The second leg home advantage: Evidence from European football cup competitions

Abstract

The home advantage is a widely acknowledged sporting phenomenon, especially in association football. Here, we examine the second leg home advantage, an effect that is discussed in the public domain but which has received very little scientific attention. The second leg home advantage effect occurs when on average teams are more likely to win a two-stage knock-out competition when they play at home in the second leg. That is, both teams have a home advantage but this advantage is significantly greater for the team that plays at home second. Examining data from three different European Cup football competitions spanning 51 years, we show that the second leg home advantage is a real phenomenon. The second leg home team has more than a 50% probability to qualify for the next round in the competition even after controlling for extra time and team ability as possible alternative explanations. The second leg home advantage appears, however, to have decreased significantly over the past decade. Possible reasons for its existence and subsequent decline are presented.

Influence of information technologies on technical fitness of students in sport-oriented physical education

“…At the beginning and at the end of academic year we conducted pedagogic testing for determination of physical and technical fitness. As tests we used standard tests for physical and technical fitness [16,17,19,23,25,27,29,30]. For determination of physical fitness we conducted pedagogic testing: forward…”

Second-leg home advantage in the Copa Libertadores da América (2005-2015)

“…The second-leg HA found in the present study was in accordance to other authors who investigated the second-leg HA in European tournaments. Page and Page 29 , for example, investigated the second-leg HA effect in European Football Cup competitions (N=6084 two-leg knock-out rounds) and reported the probability of winning at the end of two legs for the second-leg home team of 54.98% 29 . In another study, Eugster, Gertheiss, Kaiser 30 found 56% of the probability of winning in favour of the team having the return match at home in the UEFA Champions League.…”

“…The visual revision and assessment were performed blinded by two experienced and independent observers. The procedures were in accordance with previous reports 29,30 .…”

“…However, they were based on European tournaments and present conflicting conclusions because second-leg HA varied from 61.8% (with second-leg HA) to 47.8% (no second-leg HA) 20,29,30,31 . These differences may be explained due to the different mathematical models used to access second-leg HA.…”

Leading-Effect vs. Risk-Taking in Dynamic Tournaments: Evidence from a Real-Life Randomized Experiment

“…In this natural experiment professionals know exactly the tournament's setting, the payo¤s and incentives are very high, and the process of allocating teams is random. Page and Page (2007) analyze the same knock-out setting. The most important di¤erence between this paper and Page and Page (2007) is that we develop an identi…cation strategy capable of distinguishing between the leading-e¤ect and risk-taking.…”