  Managerial decision making is likely to be a dominant determinant of
performance of teams in team sports. Here we use Japanese and German football
data to investigate correlates between temporal patterns of formation changes
across matches and match results. We found that individual teams and managers
both showed win-stay lose-shift behavior, a type of reinforcement learning. In
other words, they tended to stick to the current formation after a win and
switch to a different formation after a loss. In addition, formation changes
did not statistically improve the results of succeeding matches.The results
indicate that a swift implementation of a new formation in the win-stay
lose-shift manner may not be a successful managerial rule of thumb.
