9 ms·
An exploratory statistical analysis of the 2014 World Cup Final
- femg 6y agothanks for sharing this. Want to learn more about this kind of things.
- Equiet 6y agoHi, the author of Deepnote here, this is cool!
- s14ve 6y agoNot sure if you can influence this, but I have two platform suggestions that crossed my mind while reading it: 1. I would make the "Run this article as a notebook" more visible. On a first read, I've completely skipped that part as it's very similar to pop-ups on medium. Having an option to directly run/modify this blog would be pretty amazing. 2. The chosen color scheme of code formatting is a bit odd, but that might be just my subjective preference :-)
- Equiet 6y agoOf course, thanks for the suggestions. 1. I agree, but there is a reason for this. We'll soon be adding the ability to run/modify feature even without the need to sign up so the whole thing will go away. 2. Thanks! We are experimenting with this (the default scheme is different, but we had a lot of people requesting dark mode so trying out different things for the published articles.)
- lowdose 6y agoI really love the dark theme of Sourcegraph in VsCode. https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=sourcegraph.vscode-sourcegraph-theme https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=sourcegr...
- julianz 6y agoNice. Is there a reason that the up-down arrows don't work to scroll the page on Deepnote? PgUp/PgDown work but the arrow keys are blocked for some reason (Chrome, Windows 10)
- Equiet 6y agoNo good reason, it's a bug, thanks for reporting. Deepnote is a data science notebook and we are capturing the up/down key events in the main app so that you can move inside the cells and also between the cells. This article is using the same codebase but in read-only mode. I forgot to disable it in this mode.
- ppod 6y agoIt's surprisingly hard to find practical in-depth pandas code examples like this.
- stephenhuey 6y agoYour browser is not yet supported We're sorry about this, but we don't fully support your browser yet. Let us know at help@deepnote.com which browser you're using and we'll make sure to prioritize it. We currently recommend to use the latest version of Chrome, Safari or Firefox and you should be all set. Thanks! - - - I’m using Firefox 26 on the latest iOS.
- s14ve 6y agoPretty interesting read! I can also recommend the author's medium account[1] full of similar articles (even though in a bit less hands-on format) [1] https://medium.com/football-crunching https://medium.com/football-crunching
- rjtavares 6y agoThey're similar indeed. I wrote the linked post and that blog is mine.
- helloiloveyou 6y agowhat's the function that returns from the pandas dataframe the foul that the german goalkeeper made to Higuain? Jokes aside, pretty good article. I am an Argentinean, so consider that a lot.
- georgiecasey 6y agoHow about Higuain's miss from the German header back to Neuer?
- rjtavares 6y agoOk, so something I wrote years ago hit the HN front page. This is what it feels, uh? I also have a github with more notebooks about football here: https://github.com/rjtavares/football-crunching https://github.com/rjtavares/football-crunching If you gave any questions about football analytics, hit me up. (Gmail and Twitter are the same name as my HN account, if you prefer email or DM)
- programmertote 6y agoDid you do similar analysis to 2018 World Cup? Thanks for sharing your analyses of football/soccer, which is the sport that I'm passionate about.
- rjtavares 6y agoI didn't, but the good news is that data is freely available here: https://github.com/statsbomb/open-data/ https://github.com/statsbomb/open-data/ Try it!
- imrankhan17 6y agoI created a simple web tool to convert StatsBomb's json data to csv and download for any match: https://nr815jz59d.execute-api.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/sb/ https://nr815jz59d.execute-api.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/sb/
- levidxyz 6y agoThis is awesome. Where does the raw data come from? I'm curious how they collect such detailed data (e.g. is there someone tracking every time a specific player takes a certain action?).
- rjtavares 6y agoThere are some companies working in this space, like Opta and Statsbomb. As far as I know, they both use a mix of image processing and humans to collect the data. It takes a lot of work, but also supports a huge and growing industry. E.g. data scouting is increasingly used by clubs to increase the pool of potential hires.
- SkyMarshal 6y agoVery cool. For anyone interested in this kind of tactical analysis, another (though non-computational) one I've enjoyed is http://www.zonalmarking.net/ http://www.zonalmarking.net/.
- dekervin 6y agoIn the same vein, but with a more statistical oriented take on european football you can check https://www.alfadata.xyz/blog https://www.alfadata.xyz/blog. And here is an interview of the founder about his experience building the service and data infrastructure behind it http://datapeek.org/interview/alfadata http://datapeek.org/interview/alfadata
- set92 6y agoI dont know why this is here and not in https://datatau.net/ https://datatau.net/
- LanceH 6y agoGermany 2014 was about the best I've seen the game played. Something I watch that seems to differentiate players and teams at every level is what happens on the first touch when receiving a pass. When you first start watching this, you'll notice that as you move up the ranks, the ball just sticks to a pro's feet, preferably in front of them a couple feet away where they are ready to play it again. Watching Germany that year, their first touch was not merely excellent, but aggressively so. They took the ball and instead of settling it, turned it into a rolling ball in the direction they wanted to play. Or a first touch pass. Speaking in wild generalities here and I don't have numbers to back it up. Statistically I would guess that their second touch was on average farther away from them than other teams of comparable level, while still being under control. It reminded me of Tiger Woods when he burst onto the scene. He played the game far more aggressively and relied on his skills to keep him safe rather than traditional shot selection. Germany 2014 decided these slightly riskier touches are consistently possible in the long run and the benefit outweighs the risk. It also seemed that with the aggressive play, there is just more football played -- more chances. The more chances that are generated, the more it favors the better team.
- Someone 6y agoAfter 2004, where Germany didn’t get through the group stage in the European championships, they realized they had become complacent, and started a project to focus on footballing technique throughout all their teams. That turned their national side from a strong team into a strong team where all players have good technical skills. 2014 is where this led to the first great success (https://www.bundesliga.com/en/news/Bundesliga/confederations-cup-and-under-21-euro-wins-part-of-germanys-strategy-to-return-to-world-footballs-summit-454171.jsp https://www.bundesliga.com/en/news/Bundesliga/confederations...), but they only could play like that because of that decade long process.
- Mikeb85 6y agoWatch Germany vs. France and say that. The Germans stalled and fouled the whole game and scored off a set piece. In the final versus Argentina too, the game was scoreless until extra time. They also needed extra time versus Algeria. Their only real display of attacking was versus Brazil who self-destructed after having their best player (and top 3 player in the world) horrifically injured.
- hoerzu 6y agoHow would turn a team into a vector?
- thom 6y agoIf anyone's interested in doing similar analysis, my company StatsBomb makes a lot of event data available on GitHub, including the last World Cup, lots of Champions League finals, NWSL and FAWSL etc: https://github.com/statsbomb/open-data/ https://github.com/statsbomb/open-data/
- rjtavares 6y agoHighly recommend this and the "Friends of Tracking" youtube channel. Also, follow Thom on twitter, he is one of the smartest and most knowledgeable person in this space.
- thom 6y agoYeah, the Metrica data used in a lot of the FoT stuff is also an awesome place to start: https://github.com/metrica-sports/sample-data https://github.com/metrica-sports/sample-data
- bgrnwd 6y agoStatsBomb has been great for open football data, which is hard to come by. I always enjoy the Statsbomb panels at Sloan too. If anyone is interested in getting started with soccer/football analytics, this is a good place to start: https://github.com/devinpleuler/analytics-handbook https://github.com/devinpleuler/analytics-handbook
- levidxyz 6y agoAre you able to share how StatsBomb collects event data? I'd love to build something to capture stats for local club teams but probably not if it involves computer vision. Thanks!
- thom 6y agoWe do use a combination of humans and computer vision, and some providers (especially of full tracking data) have wholly automated pipelines, but analysts all over the world are collecting stuff manually every day. Really depends what sort of stuff you want to collect - you can use something like SportsCode to match any sort of events to video segments, and if you're a coach or scout you'll know what performance indicators you think are most important. If you just want some sort of team performance metrics you could start collecting shot data (coordinates, defensive pressure, type of assist etc) and build a simple xG model. Nothing you can't do in a spreadsheet or even on paper.
- s1t5 6y agoPandas code with long lines can look so so ugly. Not a dig towards the original post at all, it's just that the pandas API isn't the most pleasant to work with.
- cambalache 6y agoNice as an exercise in Pandas and the whole Python data analysis tool chain, the graphics are awesome. As an exercise on football analysis is pretty useless and feeble, and even worst, judging by the author's name (most probably Brazilian or Portuguese) it led his dislike of Argentina to cloud his judgement. You can perorate all you want about possession and passes completion but if I am a manager and you offer me a first half (who according the author was a Germany slaughter fest) as the Argentinians had it, I will take it every single time. Absent from the analysis are also the clear cut chances of Higuain and Messi (far better from anything than Germany had, despite all the possession) and the controversial disputed ball between Neuer and Higuain. Anyway, it was nice to see the exercise.
- ankit219 6y agoOne of those who doesnt like the use of advanced stats in football. I do watch a lot of football though. My reason is simple: The advanced stats as they are called (xG, xA, xPA, offense actions, defense actions) all end up as a mere tool for disregarding the actual result and providing arguments for which was the better team. Like team A won the match 1-0 but team B were the better team since they had more <<insert favorable stat>>. The idea behind stats should be to contextualize the game I watched a bit more, and not replace the game watching. Then there is also comparing the stats across games. In football(and every other game) there is a different difficulty level associated with each game (fatigue, condition, team condition, opposition condition, tactics, opposition tactics, teammates, chemistry, opposition mistakes, opposition players, adjustments, pressure, and even sheer luck on occasions), which makes the comparison redundant. An offensive team would always have more shots and more possession than a defensive minded park the bus kind of team. Like you said, right now no stat is good enough to give us an idea of how well a team played. Football is a game of spaces, and a lot of things depend on player movements (or lack of) and vision. I find those reports helpful which tells us where a certain team had the advantage and how they maximised it though.
- imrankhan17 6y agoDo you think the game of football is more complex than, say, the global economy? I doubt it, yet we still use data and statistics to analyse the economy, so why not football or any other sport?
- ankit219 6y agoIts not an exact comparison. We use models to analyse the economy but not human behavior. Any sport is a lot about human intelligence, behavior, and skill. Easy to quantify the final output (like numbers that matter such as goals) and compare those. Right now, other than that, we dont have good enough models for any action in football. The context is very important, but that is completely ignored by statistics. Until we get where those things are given due consideration, there is no point quoting or debating over vanity metrics like xG, offensive actions etc. There is a very American tendency to reduct a game to just stats, but that a game is infinitely more complex. You may have just one offensive action in the game and yet still win the game if you are well drilled defensively, and can stop opposition counters.
- zwaps 6y agoOut of interest, do you guys know of other such great data sources for other games, for example American Football? Or are those things mostly proprietary?
- lordgrenville 6y agoNice visualisations! Note that (if you're a little OCD about this like me) you can append a ; to the last matplotlib command in a block to suppress the text that appears before notebook inline plots.