Cups

weirimdi had a comment on my last post which was very interesting. He writes:

Hello, inspired by your work I collected the data for main international domestic cup tournaments.

The results are impressive.

I analyzed the data from main competitions in Europe, Asia and South America.

I looked for the results from 2017/18 up to the latest one this season.

The best performing ones:

Turkey +160 Units (mostly in early stages, but there might be a reason for that)

Korea +70 Units

Japan +50 Units

French Cup +100 Units

Spanish Cup +75 Units

Now I started looking at data depending on the respective leagues of the teams involved.

I think there are some angles that are worth digging deeper into.

Keep up the great work.

I love it when my posts trigger someone to research some of my thoughts and ideas further. weirimdi doesn't mention ROIs, but in fewer than seven full seasons, those unit totals are quite impressive. 

As readers will know, my focus for club football tends to be on the big European Leagues, the knockout stages of the European Club competitions, as well as the domestic English Cup competitions and end of season playoffs, but perhaps I need to broaden my horizons and take a look at some of the national cup competitions around the world. 

My reasons for not looking at other countries before are mostly a, possibly incorrect, feeling that the 'cup' competition is much less highly regarded than the League. 

In France for example, four recent finals (since 2000), have featured a club outside of the top two divisions there, something which seems rather unlikely to occur in the FA Cup despite Maidstone United's valiant effort so far in this season's competition, but the cup competitions in other countries might be worth a look based on weirimdi's research. 

Thank you weirimdi and feel free to share any more findings.

Right now we're in the middle of the European Competition knockout stages which are always interesting with some edges to be found. The Champions League is in its Round of 16 stage while the Europa and Europa Conference competitions are in a knockout round for a place in the Round of 16. It's only been in place for two seasons before this one and is effectively a Round of 24 with 8 teams receiving a Bye. While the results should be in line with those of the Europa Leagues former Round of 32, this may not turn out to be true as we gather more data. 

Back to England and the League Cup Final is just ahead. No surprise that the two finalists are from the Big 6 (11of the last 20 - this year Liverpool and Chelsea) nor that this is the second time these two clubs have met in this final in three seasons and the third in the last 20.

Backing the Draw in League Cup Finals has an ROI of 44% and in "Big 6" finals the ROI is 119%.