There’s really no such thing as the perfect time to score

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

Living a mere 100 per cent is never enough for footballers; you have to dig deep and find that extra ten per cent within your metaphorical locker to make it really count.

Footballers also tell a lot of lies and they know it – why else would they constantly preface the truth with the immortal phrase: “I have to be honest with you.”

Most of all, footballers talk in clichés – but that’s because it’s the only language that commentators can fully understand.

To the rest of the world, describing football as ‘a game of two halves’ is just stating the obvious; for commentators, it’s an insight into what is unfolding before their very eyes.

Equally, the notion of the next goal being anything other than crucial doesn’t need to be accentuated for the benefit of those with even the most rudimentary understanding in simple mathematics because, after all – as analysts are wont to reveal – goals win games.

And yet it now emerges that one of the commentators’ key observations on the timing of that crucial goal has been built on quicksand.

Because a Belgian scientist at Ghent University has analysed 1,200 games from the Uefa Champions League and Uefa Europa League – to discover that scoring just before half-time isn’t the clear path to victory that some seem to swear by.

You may wonder why Stijn Baert went back over 1,200 games in the first place, even allowing for the fact that Belgium isn’t the most exciting country on the planet.

But his attention to detail has done the football world some service – because he knocked that ‘goal just before half-time’ theory right out of the ball park.

Baert compared pairs of games with the same half-time score, but where in one case it was achieved after a late goal.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.