The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know About Soccer Is Wrong

by Chris Anderson

one of soccer’s true innovators: Jimmy Hill. In his later years, Hill became familiar as a television presenter and pundit, but there was a time when, as chairman of the Professional Footballers’ Association in the 1950s, Hill was far from part of the establishment. In many ways he was a revolutionary. It was Hill’s campaign to scrap the Football League’s maximum wage—a paltry £20 a week—that led, slowly but surely, to the inflated salaries of today’s Premier League stars. Hill became chairman of Coventry in 1961, as the maximum wage was being abolished, and masterminded the Sky Blue Revolution that transformed the club; the color of their kit changed, they sold the first-ever match-day program and he even gave them a club song. Later, he would commission England’s first all-seater stadium. His most significant legacy, though, is the three-point rule. Hill had long thought that soccer had become too defensive and dull, too uninteresting for spectators. He felt instinctively that goals had become rarer with every passing season. This needed to change for professional soccer to thrive. Hill’s solution was as simple as it was far-reaching: he proposed that victory should be rewarded with three, rather than two, points to make wins more valuable—the equivalent of shifting from silver to the gold standard. After a trial run in the Isthmian League for a few years in the 1970s, Hill won over the Football Association and convinced them to give three points for a win a trial run in...