (more years and/or more rounds). |
| Re: Is playing at home in the 2nd leg an advantage? | |
| Author: ferdi
Date: 30-04-2010, 18:22 Edited by: ferdi at: 30-04-2010, 19:48 | Well, there aren't many more matches suitable. You can't take qualification round results, because the team pool is inhomogeneous, and strong teams are seeded against weak teams. So any possible effect of the order of matches would be masked by the inhomogeneity of the team pool. For the same reason, you can't take results from pre CL times. (More precisely, if I can't find a significant effect in what I think are 200 of the more balanced matches available, then I don't expect to find a significant effect in a pool of less balanced matches.) Also, in qualification rounds, the order of games is often switched if a weak team is drawn against a strong team, to let the presumably weak team play their first game at home. This alone makes a proper statistical analysis of the matter impossible in these rounds. |
| Re: Is playing at home in the 2nd leg an advantage? | |
| Author: bert.kassies
Date: 30-04-2010, 19:02 | The archived topic on these statistics can be found here. |
| Re: Is playing at home in the 2nd leg an advantage? | |
| Author: amirbachar
Date: 30-04-2010, 19:51 Edited by: amirbachar at: 30-04-2010, 20:09 | Fredi said: "Also, in qualification rounds, the order of games is often switched if a weak team is drawn against a strong team, to let the presumably weak team play their first game at home. This alone makes a proper statistical analysis of the matter impossible in these rounds." That's a very good point. If the stats given it the other thread weren't biased, they were statistically significant. So finding out if that's an advantage or not is quite a research... |
| Re: Is playing at home in the 2nd leg an advantage? | |
| Author: madai
Date: 30-04-2010, 22:42 | Thanks, Bert. I like that archived tables. Would be interesting, though, to add further columns, so that ... a. ANY legs result (home team vs. away team) b. number of times that the 1st leg home team advances c. number of times that the 1st away team advances d. total number of matches with the same 1st leg result e. chance for 1st leg home team to advance f. chance for 1st leg away team to advance g. number of times that the 2nd leg home team advances h. number of times that the 2nd away team advances i. total number of matches with the same 2nd leg result j. chance for 2nd leg home team to advance k. chance for 2nd leg away team to advance Then, one could directly compare the probability for 1st leg home team to advance after winning 1st leg 2:1 with a 2nd leg home team to advance after winning 2nd leg 2:1 ... or see how 2nd leg 0:0 compares to a 1st leg 0:0 for the respective home sides. Cheers. Joe |
| Re: Is playing at home in the 2nd leg an advantage? | |
| Author: ferdi
Date: 30-04-2010, 23:11 | nemesis wrote: Did I miss something? No. I didn't intend to contradict you with my statement. |
| Re: Is playing at home in the 2nd leg an advantage? | |
| Author: Ricardo
Date: 01-05-2010, 00:25 | Inter sure had the advantage! Barca expected to be able to come back at home, but not playing a handball team. |
| Re: Is playing at home in the 2nd leg an advantage? | |
| Author: ferdi
Date: 01-05-2010, 00:42 Edited by: ferdi at: 01-05-2010, 00:46 | dzomba wrote: Playing first away is an advantage, because you try to play your best, knowing that whatever happens there will be an another chance for you. When you play first at home, you have to choose, between risking or not. Your decision may turn out to be very wrong, if you play too cautious, or too offensive. I see it exactly the other way. Playing home first allows you to play your best, then see what will be the result, and then play tactical in the away match. If you play away first, and the score is 2-1 for the home team, is that result good enough for you? Should you defend it or take a risk to score a second goal? You simply don't know. It's a gamble. But in the second leg, you already know whether a mild defeat is enough for you or not. So you know whether you have to take a risk, or better defend a 1-2 defeat. |
| Re: Is playing at home in the 2nd leg an advantage? | |
| Author: skivaz
Date: 01-05-2010, 09:47 | agree with ferdi, may i add a point that has not been raised (or i didn't notice). Playing the first one at home gives you the advantage to have the away goals available in the second match, already knowing how many you have to score, and also in case of Extra-time, it gives you 30 minutes more to score a goal (see Atletico Madrid just 2 days ago). |
| Re: Is playing at home in the 2nd leg an advantage? | |
| Author: ferdi
Date: 01-05-2010, 10:55 | skivaz wrote: and also in case of Extra-time, it gives you 30 minutes more to score a goal (see Atletico Madrid just 2 days ago). Good point!  |