» Real Madrid: 11-1-0 at home / 5-4-3 on the road
» Deportivo: 10-1-2 at home / 5-3-3 on the road
» Newcastle: 7-3-3 at home / 2-8-2 on the road
» Juventus: 9-1-1 at home / 5-3-2 on the road
What’s going on here? Unlike in North American sports, soccer teams don’t travel thousands of miles on road trips, zigzagging a continent and crossing four time zones. In the European leagues, the longest trip is usually a couple of hours by bus. So why the huge discrepancy then?
To begin with, soccer fans are not just fans, they’re fanatics. Soccer is life. And it’s the only game in town. No other sport even comes close in popularity. Soccer fans are the epitome of the word ‘die-hard’, more so even - dare I say it - than NFL fans. It’s a war mentality where regional rivalries and hatreds run deep. No American sport locks visiting fans in their own section of the stadium, sealed in a cage to protect them from flying bottles and other missiles hurled at them by the home fans. It’s unheard of for baseball fans to be chased and beaten for supporting the wrong team. Not so in soccer.
Since home fans are so crazy about their teams, home teams have a much bigger advantage. Crowds are deafeningly noisy, incredibly rowdy and they sing throughout the game. When the home team is losing they look to the crowd for motivation and support. When they’re winning, fan support can make a home team unstoppable.
Another factor is ‘away disadvantage.’ Home crowds are very intimidating to road teams. Players perceive it to be much more difficult to play on the road, and their nervousness often results in mistakes and bad decisions. Teams that haven’t won for years in a certain stadium will feel it’s impossible to win there. These types of records hang like an albatross around their necks. So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: through pessimism and fatalism the road team becomes convinced they will lose, and they aren’t surprised when they do.
That’s all fine and interesting, you might say, but how can we profit from this? For the most part, the oddsmakers factor home field advantage into their lines. But the average bettor certainly doesn’t, especially when a premier team is playing on the road. The result is skewed lines, often with value in the home underdog. Dismal away teams with a winless road record often have a respectable record at home. For example, Wolves (3:2) represent good value at home against Fulham (8:5) this weekend. Their away record is 4-5-3, which includes wins against Manchester United and Liverpool. Wolves get a huge boost from their home crowd, who are among the most inspiring fans of any team in the league.
