The Weekend That Started This Mess
Man, sometimes you just want a quiet Saturday watching some football, right? Nope. I was sitting there, trying to enjoy the early kick-off, when my buddies, Mark and Dave, started going at it. These two are obsessed with La Liga, but specifically, Mark is a massive Sevilla guy and Dave bleeds Athletic Club colors. They were hammering each other about whose team was the real “road warrior” and whose was just padding stats at home.
It got loud. Really loud. Mark kept yelling about Sevilla’s historical pedigree, and Dave just countered with, “Yeah, but they bottle it away from the Sánchez Pizjuán!” I tried to shut them up with beer, but it didn’t work. Finally, I slammed my mug down and said, “Enough! I’ll prove you both wrong—or right—with actual numbers. I’m going to run the stats myself.” And that’s how this whole ridiculous project started. I needed concrete data to settle this once and for all.
Grabbing and Wrestling the Raw Data
The first thing I did Monday morning, fueled purely by spite and a need to win the argument, was figure out where to grab the dirt. I needed detailed match logs—not just final scores, but who was the designated home team, goals scored, and points earned, spanning the last couple of seasons. I won’t say exactly where I sourced it, but I managed to pull down a chunk of ugly, messy spreadsheet files.
That initial data dump was a disaster. Dates were formatted weirdly, team names were inconsistent, and I had to spend a solid three hours just cleaning up the headers and making sure “Athletic Bilbao” and “Athletic Club” actually registered as the same team in my makeshift system. You know how it is—garbage in, garbage out. I had to make sure the foundation was solid before I started building anything on top of it. I fired up a simple Python script—nothing fancy, just standard libraries—and started to filter and structure the data. I isolated all matches where either Sevilla or Athletic Club was involved, tagging each row specifically as ‘Home’ or ‘Away’ for the team I was tracking.
Defining “Performance” and Crunching the Numbers
For this analysis, I kept the metrics brutally simple because I wasn’t writing a PhD thesis; I just needed ammunition for next weekend. I had to select metrics that were universally understood and easy to calculate.
Key Metrics I Focused On:
- Points Per Game (PPG): The most critical indicator of success. I calculated this Home vs. Away.
- Average Goals Scored (AGS): To see whose offense travels better.
- Win Percentage (WPCT): Just the raw likelihood of grabbing all three points.
Once the metrics were decided, I segregated the data into four distinct buckets to make the comparison straightforward:
- Sevilla Home Matches
- Sevilla Away Matches
- Athletic Club Home Matches
- Athletic Club Away Matches
I wrote the calculation functions. This part was fast. It was just basic arithmetic: sum the points, divide by the number of games. I ran the script, and the results popped out instantly. They were kind of surprising, honestly, because they didn’t align perfectly with the hot takes Mark and Dave were yelling about.
What the Spreadsheet Yelled Back At Me
Let’s look at what the raw numbers told me about these two clubs. Remember, this is based on a significant sample size—not just the last two weeks of play.
Sevilla FC: The Home Comfort vs. The Road Trip
Sevilla definitely relies on the Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan roar. Their home performance completely overshadows their away stats. Mark was right that they can be dominant, but only when they feel comfortable.
The Data Shows:
- They were pulling in significantly higher Points Per Game (PPG) when playing at home.
- Their Win Percentage at home was high enough to put them consistently in the top tier.
- The goals flowed much better. My figures showed they seemed to score almost 30% fewer goals when they were traveling compared to when they played in front of their own crowd. That’s a huge drop-off.
The conclusion here is straightforward: Sevilla is a home beast that struggles to pack the same punch away. They aren’t terrible travelers, but they drop critical points when they leave Andalusia.
Athletic Club: The Consistent Grinders
Athletic Club, playing out of San Mamés, showed something different. They are generally more balanced, which is the exact opposite of what Dave was claiming. Dave saw them as weak travelers, but the numbers proved he was only half right.
The Athletic Club Breakdown:
- Their home PPG was solid, but the drop-off when they went away was much smaller than Sevilla’s. They maintained a better level of performance stability.
- They have a surprising consistency in their Average Goals Scored, whether they are home or away. It’s almost level, which shows a defensive structure that travels well.
- While their overall PPG wasn’t as high as Sevilla’s peak home numbers, their away Win Percentage was surprisingly competitive. When you compared just the ‘Away’ rows, Athletic Club looked significantly stronger than Sevilla.
So, who is the better road team? Based purely on the metrics I ran, Athletic Club is the more consistent traveler. They don’t have the insane high ceiling of Sevilla at home, but they manage their business much better when facing external pressure.
The Takeaway for the Next Argument
I printed the key graphs and tables and laminated them. Seriously. Next time Mark and Dave start yelling, I’m just going to slap these figures on the table and let them argue with the data.
This little exercise proved one thing: Mark, the Sevilla fan, was right that when his team is firing at home, they are brilliant, but he was dead wrong about their road quality. Dave, the Athletic guy, had a point that his team is reliable, especially away, even if they aren’t flashy. It was definitely the consistency of Athletic Club on the road that tipped the scales in the away comparison. It felt good to shut them up with facts, even if it cost me an entire Monday morning to compile the evidence.