Even now, we all need a bit of luck

IN THEIR book The Numbers Game, Chris Anderson and David Sally argue that success in football is 50 per cent skill and 50 per cent luck.

- Chris Dunlavy

Naturally, coaches and players disagree. Nobody wants to believe that all those expensive coaching badges, all those evenings on Wyscout and all those hours on the training ground don’t matter. Nor that the contents of the trophy cabinet were won on the toss of a coin.

And they weren’t, of course. The best players minimise the role of luck by training diligently, making smart decisions and developing the sort of mental resilience required to perform consistently under pressure. The best teams minimise the role of luck by buying those players, then hiring elite coaches to organise them.

It stands to reason, then, that Anderson and Sally’s figure of 50 per cent does not apply to the world’s best teams. If it did, you would not expect Manchester City to be chasing a fifth consecutive Premier League crown, nor Real Madrid to have won five of the last nine Champions League titles.

Even at that level, though, luck is not entirely absent. Take John Stones’ 98th-minute equaliser for City in last Sunday’s 2-2 draw with Arsenal, a scrambled six-yard effort from a deflected Mateo Kovacic shot.