Quick info on home field advantage

[voros]

If we assume a soccer win% as equal to (wins + (draws/2))/ games, then some grunt work I did involving international soccer shows that:

Home win % = neutral site win % ^ 0.75.

So that if a team meets its equal on its home turf, it's win% shoots up to close to 60%.

The exponent is used to make sure the system doesn't break at either of the extremes. This is strictly for international results, but my preliminary info suggests it holds fairly well for club soccer too. If there's adjustment to be made to that exponent, my guess is that such an adjustment would likely result in a lower exponent than that.

If you don't feel like calculating your own, you can just use that and be fairly sure you're making a reasonable adjustment.

If you're technically interested in how I came up with that, say the word and I'll post an explanation here.

[mtr8967]

It's widely speculated there's a home continent advantage in the World Cup. Have you seen any evidence of that?

[tachyon1]

European sides have won around half of the WC games they've played against non European sides when the games have been played in Europe,but only around a third when these match ups have been in the Americas or Japan.

That implies that there is a continental advantage,although like home advantage it may be diminishing.

With the exception of Brazil and Argentina(who have largely European based squads) a run of the mill non European side is disadvatged to the tune of about 4 tenths of a goal when playing in Europe compared to playing on their home continent.That equates to around 50 old style FIFA ranking points.

If you apply this correction,along with home field advantage where applicable(and shave around 60 ranking points off the Asian and Concacaf FIFA ratings,because those conferences have always had inflated numbers) then the respective revised FIFA ratings of the two sides describes quite nicely what longterm happens on the pitch.

[tachyon1]

Re Continental advantage.

European teams verses non European teams in last five European based WC's,average margin of victory is just under 1 goal in favour of Europe.(140+games)

European teams verses non european teams in last five non European based WC's,average margin of victory is 0.13 of a goal in favour of Europe.(Around 140 games)

About 4 times per tournament these match ups involve the hosts,therefore they also have a conventional home advantage,plus there are strength of schedule issues to resolve.Hence the continental advantage is smaller than these raw figures imply.

[mtr8967]

Thanks. Even qualified as you give it sounds like there's a real effect there of maybe a half a goal.

[voros]

Thanks. Even qualified as you give it sounds like there's a real effect there of maybe a half a goal.
I think I can take another hack at this with one of my rating systems, but it has to get in line behind a few other things I need to resolve this.

The basic problem, I guess, is this. Do we apply this advantage universally to every continent? Does it hold true equally for Asia as it does Europe? North America? How does Oceania fit in?

So dealing with all of that will require work.

[mtr8967]

Another possibility would be a per time zone or mile traveled disadvantage. Just in case you're in danger of running out of research topics :)