Why is Football Hard to Predict?

Whether you’re trying to make football predictions with your friends, guess results for a bet or just predicting as a general punter, it’s generally pretty difficult to be accurate. There are many variables that make predicting football results hard, and we’re going to cover some of them in this Elastico article.

Why are Football Matches Hard to Predict?

Football matches are hard to predict for a number of reasons, including:

• Home advantage
• Tactics
• Injures
• Change of manager

Home Advantage

In any sporting fixture, home teams are usually deemed the favourites to win. The logic behind this is that the home team will have the “home advantage”. Factors like playing in a familiar environment (home ground) and having a large crowd behind them can make a difference. The home crowd will often be referred to as the “12th man”.

Obviously, home teams don’t win every football fixture, but home advantage can affect our thinking. It’s certainly worth considering home advantage when trying to predict a football result, but also know that there are more factors to consider.

Tactics

Another reason why football is hard to predict is because of tactics. Nowadays, football is a really strategic sport. Teams will adopt different types of tactics depending on the team that they are playing. It’s not uncommon for teams to change their tactics most weeks.

This can make predicting football results difficult. You might watch a team one week, when they adopt a certain set of tactics, and think they look unbeatable. The following week, they may change their tactics against another team and not play as well.

Why is football hard to predict? It simply comes down to how well a team can perform a tactical plan for 90 minutes on match day.

Injuries

Ever seen a team’s season turn upside down when one or more of their players gets injured? Injuries happen so often in football, and this is another reason why football is hard to predict. 

In the 2020/21 season, Liverpool experienced injuries to Virgil Van Dijk, Joel Matip, Joe Gomez and Fabinho. This meant that they had to rely on youth players such as Nat Phillips and Rhys Williams to cover in the centre-back positions. 

This made it really hard to predict their results, as they still won plenty of games due to the attacking prowess of players like Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mané and Roberto Firmino.

Definitely consider injuries when trying to predict football results, as they really affect the success of a football team.

Change of Manager

When asked, ‘Why is football hard to predict?’, a change of manager has to be considered. This is because football managers are sacked on a regular basis in football.

Following a change in manager, a football club may choose to go in a different direction in terms of the style of play the new manager wants to play. If this happens, the current players in the team will need time to learn new tactics and patterns, making the team’s short term results hard to predict. It’s also not guaranteed that a new manager’s style would work for the team over time.

Even if a team chooses a like-for-like tactical manager, it’s not guaranteed to work. Managers have different personalities and might not gel with the players quickly, and this will also make it difficult to predict the team’s future results.