“The vast majority of papers out there say coaches don’t matter,” AC Milan’s data-led former co-owner Luke Bornn once said, presumably out of earshot of San Siro’s dugout. “I’m oversimplifying, but that’s basically it.”
Soccer is a sport which willfully defies statistical analysis. This is a game played with a round ball and the blunt instrument of the human foot on an open field filled with 22 charging bodies. Finding a way to parse that chaos in a spreadsheet has been an ongoing battle for decades.
