Abstract
Purpose: This article presents data challenging the widely held but untested view that concurrently playing mid-week Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) Europa League matches adversely affects domestic league performance. Method: Over 16 seasons we compared next-season domestic league performance of the two highest finishing UEFA Europa League qualifying clubs with the two highest finishing non-qualifiers in England and Spain. Results: Clubs concurrently playing UEFA Europa League football showed significantly superior domestic league performance including wins, losses, goals, goal difference and points tally. The number of European matches played was not related to domestic league performance. Conclusions: The absence of prior rigorous analysis including appropriate comparison data has led to the proliferation of a widespread confirmatory bias, defined as the tendency to seek out evidence that backs one’s hunches and to ignore evidence that contradicts them. Based on our evidence, football professionals, journalists, pundits, and fans should consider the UEFA Europa League competition more favorably.
Highlights
A compelling narrative has arisen in contemporary football commentary around the alleged negative impacts on national domestic league performance of concurrently contesting the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) Europa League competition [1]
Gilmore and Graham report on a sample of four English Premier League (EPL) clubs that had played in the UEFA Europa League, a competition previously known as the UEFA Cup and referred to in this article as the UEFA EL/C, for two or more seasons from 2005-6 to 2012-3 [5]
Combining the EPL and La Liga data we found that the UEFA EL/C qualifiers won more domestic league games, t (126) = 3.108, p = 0.002, d = 0.554, 95% CI = 0.789, 3.555, lost fewer games, t (126) = 2.240, p = 0.027, d = 0.399, 95% CI = −2.943, −0.192, scored more goals, t (126) = 3.854, p < 0.001, d = 0.687, 95% CI = 3.368, 10.476, had superior goal difference, t (126) = 3.167, p = 0.002, d = 0.564, 95% CI = 3.446, 14.929 and accrued more points, t (126) = 2.964, p = 0.004, d = 0.528, 95% CI = 1.963, 9.849, than non-UEFA EL/C qualifiers
Summary
A compelling narrative has arisen in contemporary football (soccer) commentary around the alleged negative impacts on national domestic league performance of concurrently contesting the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) Europa League competition [1]. Gilmore and Graham report on a sample of four English Premier League (EPL) clubs that had played in the UEFA Europa League, a competition previously known as the UEFA Cup and referred to in this article as the UEFA EL/C, for two or more seasons from 2005-6 to 2012-3 [5]. They observed that three of these clubs finished in lower domestic league positions in seasons playing both competitions concurrently, compared with seasons when not. This indicates a deficit of 0.41 points per domestic league game following UEFA EL/C fixtures
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