football research Archives - Football Innovation Hub

23 Jul What Does an Off-Ball Run Force the Defence to Do?

Posted at 13:54h in Research

An attacker can transform a defence without touching the ball. Using tracking data from 99 LALIGA matches, this study reveals how off-ball runs activate defenders, transfer marking responsibilities and reshape the collective structure. Discover how a new analytical model identifies which movements pin opponents, disrupt...

23 Jun Looking Beyond the Goalscoring Table: What Do Goals Really Tell Us?

Posted at 13:00h in Research

At the end of every season, one ranking inevitably captures the spotlight: the goalscoring table. The logic seems straightforward. More goals should mean better attacking performance. But football is rarely that simple. While total goals provide an important starting point, they reveal very little about how...

04 Jun 100 Minutes Are Not the Same: Why Playing Time Is a Poor Measure of Competitive Load

Posted at 13:25h in Research

For decades, football has relied on a simple assumption: More minutes = more load. Playing time has become the universal currency used to describe player exposure, accumulated fatigue, squad rotation, workload management, and even injury risk. But what if playing time tells us how long a player was...

20 May The Hidden Bias in Football Scouting

Posted at 13:05h in Research

Introducing LALIGA’s Team Context Adjustment Model (TCAM) With only one matchday remaining in the 2025/26 LALIGA EA SPORTS season, recruitment departments across professional football are already immersed in one of the most decisive moments of the year: building next season’s squad. Every summer, clubs compare hundreds of players...

17 Nov Do Black Players Really Run More? A Scientific Examination of a Long-Standing Football Myth

Posted at 14:02h in Research

Last Thursday, during a guest lecture I gave at Stanford University’s “Science of MythBusters” course, we explored how scientific reasoning helps test long-standing beliefs by confronting them with rigorous data rather than intuition.A newly published study provides a clear example of this approach applied to...

29 Oct “The Game Is Won in the Middle Third.”

Posted at 13:50h in Research

In football, control is often confused with possession. But data from LALIGA EA Sports 2024/25 suggest something more precise:it’s not about having the ball, but about where you have it. What the data tell us Using match-by-match data from every team in LALIGA EA Sports 2024/25, we...