Home used to mean passion, fear, and fortress-like stadiums. But has modern football killed that edge? From tourists and VAR to sterile stadiums and £7 pints, we explore the slow death of home advantage — and what it means for the soul of the game.
00:03But I don't know about you lot, it's starting to feel a bit empty.
00:07It's void of something. Soulless, you might say.
00:09It seems like the home advantage isn't even a thing anymore.
00:13So I did some digging to find out why.
00:16Papa Pink is here with 4-4-2. Let's talk about it.
00:21There was a time when a home fixture in football meant something more than just a line on a calendar.
00:27It meant hostility. It meant fortress. It meant stepping out into a cauldron of noise.
00:33Facing not just 11 players, but 40,000 growling fans who knew your full name, your family tree and your less preferred foot.
00:41It meant long coach rides into unfamiliar cities, narrow tunnel entrances, dodgy changing rooms
00:47and referees who somehow always seemed to give the 50-50s the home team's way.
00:52The pitch might be waterlogged, the lighting suspiciously dim and the ball would vanish into the crowd after every throw-in.
00:59This was the home advantage.
01:01Now, not so much.
01:03The idea that a team has a genuine, quantifiable edge when playing at home has been gradually losing power over the last decade.
01:10And the data backs it up.
01:12Back in the early 1900s of English football, home teams won over 60% of their games.
01:17By the 1950s and 60s, that number had already started to slide.
01:22Through the 70s and 80s, home wins dropped to around 50%.
01:25Fast forward to the 21st century and the figure fell below 45%.
01:30Things got even worse during the COVID hit 2020-21 season, with home wins collapsing to 37.9%.
01:38What was once a clear edge is now barely an advantage at all.
01:43Let's start with an obvious reason for the decline.
01:46Tourism.
01:46Now, this isn't a complaint, by the way.
01:48Football's global appeal is one of its greatest triumphs.
01:52Fans travelling across the globe to watch the football in the flesh is, of course, a testament to how massive the game has become.
01:58But it's had a huge side effect.
02:00The traditional home crowd, once made up of fiercely loyal local voices who lived and breathed the club,
02:07is increasingly diluted by visitors with selfie sticks and half-on-half scarves.
02:12You just can't generate the same kind of venom when half your stand is filming kickoff for their Instagram stories.
02:18The chants are often softer, the reactions are delayed, and the edge just disappears.
02:25The infamous Anfield Raw still exists, in a blockbuster game maybe, but try finding it at 3pm on a rainy Saturday against Brentford.
02:34And you can't really blame tourists either.
02:36Clubs sell the tickets.
02:38The demand is there.
02:39It's a business.
02:40But when your stadium starts feeling more like a theme park than a tribal battleground, the result is what we're seeing now.
02:47Less noise, less energy, less influence.
02:50You could argue clubs are trapped in a double bind.
02:53They need the global exposure and the financial boost that comes with international fans.
02:58But in doing so, they've hollowed out the atmosphere that made a stadium a fortress in the first place.
03:03Then, there's VAR.
03:05One of the often unspoken pillars of home advantage used to be the pressure.
03:10The crowd swayed referees.
03:12Maybe not overly, but subtly.
03:15A referee who's getting absolutely hammered by 40,000 people after not giving a penalty
03:20is far more likely to subconsciously balance it out later on in the match.
03:25That's just human psychology.
03:27The atmosphere mattered.
03:28Now, the biggest decisions are made in a quiet room somewhere near Heathrow.
03:32No crowd noise, no boos.
03:35Just a few people rewinding footage in silence.
03:38VAR has sanitized that part of the game.
03:40The idea that a crowd can win a penalty or pressure a red card is mostly gone.
03:46Which is great for fairness, maybe.
03:48But not so much great for home ground mystique.
03:51It's the coldest form of justice.
03:53Accurate, emotionless and indifferent to the crowd.
03:57When the home crowd loses its influence, the home team loses one of its biggest weapons.
04:01Modern stadiums aren't helping either.
04:03They're sleek, shiny and sterile.
04:07Old school grounds were built like pressure cookers.
04:10Steep stands.
04:11Fans breathing down your neck.
04:13Think Highbury or Upton Park, White Hart Lane.
04:16The new generation is built for commercial viability.
04:20Executive boxes.
04:21Better sight lines.
04:23Wi-Fi.
04:23Leg room.
04:24In trying to make football more comfortable, we've made it less intimidating.
04:28Even players talk about it.
04:30There's a reason some managers still rave about away days and hostile, tight, traditional stadiums.
04:36They know the difference.
04:38And when the away team isn't even slightly rattled walking out the tunnel, you're already losing part of what used to be the whole point of home advantage.
04:46Travel is no longer a punishment.
04:48Let's not forget the players themselves here.
04:50Footballers are more used to travel than ever before.
04:53Teams fly in style, recover better, and prepare in minute detail.
04:59An away trip to Newcastle, for example, used to be a grind.
05:02Now it's a private jet and a perfectly timed meal plan.
05:06These players are used to playing all over the world.
05:08Before they're 21.
05:09The fear factor of away grounds just isn't there anymore.
05:13If home advantage really is going extinct, maybe the question isn't just why.
05:18Maybe it's, what are we losing with it?
05:20Because this isn't just about wind percentages or crowd decibels.
05:24It's about football's identity.
05:27The tribalism.
05:28The drama.
05:29The idea that every stadium has its own energy.
05:31Its own mythology.
05:33Now, more often than not, you're stepping into a ground that looks and feels just like your own.
05:38Same megastore out front.
05:40Same pre-match playlist.
05:41Same LED hoardings.
05:43Advertising.
05:44Betting apps.
05:44And crypto exchanges.
05:45Season ticket holders talk about how going to a game doesn't feel like it used to.
05:50The tension's gone.
05:52That spark.
05:53That sense that you were part of the story.
05:55That your voice could genuinely impact the game.
05:58When was the last time a home crowd truly dragged a team over the line with nothing but noise and fury?
06:04You still get it sometimes.
06:06St. James' Park on a big night.
06:08Galatasaray in Europe.
06:10Maybe a Milan derby.
06:11But it's very rare now.
06:13And then there's arguably the biggest problem of them all.
06:16Pricing.
06:17The cost of tickets, particularly in the Premier League, has pushed out huge swaths of working class fan base that once gave stadiums their grit.
06:25The standing terraces are gone.
06:27The songs are quieter.
06:28The emotion is still there.
06:30But it's buried under corporate hospitality, half-time TikToks and seven-pound pints.
06:38You can't build a fortress with tourists and day-trippers.
06:41You can fill a stadium, sure.
06:43But can you fill it with fear?
06:45There's also the calendar overload to consider.
06:47With clubs playing 50, 60, sometimes even 65 games a season, like we mentioned last week, the novelty of home games wears thin.
06:56Players don't circle fixtures anymore.
06:57They rotate through them.
07:00Managers talk about managing minutes rather than building momentum.
07:04It's hard to create a mythical atmosphere when it's your sixth game in 18 days.
07:09Many of the stadiums now considered to have average atmospheres are, ironically, the homes of elite clubs.
07:15The Emirates is quiet when Arsenal are cruising.
07:18The Etihad is mocked for being a library.
07:20Even the city break records because dominance breeds calm.
07:24It takes a certain type of chaos to make a home ground truly hostile.
07:29Now, contrast that with other clubs fighting for survival or an underdog story.
07:33Go to Bramall Lane or Villa on a CL night.
07:36The atmosphere there can be electric because every point matters.
07:40Every kick matters.
07:41That's where you still feel the weight of home turf.
07:43But in the elite tier, where squad depth is king and fixtures come thick and fast, home advantage has become a luxury, not a weapon.
07:52And that's the uncomfortable truth.
07:54Maybe the home crowd never mattered that much.
07:56Or maybe, just maybe, modern football has evolved to a point where it doesn't matter anymore.
08:01Tactical nuance, video analysis, data-driven preparation, they all mitigate variables.
08:07The pitch could be in a volcano and Pep Guardiola would still set his team up to pass through the lines.
08:12So what's the solution, if any?
08:14Maybe it's about reclaiming identity.
08:17Letting stadiums have more of a say in how they sound, feel and intimidate.
08:22Encouraging standing sections.
08:24Lowering prices.
08:25Giving supporter groups more power to shape the matchday experience.
08:29Maybe clubs need to think about atmosphere the same way they think about set pieces.
08:34Something to coach.
08:35Because if home advantage is truly going extinct, that's not just a loss for home fans.
08:40That's a loss for football.
08:42Has home advantage gone extinct or am I just chatting rubbish?
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