Soccer Betting: Profit from Home Field Advantage
(Originally posted 20 February 2004)
In soccer, more than any other sport, home field advantage is
hugely important. Teams can go an entire season unbeaten at
home, while carrying a mediocre record on the road. A quick
glance at the standings in the major European leagues makes
this clear:
» Real Madrid: 11-1-0 at home / 5-4-3 on the road
» Deportivo: 10-1-2 at home / 5-3-3 on the road
» Newcastle: 7-3-3 at home / 2-8-2 on the road
» Juventus: 9-1-1 at home / 5-3-2 on the road
What’s going on here? Unlike in North American sports,
soccer teams don’t travel thousands of miles on road trips,
zigzagging a continent and crossing four time zones. In the
European leagues, the longest trip is usually a couple of
hours by bus. So why the huge discrepancy then?
To begin with, soccer fans are not just fans, they’re
fanatics. Soccer is life. And it’s the only game in town. No
other sport even comes close in popularity. Soccer fans are
the epitome of the word ‘die-hard’, more so even - dare I
say it - than NFL fans. It’s a war mentality where regional
rivalries and hatreds run deep. No American sport locks
visiting fans in their own section of the stadium, sealed in a
cage to protect them from flying bottles and other missiles
hurled at them by the home fans. It’s unheard of for
baseball fans to be chased and beaten for supporting the wrong
team. Not so in soccer.
Since home fans are so crazy about their teams, home teams
have a much bigger advantage. Crowds are deafeningly noisy,
incredibly rowdy and they sing throughout the game. When the
home team is losing they look to the crowd for motivation and
support. When they’re winning, fan support can make a home
team unstoppable.
Another factor is ‘away disadvantage.’ Home crowds are
very intimidating to road teams. Players perceive it to be
much more difficult to play on the road, and their nervousness
often results in mistakes and bad decisions. Teams that
haven’t won for years in a certain stadium will feel it’s
impossible to win there. These types of records hang like an
albatross around their necks. So it becomes a self-fulfilling
prophecy: through pessimism and fatalism the road team becomes
convinced they will lose, and they aren’t surprised when
they do.
That’s all fine and interesting, you might say, but how can
we profit from this? For the most part, the oddsmakers factor
home field advantage into their lines. But the average bettor
certainly doesn’t, especially when a premier team is playing
on the road. The result is skewed lines, often with value in
the home underdog. Dismal away teams with a winless road record
often have a respectable record at home. For example, Wolves
(3:2) represent good value at home against Fulham (8:5) this
weekend. Their away record is 4-5-3, which includes wins
against Manchester United and Liverpool. Wolves get a huge
boost from their home crowd, who are among the most inspiring
fans of any team in the league.
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