Simon Gleave and Jurryt van der Vooren have been tracking down the earliest example of football statistics.
There have been some Twitter exchanges
@jRRT @520507 Where were we with the oldest football statistics? This is from 1937. https://t.co/pAeGuhUNZn
— Simon Gleave (@SimonGleave) April 13, 2017
In response to:
1937 vs. 2017: "Eleganteste Fußarbeit" & "Abwehrschuss" – so sahen Statistiken vor 80 Jahren aus ➡️ https://t.co/jWs9qy9UfI #DFBPokal pic.twitter.com/TSod6Patjy
— DFB-Pokal (@DFB_Pokal) April 12, 2017
This encouraged me to write a blog post about the game.
Today Jurryt came up with two new leads, one from a Holland v Belgium game in 1935:
Yes: https://t.co/WL3Ho5YoLj pic.twitter.com/GgUi2V2zBn
— Jurryt van de Vooren (@jRRT) April 17, 2017
and this from De gronwet on 15 January 1936
This second source refers to some French journalists at the Jour newspaper. My brief enquiries suggest this might be a newspaper published in 1933.
I do need to follow up on these leads but I am immensely grateful that Simon and Jurryt are sharing their treasure hunt.