football
From making penalties fairer and taking the perfect free kick, to designing an ideal ball and predicting results using an octopus, it's all there in our collection of football articles. Take your pick!
Is the proposed ABBA rule for penalty shootouts really fairer than the existing rule? Maths shows that it is, and also suggests another, more subtle rule.
England may have bombed out, but the Euro 2016 Championships are still in full swing. Here are some articles by our favourite football expert, Ken Bray
Marcus du Sautoy talks about football, cryptography, and numbers.
In the first part of this article we let maths set the scene for a free kick. Now we continue the drama, tracing the trajectory of the ball throughout the milliseconds it takes it to reach the goal line.
Free kicks will deliver much of the drama in the football world cup this summer. But how should strikers approach them and how does the design on the ball impact on its behaviour in flight? Maths can give us answers...
Remember Frank Lampard's disallowed goal in the 2010 World Cup match against Germany? The ball hit the crossbar, landed well behind the line but then bounced out again. And it all happened too quickly for the ref to spot it was a goal. How these kind of (non)-goals happen and what can we do about them?
What makes a perfect football? Anyone who plays or simply watches the game could quickly list the qualities. The ball must be round, retain its shape, be bouncy but not too lively and, most importantly, be capable of impressive speeds. We find out that this last point is all down to the ball's surface, the most prized research goal in ball design.