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Soccer fans, something that has bugged me for years: how does soccer manage to combine low scoring with highly predictable outcomes?
In most similar sports, low scoring and low margin of victory correlate with unpredictability. But soccer is the most predictable sport in terms of finishes, very rarely have we seen real surprises at the top of the table or at the end of a major cup. It's the same few teams winning the big 5 leagues, the UCL, the world cup.
Across every other sport, one score games are so close to a coinflip in luck that much of analystics consists in softening or removing one score games from the data. In soccer a one score margin is completely normal, two scores is high, three a murder.
I think the substitution rule should have something to do with this too. Very few subs during the game and a shallow bench means if some players aren't performing well or if your strategy isn't working you are often just stuck with it. For single games or very short tournaments this creates quite high variance. But during a long season being a team with high quality replacements vs few reserve players make a serious difference. For a mid/low team the injury or low performance of one key player is often catastrophic while richer teams can keep functioning perfectly well.
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