The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know About Football is Wrong

One recent study using Premier League data for two seasons beginning in 2006 found that teams whose passing networks were more centralized in one or two players scored fewer goals, even though these central players may have been the strongest players in the club.5

Football, as a more complex team game without a form of real possession, is largely about triangles. One such triangle might be the player currently touching the ball, the one about to receive it, and the off-ball player currently causing the greatest deformation in the defence’s shape. Triangles might replace ‘ball events’ as the key unit of footb