Don Revie was right - playing dirty football is the key to success. This paper by Christos Papahristodoulou shows that in last year's Champions League, there was a strong correlation between the number of fouls a team committed and the number of points won (0.877) or goals scored (0.762).
The correlation between fouls and yellow cards is only 0.688.
Indeed, the correlation between points won and fouls is greater than the correlation between points won and goals scored, corners or shots wide. Dirty football, it seems, works better than attacking football; Arsenal and Barcelona might have been outliers last year.
What's more, there's a statistically significant positive correlation between goals scored and both fouls committed and being caught offside.
Chelsea's performance on Wednesday could suggest that Jose Mourinho and Didier Drogba know all this.
Phil Scolari caused a bit of a stir before the 2002 world cup for encouraging his side to commit more fouls for this reason. He seems to have backed off after the criticism and his midfield enforcer Emerson was ruled out through injury.
Posted by: stuart | October 16, 2006 at 06:21 PM
Only you could write a thing like this, Chris. The economics of dirty football indeed.
Posted by: james higham | October 16, 2006 at 07:34 PM
Arsenal played some very dull, negative football in the Champions League last year, and even at their attacking best have been a dirty side- take Viera for one.
Posted by: Igor Belanov | October 17, 2006 at 11:40 AM
Perhaps scoring goals causes you to commit fouls.
Once you have taken the lead, the other team will be more attacking, you will be on the defensive and have less possession, causing you to commit fouls.
Posted by: Sam | October 17, 2006 at 10:43 PM
The biggest problem with the study (which it acknowledges in passing without really exploring it in any way) is that "fouls committed" are fouls committed in the eyes of the referee - which makes fouls the only truly subjective element in the study. Over such a small sample, 125 games, the "luck" factor this involves might well not work itself out. It'd be interesting to see the study extended to cover e.g. every similar Champions League tournament, and also to see a comparison between your own hobbyhorses, league-format and knock-out stages.
Posted by: James Hamilton | October 18, 2006 at 01:04 PM
James has given me another reason, if you are winning say 3-0, the ref will probably feel sorry for the other team. He will therefore be more strict on the winning team, seeing it won't affect the result anyway.
Posted by: Sam | October 18, 2006 at 10:59 PM