So how many fouls do teams commit? I had to admit that I didn't know, but since its' knowable, I looked it up (well, I let my trusty computer do it for me). When counting up fouls, however, there's a tricky definitional issue we need to get out of the way before looking at the numbers. The official statistics we have from box scores and various other published sources include only fouls that are called, not necessarily those that were committed. Counting how many times refs blow the whistle for a foul is not the same as counting fouls. Anyone who's ever played the game knows that there's a difference between the two and, depending on a variety of circumstances, quite a difference. But: for the sake of argument, let's assume for simplicity that too many fouls called on any one team we would randomly draw from a hat cancel out too few called on another drawn from a hat.
So here's the total number of fouls called in the Big Four soccer leagues of Europe over the past five seasons.
There's quite a range in how busy referees are. The totals range from fewer than 9,000 fouls called in the 2008/09 EPL season to almost 15,000 in the 2005/06 La Liga sesaon and the 2007/08 Serie A season. Among other things, this suggests to me many fewer interruptions to the game in Germany and England than Italy and Spain or conversely, a more fluid, continuous style of play. It also may imply fewer worries about injuries, or simply imperious referees who like to be the center of attention. But I digress.
So how much do individual teams foul? What do these big totals translate to at the level of individual teams and matches? Here we go.
Over the 2005/06-2009/10 seasons as a whole, the average numbers of fouls per match were:Bundesliga: 36.46
EPL: 24.63
La Liga: 37.41
Serie A: 35.09
Again, the EPL looks different from the rest of the pack (as it does for other things like shots on target, for example). Turns out, the low foul totals for the Bundesliga are virtually entirely due to the fact that there are fewer teams and therefore matches played in that league. But clearly, fewer fouls are called in the Premiership.
If you think about it, this means that play is interrupted just for a foul (aside from all the other interruptions that happen in a match) every 3.5 minutes in the Premier League and every 2.5 minutes in the other leagues. Looking at the level of individual teams, this is what it looks like (the arithmetic should be simple by now).
Teams in the Premiership foul on average 12 times per match, while teams in the other three big leagues foul a whopping 50% more at an average of about 18 times per match. I find this statistic particularly interesting in light of the fact that people often talk about the alleged physical play in the EPL. Perhaps by that they mean that fouls are committed as often there as elsewhere but simply not called as much. Could be; or there may simply be fewer fouls in the Premiership than anywhere else.
Finally, one of the most striking patterns to me is the significant downward trend in fouls across all the leagues. We see a decrease in fouls in every league since the 2005 season. To see how pronounced it is, we can correlate the number of fouls with a trend variable. These calculations show that the downward trend in fouls has been steepest in La Liga, followed by the Bundesliga, the EPL, and finally Serie A.
Why this would be is unclear to me at this point, but let me know if you have any theories about this! But I suspect Sam Allardyce would love to have these facts at his fingertips next time he runs into Arsene Wenger.
