Matthew Benham made a lot of money betting on soccer. After getting a physics degree from Oxford and more than a decade in the financial industry, he used predictive analytics to win at soccer betting.
After his financial success, Benham did what all little boys dream of doing: he bought his favorite soccer team. Benham became the owner of Brentford in 2012, a third league team back then.
Benham wanted to apply the quantitative tools he used at betting to win at actual soccer matches. However, this was difficult at an English club with decades of inertia.
This prompted Benham to buy FC Midtjylland, a soccer team in Denmark. As Ryan O’Hanlon describes in his excellent book Net Gains, the team got to work on the primary suggestion from analytics: scoring goals on set pieces.
Back then, there was controversy about this approach. If a team spends practice time on these scripted plays that start with a dead ball (corners, free kicks), then the team won’t score as many goals in open play. There is only so much practice time, and it should be spent on the unscripted nature of open play.
Benham, as with most professional bettors, didn’t care about this conventional wisdom. FC Midtjylland scored 25 goals from set pieces in 2014-15, the first year they won the Danish first league. No other team had more than 11 set piece goals.
Instead of keeping their strategy a secret, they went full Billy Beane and told everyone. A few years later, every Danish team was working set pieces. In 2017-18, FC Midtjylland won the league with 25 set piece goals, but two other clubs also had 20 or more.
From 2014-15 to 2017-18, the rate of set piece goals rose from 0.55 to 0.75 per game in the Danish league. However, total goals per game also increased. The increase of 0.5 goals per game meant an increase in open play goals despite the emphasis on set pieces.
This one thing about soccer analytics continues to apply to the game today.
Heading into the 2022-23 season, the Guardian predicted Brentford to finish 16th in the Premier League. The sports writers figured they would slump in their second season in the top league.
Instead, Brentford finished 9th. Matthew Benham’s team had 16 set pieces goals, 2nd best in England’s top league.
In 2022, famous NBA bettor Haralabos Voulgaris bought CD Castellon, a Spanish team in the third league. Like Benham, he promised to use player analytics and set piece goals to improve the fortunes of the team.
This season, CD Castellon finished third in Group 2. This makes them one of eight teams in a playoff fighting for two promotion spots to the second league. Set pieces almost certainly played a role in their advance.
How about the absolute top level of the game? Manchester City faces Inter in the Champions League final on Saturday, but neither team excelled at set piece goals.
The Analyst, an excellent site from Opta, has set piece data. For any shot off a set piece, they calculate the xG, or the probability of that shot to become a goal. The total xG for the season gives an expected number of goals.
- Manchester City, 13.6 xG, 9th in Premier League (14 goals)
- Inter, 14.1 xG, 3rd in Serie A (11 goals)
In my adjusted xG, Man City has a 56.1% chance to win in regulation. Assuming a coin toss in a penalty shoot-out, Man City has a 67.7% chance to win over Inter.
The markets are higher on Man City. As of Thursday, Pinnacle has a 81.8% break even probability to win over Inter.
Summer reading that makes you smarter
Soccer is twenty years behind baseball in the analytics revolution, but that’s what makes the sport such an opportunity.
Ryan O’Hanlon of ESPN writes about soccer analytics in his awesome book Net Gains, which includes stories about:
- The religion PhD who did seminal work in xG
- The sports bettor from Indiana who might be making a bigger contribution to soccer analytics than Matthew Benham
I loved every page of this book. It will not only make you smarter the minute you crack it open but also entertain you the entire way.
