Champions League Hangover? (Betting School Article)

Time for another Betting School article. This time one I originally wrote in September 2011 and looks to see if times struggle after playing in the Champions League.

Hit or Myth: Teams struggle at the weekend after playing in the Champions League in midweek

Over the coming months I intend to look at some of the things you often hear people say connected with football and ask if they are really true. For example when a new manager comes in it is often said it gives the place a lift and results immediately improve. Another, which this article is based on, is the one often trotted out after a team plays in the Champions League that they may perform badly after the midweek exertions.

I was reminded of this after the first round of Champions League matches as Barcelona drew 2-2 at home with AC Milan in the Champions League and then thrashed Osasuna 8-0 at home. On the other hand Real Madrid had travelled to Croatia in midweek winning 1-0 against Zagreb, and then lost away to Levante 1-0 at the weekend. It made me think if there could be some truth in it but only if a team had travelled away in the Champions League. It may be that these teams struggle more if they play away in both the Champions League and their domestic league

To test this I have gone back through the Champions League results from the 2005-2006 season to last season using the Bet Explorer site. I then match this data up to the domestic leagues, thanks to football-data.co.uk, and am using teams from England, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Scotland and Spain.

The best way to compare this is to look at individual teams performance over the time period. We can then compare how they performed after playing in the Champions League with their domestic form as a whole. Of the leagues I looked at there were only 10 teams that had played in the Champions League in each of the 6 seasons so I have looked at them in the tables below. The first table looks at how they performed at home the weekend after playing in the Champions League.

Won

Drew

Lost

Team

CL

All

CL

All

CL

All

Arsenal

73%

66%

14%

24%

14%

10%

Barcelona

82%

79%

16%

13%

3%

8%

Bayern Munich

73%

72%

19%

18%

8%

9%

Chelsea

68%

76%

24%

21%

9%

3%

Inter

76%

80%

24%

14%

0%

6%

Lyon

32%

72%

52%

22%

16%

6%

Man United

73%

87%

13%

10%

13%

4%

Milan

55%

71%

32%

17%

14%

12%

Porto

85%

80%

8%

15%

8%

5%

Real Madrid

71%

79%

13%

9%

17%

12%

Grand Total

69%

76%

22%

16%

10%

7%

The column CL shows how the percentage for a team playing at home the weekend after a Champions League game and the All column shows the percentage for that team for all other matches. Lyon stand out in this as they have performed terribly after Champions League matches. Of the 10 teams 6 have performed worse the weekend after playing in the Champions League in terms of victories. The lost column is interesting as 7 of the teams recorded more losses after playing in the Champions League than they did in the other games. However, the totals of these losses were just 25 losses in 263 matches so that’s still a meagre 9.5% losses.

Now let’s look at how teams do when playing away from home the weekend after a Champions League fixture.

Won

Drew

Lost

Team

CL

All

CL

All

CL

All

Arsenal

50%

39%

25%

30%

25%

30%

Barcelona

52%

57%

23%

27%

26%

17%

Bayern Munich

45%

46%

36%

29%

18%

25%

Chelsea

48%

61%

29%

16%

24%

23%

Inter

56%

52%

36%

25%

8%

24%

Lyon

57%

49%

29%

23%

14%

28%

Man United

50%

57%

25%

24%

25%

19%

Milan

64%

43%

12%

31%

24%

26%

Porto

68%

72%

20%

15%

12%

13%

Real Madrid

46%

63%

25%

16%

29%

21%

Grand Total

54%

54%

26%

24%

21%

23%

A mix of results here with 4 teams performing better after Champions League weekends than they have overall and the total values all being pretty similar. The Milan win % stands out here and is very high compared to their normal results (just 12% draws when normally it is 31%) which does level out the overall results a bit. 7 of the 10 teams drew more games after the Champions League matches.

As I mentioned at the beginning the different results Real Madrid and Barcelona had after the first round of Champions League games made me think about a team’s performance when playing away in both the Champions League and at the weekend as I think this would be the hardest schedule.

Weekend

Won

Drew

Lost

Matches

P/L Win

Played at Home in CL Home

66%

20%

14%

252

-3.93

Played Away in CL Home

65%

21%

13%

260

-10.43

Played at Home in CL Away

46%

28%

26%

243

-26.13

Played Away in CL Away

45%

25%

29%

234

-8.56

The table above breaks down all the teams (not just the 10 above) in terms of their percentages and you can see that there is a slight difference. Teams that played away in the Champions League perform worse than those who played at home. This is true whether they play at home the following weekend or away. It is interesting to look at the profit and loss figures (taken to Betbrain average prices) as you almost break even backing teams that played at home in the Champions League and then play at home again. One possible explanation could be the bookies taking into account the very factor this article is about. However, that would not explain the big loss on teams playing at home in the Champions League and then away at the weekend.  Teams playing away after the Champions League do seem to perform worse than those at home but then losses on away teams generally are bigger than those at home.

A few months back I wrote an article on teams travelling long distances and believe this can have an effect on performance. I want to test this a little more and look at teams that had to play away in Eastern Europe, Greece, Turkey or Israel as I thought they all involved some travel. I broke down the results by country and they can be seen below.

Team

Won

Drew

Lost

Matches

P/L

England

77.8%

0.0%

22.2%

9

4.51

France

63.6%

18.2%

18.2%

11

4.7

Germany

37.5%

62.5%

0.0%

8

-0.24

Italy

50.0%

37.5%

12.5%

8

0.27

Portugal

80.0%

20.0%

0.0%

5

1.23

Scotland

0.0%

50.0%

50.0%

2

-2

Spain

22.2%

33.3%

44.4%

9

-4.98

Grand Total

51.9%

28.8%

19.2%

52

3.49

First thing is there is not a particularly big sample size. However, only Spain show real losses here, remember this is to the average price as well. Digging deeper in Spain of the draws and losses only one of the teams that didn’t win was odds on so it looks like there were no shocks  as the other losers were all odds against and my theory is blown to bits!

Whilst looking at this and as the data is available it also makes sense to look at teams performance the weekend before the Champions League. Often teams will rest some of their bigger players so they are fresh for the midweek games. The table below looks first at teams playing at home.

Lyon once again are inexplicable and I wish I had left them out of this now. There is not a lot that stands out in the rest and I also checked the results for teams playing away and they were similar. With Inter Milan having such a high figure I started to wonder about looking at correct scores as I bet there are a fair share of 1-0s in there as teams leading no doubt rest players and break up the rhythm of the match.

Won

Drew

Lost

Team

CL

All

CL

All

CL

All

Arsenal

65%

69%

26%

20%

9%

11%

Barcelona

71%

83%

19%

12%

10%

5%

Bayern Munich

65%

74%

15%

20%

20%

6%

Chelsea

78%

73%

22%

22%

0%

5%

Inter

96%

74%

4%

20%

0%

6%

Lyon

80%

58%

12%

34%

8%

8%

Man United

80%

84%

12%

10%

8%

6%

Milan

67%

68%

19%

21%

15%

11%

Porto

82%

80%

12%

15%

6%

5%

Real Madrid

71%

79%

11%

9%

18%

12%

Grand Total

75%

74%

16%

18%

9%

8%

So, after all that the we need to ask if this is a hit or myth. Personally I think it is a myth and nothing in the data makes me question that assumption. People definitely think there is a bit of truth in it. I think with so many games in a season there is bound to be sometime when it occurs and that is the one people remember. For example the 4 English clubs probably play around 30-40 Champions League games between them in a season so at some stage there should be an upset the weekend after.

If you have any suggestions for any myths to investigate please contact me.