Title: The (relative) importance of the attack in the game of football: evidence from a team-level study of Italian Serie A

Authors: Siyan Chen; Saul Desiderio

Addresses: Business School, Shantou University, Daxue Road 243, Shantou, Guangdong, China ' Business School, Shantou University, Daxue Road 243, Shantou, Guangdong, China

Abstract: Attackers are recognised as the most important players of football, and this reflects on their high wages and market values. A natural question is whether such high financial costs are justified by the actual contribution of the attack to the success of a football team. In this paper we use team-level data relative to 34 seasons of Italian Serie A to see if the offensive sector as a whole is indeed the major determinant of the strength of a team. Results show only a moderate prevalence of the attack over the defence, which suggests that offensive players are likely to be overvalued with respect to their actual contribution to the strength of the team. In addition, we found that a good defence is the key for ending the season on top spots, whereas a bad attack is the main reason for ending at the bottom of the ranking.

Keywords: football; strikers; team success; Italian Serie A; pooled OLS; probit.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCEE.2023.132138

International Journal of Computational Economics and Econometrics, 2023 Vol.13 No.3, pp.243 - 255

Received: 24 May 2021
Accepted: 15 Dec 2021
Published online: 12 Jul 2023 *

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