Study of the Goal From the Top Five Portuguese Teams Playing at Home and Away in 2018-2019 Season

Abstract

The target of this paper was to understand if there is any differences between the games at home and away. For that we did a comparative study of the first 14 games from the main 5 teams in Portuguese championship (F.C. Porto, Sporting C.P., S.C. Braga, S.L. Benfica and Vitoria S.C.) in 2018/2019 given the main reasons found in the literature for the home advantage, the field, trips, fans, referee and the familiarity with the pitch. The main mean of recovery the ball was in fault, in the offensive central zone, being the last pass executed in the same zone, as the most registered method is the counter-attack as the goals are finalized mostly with the right foot in the middle of the box zone at home and penalty away. The majority of the differences were in the number of records, bigger at home, and in the finalization zones with more equality between zones in the away games.