Knowledge Is Power. But Is It Fun to Watch?

Few things degrade quite so rapidly as the element of surprise, once exposed to the pressurized, accelerated conditions provided by elite soccer. In most cases, its half-life will extend no more than 90 minutes. Even in extreme, extenuating circumstances, it is unlikely to be more than twice that.

Two games — one at home, one away — is all that is required these days to know everything there is worth knowing about any given rival. Two games provide three hours of footage that an opposing manager and their coaching staff can mine for insights. They generate reams of data for analysts to pore over and pick through.

And, of course, they provide a large enough sample size for the players themselves to learn. “When you’re playing against someone twice a season, every season, you start to see the little tells,” Newcastle defender Dan Burn recently told the BBC. As a rule, Burn said, teams go into games “knowing what is coming.”

There are exceptions, of course: Newly-promoted teams, sides who have drafted in a host of reinforcements and managers who have only recently arrived at a club can be decoded more easily on paper than on turf. Still, even their secrets are relatively fleeting.