Video 17: Is football an art or a science?

What is football: An art or a science?

Unlike American sports, football has not traditionally been known as a data-heavy or data-obsessed sport. But that trend has changed dramatically over the last decade or so.

You can buy my book at edwardp.me/yousaysoccer (Credit: Graziani Multimedia LLC)

Video link: https://youtu.be/_d1y6KynQ9M

Expected goals, heatmaps, key passes played, distance run in final third of the pitch: we’ve been flooded with a dizzying area of new variables to measure the finest details of every second of the beautiful game. But as the great Argentine footballing legend Jorge Valdano once said:

“The big problem is that with every step we take towards “scientific certainties”, players lose a little more freedom. Freedom for what? To think.”

Emotion versus reason. Data versus intuition. I explore all this and more in Chapter 20 of my book (“The heart versus the mind”).

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See you, Space Cowboy.

I’m also the author of the book “Community Heroes: What a year as an AmeriCorps VISTA member taught me about community development”.