IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jomega/v37y2009i1p63-78.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Increasing offensive or defensive efficiency? An analysis of Italian and Spanish football

Author

Listed:
  • Boscá, José E.
  • Liern, Vicente
  • Martínez, Aurelio
  • Sala, Ramøn

Abstract

This paper analyses technical efficiency of Italian and Spanish football during three recent seasons, to shed light on the sport performance of professional football clubs. To achieve this we have used mathematical optimisation methods, particularly DEA models, which enable the calculation of the frontiers of efficient production. Some of the most interesting results are the following. Firstly, the Spanish league is clearly more homogeneous and competitive than the Italian league. Secondly, to obtain a better classification in the Italian league, it is much more important to improve defensive, rather than offensive, efficiency. The popular maxim holds in Italy: the best attack begins with a good defence. Third, in Spain our analysis supports the idea that to improve the ranking in the league, the best-rewarded strategy consists in improving offensive efficiency playing at home ground, followed by increasing offensive efficiency when playing away from home.

Suggested Citation

  • Boscá, José E. & Liern, Vicente & Martínez, Aurelio & Sala, Ramøn, 2009. "Increasing offensive or defensive efficiency? An analysis of Italian and Spanish football," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 63-78, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:jomega:v:37:y:2009:i:1:p:63-78
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305-0483(06)00104-6
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dieter J. Haas, 2003. "Technical Efficiency in the Major League Soccer," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 4(3), pages 203-215, August.
    2. Scully, Gerald W, 1974. "Pay and Performance in Major League Baseball," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 64(6), pages 915-930, December.
    3. Simon Rottenberg, 1956. "The Baseball Players' Labor Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 64, pages 242-242.
    4. Charnes, A. & Cooper, W. W. & Rhodes, E., 1978. "Measuring the efficiency of decision making units," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 2(6), pages 429-444, November.
    5. Peter Dawson & Stephen Dobson & Bill Gerrard, 2000. "Stochastic Frontiers and the Temporal Structure of Managerial Efficiency in English Soccer," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 1(4), pages 341-362, November.
    6. Zak, Thomas A & Huang, Cliff J & Siegfried, John J, 1979. "Production Efficiency: The Case of Professional Basketball," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 52(3), pages 379-392, July.
    7. Fiona Carmichael & Dennis Thomas & Robert Ward, 2000. "Team performance: the case of English Premiership football," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(1), pages 31-45.
    8. Joaquín Maudos Villarroya & José Manuel Pastor Monsálvez & Lorenzo Serrano Martínez, 1997. "Convergencia en las regiones españolas: cambio técnico, eficiencia y productividad," Working Papers. Serie EC 1997-20, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    9. Sloane, Peter J, 1971. "The Economics of Professional Football: The Football Club as a Utility Maximiser," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 18(2), pages 121-146, June.
    10. Rajiv D. Banker, 1993. "Maximum Likelihood, Consistency and Data Envelopment Analysis: A Statistical Foundation," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 39(10), pages 1265-1273, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Halkos, George & Tzeremes, Nickolaos, 2012. "Evaluating professional tennis players’ career performance: A Data Envelopment Analysis approach," MPRA Paper 41516, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Halkos, George & Tzeremes, Nickolaos, 2011. "A non-parametric analysis of the efficiency of the top European football clubs," MPRA Paper 31173, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Wen-Jhan Jane, 2013. "Overpayment and Reservation Salary in the Nippon Professional Baseball League," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 14(6), pages 563-583, December.
    4. Francisco González-Gómez & Andrés J. Picazo-Tadeo, 2010. "Can We Be Satisfied With Our Football Team? Evidence From Spanish Professional Football," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 11(4), pages 418-442, August.
    5. Sala-Garrido Ramon & Liern Carrión Vicente & Martinez Esteve Aurelio & Boscá José E., 2009. "Analysis and Evolution of Efficiency in the Spanish Soccer League (2000/01 - 2007/08)," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 5(1), pages 1-24, January.
    6. Andrés Picazo-Tadeo & Francisco González-Gómez, 2010. "Does playing several competitions influence a team’s league performance? Evidence from Spanish professional football," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 18(3), pages 413-432, September.
    7. Fiona Carmichael & Giambattista Rossi & Denis Thomas, 2017. "Production, Efficiency, and Corruption in Italian Serie A Football," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 18(1), pages 34-57, January.
    8. Halkos, George & Tzeremes, Nickolaos, 2011. "Applying conditional DEA to measure football clubs’ performance: Evidence from the top 25 European clubs," MPRA Paper 31278, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Carlos Pestana Barros & Stephanie Leach, 2006. "Performance evaluation of the English Premier Football League with data envelopment analysis," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(12), pages 1449-1458.
    10. I. García-Sánchez, 2007. "Efficiency and effectiveness of Spanish football teams: a three-stage-DEA approach," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 15(1), pages 21-45, March.
    11. Manuel Espitia-Escuer & Lucia Isabel Garcia-Cebrián, 2010. "Measurement of the efficiency of football teams in the Champions League," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(6), pages 373-386.
    12. Papahristodoulou, Christos, 2006. "Team Performance in UEFA Champions League 2005-06," MPRA Paper 138, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Carlos Pestana Barros & Stephanie Leach, 2006. "Analyzing the Performance of the English F.A. Premier League With an Econometric Frontier Model," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 7(4), pages 391-407, November.
    14. Debnath Roma Mitra & Malhotra Ashish, 2015. "Measuring Efficiency of Nations in Multi Sport Events: A case of Commonwealth Games XIX," Naše gospodarstvo/Our economy, Sciendo, vol. 61(1), pages 25-36, March.
    15. Marc Rohde & Christoph Breuer, 2018. "Competing by investments or efficiency? Exploring financial and sporting efficiency of club ownership structures in European football," Sport Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(5), pages 563-581, December.
    16. Young Hoon Lee & David Berri, 2008. "A Re‐Examination Of Production Functions And Efficiency Estimates For The National Basketball Association," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 55(1), pages 51-66, February.
    17. Rodríguez Guerrero, Plácido, 2012. "La economía del deporte/The Economics of Sport," Estudios de Economia Aplicada, Estudios de Economia Aplicada, vol. 30, pages 387-418, Agosto.
    18. Wen-Jhan Jane & Wei-Hsin Kong & Yi-Hsiue Wang, 2010. "Individual efficiency and club performance: a panel analysis of professional baseball," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(5), pages 363-372.
    19. R. Todd Jewell, 2017. "Technical efficiency with multi-output, heterogeneous production: a latent class, distance function model of english football," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 48(1), pages 37-50, August.
    20. Fiona Carmichael & Dennis Thomas, 2014. "Team performance: production and efficiency in football," Chapters, in: John Goddard & Peter Sloane (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Professional Football, chapter 10, pages 143-165, Edward Elgar Publishing.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Efficiency DEA Sports;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jomega:v:37:y:2009:i:1:p:63-78. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/375/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.