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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

SOE 27: Sports Studies: Football/Soccer

SOE 27.1: Talk

Friday, March 22, 2024, 12:15–12:30, MA 001

Coping with crises: a quantitative stochastic approach to determine the resilience of soccer teams — •Ralph Stömmer — Private researcher, Ottobrunn, Germany

Resilience is a crucial asset for successfully coping with crises. In the sport context, research on resilience is rather new. A quantitative model is developed to determine the resilience of soccer teams and applied to the German premier league Bundesliga.

The concept of resilience does agree with previous research and implies two conditions: (i) adversity and (ii) positive adaption despite this adversity. The quantitative model to measure resilience is a novel approach. The relative frequency of matches is determined, where a soccer team, which is initially trailing by 2 goals, finally succeeds to win the match or at least to reach a draw. The empirical data are compared with a theoretical model derived from Poisson distributions. The analysis reveals how the resilience values of leading soccer teams differ from the average, which highlights the importance of experience and grit, compared to talent and technique.

In retrospect, the method sheds some new light on the final 3:2 win of the German team in the 1954 FIFA world cup in Bern, Switzerland, generally known as the *miracle of Bern*.

Keywords: Resilience; Motivation; Sports; Stochastic processes; Poisson distribution