A methodology-first look at 1,085 matches, 41 competitions, and one number that keeps showing up: 79.3%
I want to tell you exactly how I did this, because the methodology matters more than the finding.
That's a weird thing to lead with. Most sports analytics pieces bury the methods in footnotes or skip them entirely. They give you the headline number, maybe a chart, and then ask you to trust them. I've read hundreds of those pieces. I've written a few. And I've learned that the number without the method is close to worthless — especially when you're testing something that has real-world implications for how people think about soccer matches.
So let's start at the beginning, before any results, before any percentages. Let's start with the question I was actually trying to answer.
The Theory: What Happens in the Final Minutes of Close Games?
