Historical At-Home Performance in the Bundesliga
maila
1/30/2021
#load package and data
library(vcd) #install using "install.packages("vcd")" if required
data("Bundesliga")
head(Bundesliga, 5)## HomeTeam AwayTeam HomeGoals AwayGoals Round Year
## 1 Werder Bremen Borussia Dortmund 3 2 1 1963
## 2 Hertha BSC Berlin 1. FC Nuernberg 1 1 1 1963
## 3 Preussen Muenster Hamburger SV 1 1 1 1963
## 4 Eintracht Frankfurt 1. FC Kaiserslautern 1 1 1 1963
## 5 Karlsruher SC Meidericher SV 1 4 1 1963
## Date
## 1 1963-08-24 10:30:00
## 2 1963-08-24 10:30:00
## 3 1963-08-24 10:30:00
## 4 1963-08-24 10:30:00
## 5 1963-08-24 10:30:00Background
This dataset comprises of soccer scores from the German top-division soccer league Bundesliga since its beginning in the 1963/64 season up to the 2008/09 season. The Bundesliga features 18 teams, where each team plays every other team twice- once at home (at their own stadium), and once away (at the other team’s stadium). At the end of the season, the bottom two teams get automatically relegated to the lower 2. Bundesliga division, and the top two teams from the 2. Bundesliga get automatically promoted to the Bundesliga. The third-from-the-bottom team in the Bundesliga has to play a two-legged match (one home and one away) with the third placed team in the 2. Bundesliga to determine who will be included in the top division the following season. The top three teams from the Bundesliga are also automatically selected for participation in the multinational UEFA Champions Leauge tournament, where top teams from soccer leagues in Europe compete for the trophy, starting with a group stage, followed by a knockout style tournament to determine the eventual winner. The fourth team, meanwhile, has to participate in a two-legged tie with a similarly placed team from a different league (for instance, the English Premier League, or La Liga, which are the top divisions in England and Spain, respectively) to qualify for the Champions League.
Historical Success
We are interested in finding the most successful club in top-division German soccer. To do this, we first add a Results column in the dataset and populate it with the result of each match for the home team.
# conditionally populate the HomeResult column (ties are possible, and frequent)
Bundesliga$HomeResult <- ifelse(Bundesliga$HomeGoals >
Bundesliga$AwayGoals,
"Win",
ifelse(Bundesliga$HomeGoals <
Bundesliga$AwayGoals,
"Loss",
"Draw"))
table(Bundesliga$HomeResult) ##
## Draw Loss Win
## 3634 3103 7281Historical results suggest there may be some home-field advantage. The home team won 7281 games between 1963-2009 while losing only 3103 games with 3634 draws. Next, we check to see which team is the most successful at their home stadium.
table(Bundesliga$HomeTeam, Bundesliga$HomeResult)##
## Draw Loss Win
## 1. FC Kaiserslautern 177 121 414
## 1. FC Koeln 147 149 382
## 1. FC Nuernberg 137 120 200
## 1. FC Saarbruecken 32 29 22
## 1. FSV Mainz 05 14 16 21
## Alemannia Aachen 17 20 31
## Arminia Bielefeld 73 95 121
## Bayer Leverkusen 139 98 275
## Bayer Uerdingen 61 59 101
## Bayern Muenchen 131 72 547
## Blau-Weiss 90 Berlin 8 7 2
## Borussia Dortmund 182 128 402
## Borussia Moenchengladbach 194 132 373
## Borussia Neunkirchen 11 16 22
## Darmstadt 98 10 14 10
## Dynamo Dresden 24 19 27
## Eintracht Braunschweig 89 66 181
## Eintracht Frankfurt 168 149 378
## Energie Cottbus 16 44 42
## FC Homburg 17 16 18
## FC St. Pauli 39 41 39
## Fortuna Duesseldorf 112 92 172
## Fortuna Koeln 6 5 6
## Hamburger SV 188 144 448
## Hannover 96 108 97 150
## Hansa Rostock 57 65 84
## Hertha BSC Berlin 119 92 261
## Karlsruher SC 134 97 175
## KFC Uerdingen 6 7 4
## Kickers Offenbach 26 32 61
## Meidericher SV 13 7 27
## MSV Duisburg 137 114 176
## Preussen Muenster 4 6 5
## Rot-Weiss Essen 43 30 46
## Rot-Weiss Oberhausen 18 19 31
## SC Freiburg 45 55 70
## Schalke 04 194 140 361
## SpVgg Unterhaching 11 6 17
## SSV Ulm 4 6 7
## Stuttgarter Kickers 8 17 11
## Tasmania Berlin 3 12 2
## Tennis Borussia Berlin 10 14 10
## TSV 1860 Muenchen 76 93 167
## VfB Leipzig 9 6 2
## VfB Stuttgart 157 140 449
## VfL Bochum 153 153 257
## VfL Wolfsburg 49 47 108
## Waldhof Mannheim 41 27 51
## Wattenscheid 09 22 22 26
## Werder Bremen 176 127 460
## Wuppertaler SV 14 17 20
## 1899 Hoffenheim 5 3 9The table shows that Bayern Munchen, a Munich-based club, is historically the most successful at home, winning a total of 547 games at the Grunwald Stadion, the Olympic Stadion, and the Allianz Arena combined.
library(dplyr) # for data manipulation
winPercentages <- Bundesliga %>% select(HomeTeam, HomeResult, Year) %>%
group_by(HomeTeam) %>%
summarise(winPerc = length(which(HomeResult=="Win"))/n())
winPercentages## # A tibble: 52 x 2
## HomeTeam winPerc
## <fct> <dbl>
## 1 1. FC Kaiserslautern 0.581
## 2 1. FC Koeln 0.563
## 3 1. FC Nuernberg 0.438
## 4 1. FC Saarbruecken 0.265
## 5 1. FSV Mainz 05 0.412
## 6 Alemannia Aachen 0.456
## 7 Arminia Bielefeld 0.419
## 8 Bayer Leverkusen 0.537
## 9 Bayer Uerdingen 0.457
## 10 Bayern Muenchen 0.729
## # … with 42 more rows#next, sort this table
winPercentages <- arrange(winPercentages, desc(winPercentages$winPerc))
winPercentages## # A tibble: 52 x 2
## HomeTeam winPerc
## <fct> <dbl>
## 1 Bayern Muenchen 0.729
## 2 Werder Bremen 0.603
## 3 VfB Stuttgart 0.602
## 4 1. FC Kaiserslautern 0.581
## 5 Meidericher SV 0.574
## 6 Hamburger SV 0.574
## 7 Borussia Dortmund 0.565
## 8 1. FC Koeln 0.563
## 9 Hertha BSC Berlin 0.553
## 10 Eintracht Frankfurt 0.544
## # … with 42 more rowsBayern Munchen also leads the Bundesliga in terms of at-home wining percentage, having won 72.9333333 percent of their home games.
# to create a table with at-home winning percentages for each year for each club
winPercByYear <- Bundesliga %>% select(HomeTeam, HomeResult, Year) %>%
group_by(HomeTeam, Year) %>%
summarise(winPerc = length(which(HomeResult=="Win"))/n())
winPercByYear## # A tibble: 826 x 3
## # Groups: HomeTeam [52]
## HomeTeam Year winPerc
## <fct> <int> <dbl>
## 1 1. FC Kaiserslautern 1963 0.467
## 2 1. FC Kaiserslautern 1964 0.6
## 3 1. FC Kaiserslautern 1965 0.412
## 4 1. FC Kaiserslautern 1966 0.588
## 5 1. FC Kaiserslautern 1967 0.353
## 6 1. FC Kaiserslautern 1968 0.588
## 7 1. FC Kaiserslautern 1969 0.529
## 8 1. FC Kaiserslautern 1970 0.765
## 9 1. FC Kaiserslautern 1971 0.647
## 10 1. FC Kaiserslautern 1972 0.588
## # … with 816 more rowsSuccess Trends
Based on at-home winning percentage, the five most successful clubs in Germany are:
- Bayern Muenchen
- Werder Bremen
- VfB Stuttgart
1. FC Kaiserslautern- Meidricher SV
To observe historic trends in home performances, we plot at-home winning percentages of the three most-successful clubs in Germany.
library(ggplot2) #for data vizualization
topWins <-winPercByYear[winPercByYear$HomeTeam %in% c("Bayern Muenchen","Werder Bremen","VfB Stuttgart"),]
winPlot <- ggplot(topWins) + geom_line(mapping = aes(x = Year, y = winPerc, color = HomeTeam) ) + labs(title = "Winning Percentage at Home of Bundesliga Clubs", x="Year", y ="Win Percent")
winPlot