Partial least squares – path modelling for efficiency assessment in the colombian professional football league

This research develops a production function to evaluate the teams’ efficiency in the Colombian professional soccer league. The designed methodology uses the concepts of structural equations and Data Envelope Analysis. In the development of the research, primary information associated with the sports and financial performance of the 20 Colombian Professional soccer teams was collected, with which a structural equation model was established that was empirically validated to evaluate the efficiency of each football team finally holistically. As result of this research, it can be pointed out that the proposed PLS structural model validates the hypotheses about the relationships between the latent variables. Similarly, the results show that the best Colombian soccer teams for the analyzed period are Medellín, Tolima, Nacional, and Junior

Football team performance efficiency and effectiveness in a corruptive context: the Calciopoli case

Research question: While considerable research on production and efficiency is mostly on all European football leagues, corresponding evidence relating to the Italian Serie A is limited. To address this imbalance, this paper analyses the technical efficiency and effectiveness of Italian football clubs, taking into consideration the impact of the Calciopoli corruption scandal in 2006. This allows assessment of how clubs' efficiency and effectiveness were affected by the sanctions inflicted on the clubs involved in the scandal. Research methods: Utilising a panel dataset comprising season aggregated match statistics over ten seasons from 2000/01 to 2009/10, this paper estimates a production function for the league and, then, calculates the relative offensive and defensive efficiency and the football effectiveness of 36 teams. To achieve this, DEA models have been used to calculate the frontiers of efficient production. Results and findings: The results partially confirm the evidence of the literature but they also reveal how playing style changed, emphasising the importance of attacking play at the expense of defensive play in Italian Serie A. Clubs that suffered a points deduction following their involvement in the Calciopoli scandal changed their usual tactical behaviour, presumably to compensate for the impact of these punishments

Assessing offensive/defensive strategies in a football match using DEA

Belarmino Adenso Díaz Fernández es el investigador principal del proyecto "Análisis y diseño de redes logísticas eficientes, robustas y sostenibles

An analysis of the efficiency of football clubs in the Spanish First Division through a two-stage relational network DEA model: a simulation study

Previous works that have analysed the efciency of the management of professional football clubs have not paid much attention to the interaction between the sporting, social and economic dimensions of their activity. To bridge this research gap, a DEA model is developed and applied to determine the relative efciency of clubs participating in one of the main football leagues while taking into account their multiplicity of objectives. The proposed two-stage relational network DEA model assumes that the fnancial resources of the clubs are distributed between social and sporting dimensions, contributing to generate results in both areas that, in the second stage, determine the business performance of the clubs. As the actual distributions of the primary inputs are unknown, two complementary approaches are used. First, the model is solved by assuming a parameterization of the distribution. Then, a simulation model is used to study the efect of the diferent distributions on the efciency by means of contour charts. A fnal cluster analysis completes the study. The sample consists of the 20 clubs that played in Spain’s First Division in the 2016–17 season. The evidence shows that the efciency of the clubs increases when a higher proportion of the primary inputs is allocated to the social dimension. In addition, the clubs are more efcient in converting their sporting and social results into income, than when turning their economic resources into sporting successes and social support. As a result, the model makes it possible to extend efciency analysis to professional sports organisations which have multiple objectives

Efficiency of football teams from an organisation management perspective

The aim of this paper is to assess the efficiency of football. Our contributions to the literature are the use of the resource-based theory and the strategy-structure-performance perspective as the study''s framework, efficiency has been considered as the result of the qualities of the productive resources in football teams and efficiency is calculated in every area in the field of play. The results show that the entire team''s efficiency is positively related to sporting success and the efficiency of attacking and ball recovery areas is directly related to the sport result and the efficiency of the team as a whole

Assessment of the efficiency of spanish football teams through profiling

The aim of this paper is to assess the efficiency of Spanish football teams that participated in the Spanish First Division between 2011 and 2016. We started by specifying the production function of football teams using the production process as a basis. Considering all the moves that can be made during a match, ordering them in the logical sequence that usually links them together and considering ball possession and non-possession as different phases lead to disaggregating the match into eight subdivisions whose efficiency is calculated using the data envelopment analysis (DEA) variant known as profiling. The representative input and output variables considered in these eight subdivisions are moves made during the matches. However, the actions football teams perform, irrespective of their type, are not the result of a standardised procedure. This has two consequences on the number of moves in the field of play: firstly, a minimal variation in playing conditions (both the team's and its opponent's) can alter the number; and, secondly, it is very difficult to control and arrive at a figure possibly established in advance. Since these circumstances can be interpreted as data imprecision, one of the stochastic DEA proposals has also been used in this paper as a calculation tool to verify the robustness of the results. The results show the subdivisions in which the use of moves can be improved to increase the number of actions in the next stage. This knowledge could provide guidance for technical personnel for their training sessions

An Empirical Analysis of Efficiency of English Premier League (EPL) Football clubs (2005-2015) Using a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) Approach

The aims of this study are in two folds; first to examine if any EPL club could maintain efficiency over the period (200

Football clubs' efficiency and COVID-19 in the Big-5 European leagues

This study aims to contribute to the recent literature on the effects of COVID on football teams’ performance, focusing on the impact of playing behind closed doors – due to the health and safety measures following the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak - on offensive and defensive technical efficiency. Using a long season-level dataset for the top 5 European leagues, a novelty for efficiency studies on football, the analysis compares the ten seasons (2009-10 to 2018-19) played before the pandemic outbreak with the only season (2020-21) entirely played behind closed doors. The methodology applied to calculate the efficiency scores is the conditional order-m, whose application represents a further novel contribution to the literature on football teams’ efficiency. Our findings are consistent with the recent literature on the impact of ghost games on teams’ performance and show an erosion of the home advantage, likely due to the reduced pressure on visiting teams deriving from the lack of home crowd support

The impact of COVID-19 on home advantage: a conditional order-m analysis of football clubs' efficiency in the top-5 European leagues

This study aims to contribute to the recent literature on the effects of COVID on football teams’ performance, focusing on the impact of ghost games on offensive and defensive technical efficiency. Using season-level data for the top 5 European leagues, a novelty for efficiency studies on football, the analysis compares the ten seasons played before the pandemic outbreak with the only season (2020-21) almost entirely played behind closed doors. A further novel contribution is the methodology – conditional order-m – applied to calculate efficiency scores. Our results show that in the post-COVID season both offensive and defensive efficiency significantly increased for away games, whereas for home games offensive efficiency shows a very slight increase, and defensive efficiency remains basically unchanged. These findings are valid for all the five leagues and provide evidence of a generalised reduction in the home advantage