Passing Your Way to Success

A few years ago I ran across a series of articles written by Daniel Finkelstein of the London Times. He authors a column called Fink Tank which looks at soccer through the emotionless eyes of a statistician. The first column, “Identifying top teams more than just a passing fancy“, attempted to discover what differentiates good English Premier League football teams from bad ones. He found that the obvious choices – shots on goal, shots on target, style of play, etc. – did not lead to a definitive conclusion on what separates the men from the boys.