England to win World Cup, says JPM quant model
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In the world cup itself, the English barely manages to graduate the group stage when, bruised and battered, it meets a Latin American or stronger European team that promptly wipes the floor with them in the next round.
A band of heros only few weeks ago, they then return to England to have the UK tabloids wipe the floor with them once again.
That's a soccer tradition many of us look forward to seeing again next month, in South Africa.
Like that sticker from an earlier World Cup says: "Pride. Passion. Belief."
Don't be so pessimistic!
This result is good news, now I don't have to watch any of the world cup. Rather watch sports where cheating is not such an integral part of the game, and where the officiating body actually tried to discourage it rather than encourage. (from a bitter aussie)
The media has hyped a lot of England's "stars" into the stratosphere so that a lot of people believe the rubbish that's published about them. Every time the World Cup rolls around all England have to do is show up and they'll win it. And when they don't it's the end of the world. Just cos you invented the sport, doesn't mean you have a divine right to win it! In Europe, I would admire the likes of Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands a lot more than England as they have a lot of fine, natural footballers (not to mention they generally play better as a unit) and I'd suspect one or two of the should reach the semis at least.
ps. I hope France get annihilated in the group stages. Yes, I'm Irish. Those rotten cheaters should never have been permitted to get on a plane to South Africa. Even if you're French you shouldn't support your own country. C'mon Mexico!
Full rankings (updated periodically): http://soccernet.espn.go.com/spi/rankings/_/view/worldcup?cc...
Methodology: http://soccernet.espn.go.com/world-cup/story/_/id/4447078/ce...
Every single World Cup in the past has turned up surprises in the weirdest kind of way.
My opinion is Spain 1st, Brazil 2nd, Ivory Coast 3rd
The beautiful thing about football (and maybe the reason it is not that popular in the US) is that stats don't matter nearly as much as they do in baseball, american football and basketball.
It's more likely that the David's can beat Goliath. This is also compounded by having a knockout cup (where the Goliaths can and do go out) and the teams playing each other in a league far less than most American sports, at about 25 matches a year. That's roughly the same as the NFL, but nothing like baseball, which is insane.
The NFL season feels like it's over before it began. I guess the nature of the game is such that very few players could last much longer anyway.
There are certainly fewer stats altogether and the stats that exist are more team-oriented stats, but I still don't really buy your conclusion.
For a counterpoint, baseball is pretty much the king of sports in terms of statistics and it's still pretty damn hard to predict a world series winner at the end of the regular season, much less at the beginning of the season.
As a contrast, baseball is easier to quantify with stats because it's a series of discrete events.
In most sports statistical analysis, you try and drill down to a discrete event. In baseball, it's something like at-bat or on-base. In basketball, it's per-possession (though this isn't enough). But in soccer, what can you do? Per-possession is difficult because it overlooks the 21 other players on the field. Everything is team-oriented.
The other point to make is that baseball controls the combinatorial explosion by either having the players act in relative isolation (when fielders handle the ball) or by grouping them in tiny groups of two or three (pitcher, batter, and to some extent the catcher), one of whom is generally a constant in any given game (the catcher), and one of whom only changes a few times per game (the pitcher). This is a fairly restricted set of possible matchups, and these are replayed over and over to get better stats. That's why baseball is the statistician's dream.
Similarly, in basketball there are fairly few players on the floor, and they tend to match up with each other fairly predictably. And while American football puts 22 players on the field, most of them never touch the ball, and most of the remaining players do the same sort of job over and over in the same relatively small part of the field, interacting with the same small subset of players on the other team.
But soccer is all over the place. ;)
Just because you don't understand soccer isn't reason alone to describe it as "all over the place". It's a very exciting team sport (when played properly) and full of formations and tactics that coaches constantly try to innovate with:
The classic 4-4-2 formation
Beckenbauer's/Dutch football's 4-3-3
Jose Murinho's 4-5-1...Google em!
Also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_(football)#Common_mod...
Maybe new stats collected at a later date will matter as much as those collected in baseball... or maybe not.
For some reason, soccer nations seem to enjoy the fact that any team can win any game, due to the nature of the game. It is such a low scoring game, that one goal can decide the game. So all it takes is an incredibly lucky kick, or cheat, for a side to win.
You don't see this in many other sports.
So while the Premier league the result is certain (either Chelsea or Man United), the World cup, where in the later stages one game decides whether you move on or not, anyone has a chance.
True, the 'one lucky kick' possibility also means that your team wins when it really shouldn't have. Is this really satisfying to a supporter?
(I've also heard it concluded that the glut of scoring makes basketball less appealing for similar reasons, but I haven't followed it enough to determine whether this is true).
It means as a supporter, you are always on the edge of your seat, cheering your team on, because you know what can happen if they falter.
It also means that the rare occasions where you are 3-4 0 up and the game is safe are just that much more satisfying ;).
This season just gone, i think the average goals per game in England this year was about 2.5. Sure this average has an upward trend by games like a 7-0 thrashing that Chelsea dished out in the last game of the season. The German league has an even higher average goals per game (cant seem to find that stat at the moment..)
There are low scoring games, but that is part of the way the game works, but I definitely would not say a low score is a regular thing week in week out anymore.
As to the hooligans that truly are complete idiots, there is no other explanation for their behavior other than stupidity. Its a gang mentality that causes the problem, not the game itself. There are some epic rivalries in Europe where the fans do really hate each other, and it goes back to an identity/gang thought pattern.
You should also point out that La Liga (the Spanish Premier League) while very easy on the eye, is possibly the most uncompetitive league in the world as only Real Madrid or Barcelona will ever win it.
I can't seem to track down the article now, but I sort of remember the logic...
If Team A beats Team B, then Team B beats Team C, then Team C beats Team A, then you've demonstrated at least a 33% probability of a fluke outcome in the soccer bracket. This is highly simplified of course, but repeat this analysis over a much larger sample size, and you get some pretty convincing results (and I really wish I could find that paper now).
http://www.amazon.com/Soccernomics-Australia-Turkey-Iraq-Are...
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/infographical-mor...