Soccer: a quantitative analysis of team resilience and the miracle of Bern

Abstract: Resilience is the ability to positively respond to adversity. It has been studied in psychology for several decades, with focus on how individuals overcome traumata or cope with setbacks and obstacles in their professional career. Research on resilience in the sport context is rather new. Activities are based on insights that in highly competitive environments, tiny effects tip the scales. A key question of measuring resilience in sports is what parameters to measure. Here a novel concept is proposed to measure the resilience of soccer teams. 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 analysis is applied to the last 59 seasons of the German premier soccer league Bundesliga. The empirical data are compared with a theoretical model derived from Poisson distributions. It is shown how leading teams in the premier soccer league differ from the average with respect to resilience, which provides further insights into the hidden secrets of top soccer teams.