Football Hackers: The Science and Art of a Data Revolution

✍️ Christoph Biermann

Tags: christoph-biermann , data-science , sports , lang-en

For anyone, like me, who thought that analytics and football do not mix well, this book is really an eye opener. Not only do they blend well but also achieve good results. The book presents some new metrics devised to analyze player and club performance. The initial goal was simply to help with odds and betting but, afterwards, some clubs started to embrace a data-driven approach to have answers for questions like: How to choose a new player for your club? We have lost 3 games in a row. Are we that bad or simply out of luck? Are we really efficient when we have ball possession? As football is a very conservative (and gut based) sport, it is difficult to push for an analytical approach as told by some of the stories in the book. Overall, it was a nice read and made me put a couple of other books/articles about the subject on my radar.