Performance in sports teams: Results and potential in the professional soccer league in Spain

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this research is twofold: to evaluate the performance of Spanish First‐Division soccer teams, comparing the sports results that they actually obtain with those that they should have obtained on the basis of their potential, and to propose a future course of action.

Design/methodology/approach

In order to assess the potential of each team in the Spanish professional soccer league between the years 1998 and 2005 an output‐oriented version of Data Envelopment Analysis is used. In this way it is possible to calculate the number of points a team could have achieved with an efficient use of its actual resources and, consequently, its potential position in the league classification.

Findings

The main conclusion is that a team's final league position depends more on its efficient use of resources than on its potential.

Practical implications

From the practical perspective, the results seem to stress that measures directed at improving soccer teams' results should focus on improving their efficient use of available resources. Consequently, this work provides a preliminary result, obtained using economics tools, that suggests where soccer team managers might direct their efforts to improve their sports results.

Originality/value

The present work is based on the same concept of potential in sports teams as Zak et al. (1979) and Hofler and Payne (1997), but with a number of differences compared with the earlier studies. First, the potential of the teams and their actual results are compared not by assessing their efficiency in the use of resources, but by observing their final league table positions. Second, the technique which is used to estimate the frontier is in this case Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), or the deterministic non‐parametric frontier method, which has not often been used in order to measure efficiency in soccer. Finally, the object of study is the Spanish First Division soccer teams in the seasons 1998/1999, 1999/2000, 2000/2001, 2001/2002, 2002/2003, 2003/2004 and 2004/2005.

Citation

Espitia‐Escuer, M. and García‐Cebrián, L.I. (2006), "Performance in sports teams: Results and potential in the professional soccer league in Spain", Management Decision, Vol. 44 No. 8, pp. 1020-1030. https://doi.org/10.1108/00251740610690595