Analyzing the operating efficiency of Greek football clubs

Abstract

Several recent papers on Football Clubs performance evaluation tend to focus on their athletic performance and in particular, on examining separately their offensive and defensive operation because this way provide a more detailed picture about their on-field performance. Along these lines, the present study analyses the athletic/on-field performance of Football Clubs in Greek league, using data from ten consecutive seasons (1998/99 to 2007/08), by applying a two-stage DEA. In the first stage, the offensive and defensive operations are evaluated and then (in the second stage), the corresponding efficiency scores are introduced as inputs to account for the final ranking of each team in every season. For the analysis of offensive operation, goals scored are used as an output and the number of shots and headers, crosses and assists as inputs. For the analysis of defensive operation, the inverse of goals conceded is used as an output and the number of saves, clearances and steals as inputs. In the second stage, the accumulated points at the end of season are used as an output, whiles the efficiency scores of its offensive and defensive operation (obtained from the first stage) are used as inputs. The results indicate that in the Greek league there seems to be more room for improving defensive rather than offensive efficiency, as the mean efficiency of the former was estimated at almost 60% and of the latter at almost 84%. In addition, Football Clubs seem to be more homogeneous in terms of their offensive rather than their defensive operation. As a result, it seems that defensive errors modulate the final result in most of the football matches and thus, for a team to get a better ranking requires improvement of defensive efficiency. On the other hand, it was found that the relative offensive and defensive efficiency accounts on average for almost 80% of season’s accumulated points by each team. Moreover, there seem to be no changes over time in the upper tale of the performance effectiveness scores distribution, implying the group of highly qualified teams remained unchanged over the period under consideration.