Estimating the Effect of the Red Card in Soccer: When to Commit an Offense in Exchange for Preventing a Goal Opportunity
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Jan Vecer
We study the effect of the red card in a soccer game. A red card is given by a referee to signify that a player has been sent off following serious misconduct. The player who has been sent off must leave the game immediately and cannot be replaced during the game. His team must continue the game with one player fewer. We estimate the effect of the red card from betting data on the FIFA World Cup 2006 and Euro 2008, showing that the scoring intensity of the penalized team drops significantly, while the scoring intensity of the opposing team increases slightly. We show that a red card typically leads to a smaller number of goals scored during the game when a stronger team is penalized, but it can lead to an increased number of goals when a weaker team is punished. We also show when it is better to commit a red card offense in exchange for the prevention of a goal opportunity.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Importance of Teammate Fit: Frescoball Example
- Coach Succession and Team Performance: The Impact of Ability and Timing -- Swedish Ice Hockey Data
- Analysis and Evolution of Efficiency in the Spanish Soccer League (2000/01 - 2007/08)
- Offense-Defense Approach to Ranking Team Sports
- Determining the Evenness of Domestic Sporting Competition Using a Generic Rating Engine
- Predicting Baseball Hall of Fame Membership using a Radial Basis Function Network
- Predicting NBA Games Using Neural Networks
- Estimating the Effect of the Red Card in Soccer: When to Commit an Offense in Exchange for Preventing a Goal Opportunity
- The X-Factor and Its Relationship to Golfing Performance
- Defining the Style of Play in the NHL: An Application of Cluster Analysis
- Match Play: Using Statistical Methods to Categorize PGA Tour Players' Careers
