deeden is Stephen Rushe

Barcelona are 3-1 down going into the second leg of the Champions League semi-final against Inter Milan. Once again I feel roused to check the stats to see how likely a team is to come back in the second leg of a tie. The same caveat applies as for the previous study, namely that the size of the sample is limited. Fewer first leg games have finished 3–1 than have finished 2–1. There’s nothing to be done so we will just work with what we have.

The Raw Data

I’m using the same data source as I did last time, my CSV file of the RSSSF European Cups Archive. The data has been updated to include the quarter-final ties from the last round, meaning that it now contains the details of 1,454 two-legged ties played in the competition since the full introduction of the away-goals rule for the 1968–1969 season.

The Methodology

In a similar fashion to the previous look at the data I’m going to look at the first-leg games which finished in a 3–1 victory for the first-leg home team and then find out what percentage of these ties resulted in an eventual win for the first-leg home team (henceforth “home team”), first-leg away team (henceforth “away team”), or a draw¹.

I have maintained the 3-period reporting structure from the previous study. These are since the introduction of away goals in 1968 (53 ties), since the re-branding of the competition in 1992 (29 ties), and the first 29 ties which had a first-leg which finished 3–1 since 1968.

The Processed Data

The results for the 3 periods chosen are as follows:

The worst for away teams, based on the above figures, is 20.69% in the Champions League period; all for a winning chance. This means that in the 29 ties since the Champions League re-naming in which the first-leg has finished 3–1 the away team has come back to win only 6 times, and has never taken the tie to penalties.

In the period since the away goals rule was introduced the away team has had a slightly better record, with a 24.53% chance of recovery; a 22.64% chance of winning outright, along with 1.89% chance of taking the tie to penalties.

The best record was in the period from the introduction of away goals in 1968 up to 1997². During that time the away team went on to make at least a penalty shoot-out 31.04% of the time.

The Conclusion

Once again the sample size is small but the numbers seem reasonable. The average team has at best about a 31% chance of recovering from the position Barcelona are now in, and Barcelona are by-no-means an average team.

They might do well to take heart from the fact that 2 out of the 6 recoveries from this position, since the Champions League began in 1992, have been achieved by the club; against Dynamo Kyiv in 1993, and Chelsea in 1999. Both also involved the conceding of an away goal in the home leg, so that is not a fatal blow if it happens again. It’s unlikely that Barcelona can recover but there is a chance, and history shows that they have done it before.