David Sumpter

David Sumpter (web page as of November 2023; no Wikipedia entry) is an English academic and writer. His area of interest is mathematics. He teaches at the Univerity of Uppsala in Sweden. (His University contact page in 2023.)
His 2016 book Soccermatics discusses football from the perspective of a fan of the game who followed professional football, as played in English Premier league and the UEFA Champions League. Some of the material is easier to follow by fans and followers of the game. He mentions and explains formations and tactics, but does not try to explain the game to readers who have not been exposed to it.
His main subject is that football have patterns that can be recorded in statisics or geometry. He discusses the patterns that have been seen and used by journalists, fans, team managers,sports consultants, bookies, and gamblers. Some patterns explain the advantages of formations, movement, distance and position on the field. Others are used to assess the fitness and skill of players and the chances of results in games. It is informative.… (mer)

The book is divided into three sections on playing, coaching and watching soccer. For each part, there are several chapters where mathematical analysis is applied to the topic.

The part on playing starts off with modelling the distribution of goals in a game, and continues with simulating league results. There are also chapters on passing networks in different teams (like Barcelona), ranking individual players and teams, and an analysis of Zlatan’s bicycle kick goal against England.

The section on coaching starts with an analysis of why changing from 2 to 3 points for a win leads to more attacking in games. It also covers how the ball moves between the players in certain teams, for example Italy, England and Spain from Euro 2012. This chapter also covers the shape of Barcelona’s attacking and Juventus defending, and where Real Madrid shoots from. Next are chapters on the impact of playing as a team, and the collective movement on the pitch.

The final section covers how singing spreads in a stadium and the predictions of expert. The section ends with a case study where the author uses several different betting strategies to see how successful they are.

I really enjoyed reading this book. Sumpter clearly loves both soccer and mathematics, and he makes very interesting connections between the two. The theme throughout the book is to use mathematical models to explain and understand various aspects of soccer.

Since I also like to play soccer myself for fun, I am always on the lookout for insights that can be useful when playing. In this regard, it was particularly interesting to see figures for the percentage chances of scoring when shooting close to the goal. The figures are 3%, 12% and 32% respectively for when outside the penalty area, inside the penalty area and inside the goal area. This explains why Arsenal tries to get inside the penalty box before shooting. More factoids I liked in this regard: the more passes a team makes per minute, the likelier they are to score (although to me it is not clear if this is causation or correlation), that defending is always easier than beating a defender, and the time limit of 5.5 seconds to get two players pressing after losing the ball.

For the interested, there is a comprehensive notes section with links to additional resources in the back. My copy of the book (the Swedish translation) is around 350 pages. Despite this, it was a quick read for me, mainly because I found it so interesting that I just kept reading. I found it to be a very good and well-written take on soccer.… (mer)

Một cuốn sách thú vị cho những người học Toán mê bóng đá.

Chương thú vị nhất có lẽ là phần liên quan đến cá độ. Tuy nhiên, cũng như những mô hình phân tích trong những chương trước đó, đừng nghĩ đọc xong là bạn có thể kiếm tiền ngay lập tức, vì mọi thứ đơn giản thay đổi theo thời gian. Đặc biệt trong những lĩnh vực nhạy cảm như cá độ thể thao.

Tác giả mang đến một cái nhìn mới mẻ về môn thể thao vua. Còn thưởng thức như thế nào thì hoàn toàn là do bạn, những người đam mê bóng đá.… (mer)