Is Soccer a lie or simply a complex system?

TL;DR

This paper explores soccer as a complex system, using complexity science to explain unpredictable phenomena and bridge the gap between scientific understanding and the sport's intricacies.

Contribution

It provides a synthetic overview of how complexity science can be applied to understand soccer's unpredictable and counterintuitive behaviors.

Findings

Soccer exhibits properties of complex systems such as unpredictability and emergent behavior.

Complexity science offers explanations for many counterintuitive phenomena in soccer.

Understanding soccer through complexity can enhance scientific and practical insights.

Abstract

Understanding soccer as a complex system we base on nature and the collective behavior of many organisms that "do calculations," seeking to generate solutions in a bioinspired way. When soccer mysteries appear, complex systems science emerges as a means to provide explanations. However, given the variety of interpretations that complexity and its associated properties can have and the understanding of what a complex system is, it is convenient to provide some elements to understand how unpredictability in soccer gives way to hundreds of counterintuitive results and how the science of complexity could contribute to the understanding of many phenomena in this sport. In this context, the manuscript's objective is to synthetically address some of the most important aspects of applied complexity to soccer to bring science and sport closer together