Football By Numbers

There was a telling moment during last week’s press conference at Milan’s swanky Milanello training ground. An English journalist asked the R00ossoneri coach, Massimiliano Allegri, whether he believed his side were capable of beating Arsenal, given that the Italian side hadn’t got the better of the Gooners in a knockout round since 1995.

There then followed a rundown of (admittedly impressive, though increasingly rusty looking) statistics, while the Milan coach sat and politely listened. Once the journo had said his bit, Allegri cleared his throat, smiled and said he was just concentrating on the here and now, the past was really of little importance.

The assembled Italian hacks were generally bemused at their English colleague’s line of questioning. The myth of the over-excited “goooool!!!!!”-yelling Euro commentator is wide of the mark.

Yes, they talk at a hundred miles per hour, but most Italian and Spanish pundits are relatively calm, talking you through the tactical changes on the pitch and not treating the viewer like an agitated child who can be calmed with a few snippets of largely irrelevant info. 

This reliance on stats has become something of an obsession in both the UK print media and television. There’s nothing worse than watching a game on the telly, only for a commentator to keep chucking endless facts and figures at you while you try to work out what’s happening on the pitch. 

There’s a fear of silence in the modern commentator’s art, a refusal to let us sit and watch events unfold without yelping out random information about a player’s early career, inside leg measurement, star sign, etc.

Journalists too have a habit of hiding behind stats to cover up for lack of tactical knowledge or (more often when European games come around), ignorance about the opposition). 

So, Arsenal were bound to beat Milan because they have (had) a decent record against Italian teams. Never mind the fact that the Italian club in question are the current league champions and head the Serie A table. Or that Arsenal have been enduring one of their worst seasons in years.

The whole stats thing snuck across the Atlantic from American sports. There’s a fine tradition of men using baseball batting averages as a sort of comfort blanket, of sports data slang becoming a part of everyday lingo (Wall Street of course has always been particularly big on this). 

Fantasy football leagues and the phenomenon of online betting sites then took things up a notch. We now have online databases crammed with every last detail about a player’s performances over the course of his career. record on assists (whatever that actually bloody means) has suddenly become a vital part of a footballer’s performance profile. Possession figures, generally pretty worthless when it all comes down to it, are regularly pointed to as if it should be part of the final result.

Print (and web) journalism uses facts and figures to fill up some space and back up an argument, but both television (and even radio) could learn a thing or two from their colleagues in mainland Europe. All this info, and yet there’s still very little in the way of genuine insight.