Lionel Page and Katie Page, "The second leg home advantage: Evidence from European football cup competitions", Journal of Sports Sciences, 25(14): 1547-1556, 2007. [Scribd]

Following up on my discussions of the two-leg competition in football is a very interesting and thorough paper written by British and Australian researchers.  I came across it while reading a Wikipedia entry on the two-leg format in sports.  The paper looks at the last 50 years of European club competition (Champions Cup/League, UEFA Cup, Cup Winners' Cup) and establishes the existence of an advantage to teams hosting the second leg, even after controlling for extra time and the difference in team quality.  They note that this advantage has declined over time, but didn't give a clear reason for that.

I don't have time to make lots of comments on the paper now, so I'll just post a link so that you can take a look at it and I'll talk about the publication later.