FIFA 2014 World Cup - Official Discussion Thread

[Bacon King]

Not directly related to the world cup but Barca just made an initial offer of $120 million to Liverpool for Suarez

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/jul/02/luis-suarez-liverpool-barcelona-70m

[Keystone Phil]

Not directly related to the world cup but Barca just made an initial offer of $120 million to Liverpool for Suarez

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/jul/02/luis-suarez-liverpool-barcelona-70m

Because we just didn't have enough reasons to hate that club!

[Lief 🗽]

And Arsenal looks to be swooping in to buy Alexis Sanchez to help pay for it. Wonderful news!

[King]

This is my problem with Nate Silver...

I agree with what you said and I'm not a fan of his kind of analysis. But I'd rather dismiss it for being boring than being questionable, because it doesn't seem to be anymore questionable than asking Gilberto Silva who he thinks will win.

/538 discussion

Not directly related to the world cup but Barca just made an initial offer of $120 million to Liverpool for Suarez

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/jul/02/luis-suarez-liverpool-barcelona-70m

That'll take a real bite... out of their... revenue.

[homelycooking]

/538 discussion

Yo, King, I'm real happy for you and Imma let you finish...

It has always seemed to me that association football is just a very difficult thing to analyze statistically on a micro level in that there's no real good way to quantify most of the action that takes place in a match. Unless a particular offensive effort culminates in a goal or a shot on goal, it's difficult to explain how it might have contributed to a team's victory or defeat and to what degree. That isn't to say that what happens outside the goal-box is unimportant, but it may as well be to the statistician if he can only describe a game in terms of the shots made by the offense and by the goals saved or allowed by the keeper.

The more popular American sports seem so different to me not really because of the higher frequency of scoring, but because the nature of those games lend themselves to fanatically detailed statistical analysis. A game of baseball is subdivided into nine innings, several dozen at-bats, and hundreds of opportunities in which a pitcher can throw strikes and cause outs or in which a batter can get hits, reach the bases and score runs. Each player can be judged in his various roles over a sample size of thousands of pitches or at-bats or outs or innings, and we can describe a player's or a team's propensity to win future games in terms of ERA, OBP, WHIP, WAR - sabermetricians are always devising new statistical indexes and averages to make use of the vast quantities of data available to them in the service of predicting outcomes. On the other hand, gridiron football's obsession with measurement is brutally simple - the game is, after all, played on a 100-yard ruler painted into the grass, and every yard gained is a measurable and quantifiable achievement in pursuit of the next first down or touchdown.

Baseball and gridiron football reward their audiences constantly with intermediate indicators of the progress of the game. A strike, a hit, a yard and a down are all, in some sense, stepping-stones toward victory or defeat. Association football does not provide such continuous statistical gratification. The wonder of tactics, coordination and athletic achievement that is scoring a goal can be the logical and elegant culmination of a team's combined effort, though it might confound our desire to subject the game to the familiar tortures of statistics.

[King]

There's stats now on possessions, distance, and passing success in the game. I would say soccer stats tell a better story than NFL stats. NFL stats for defense and offensive line range from non-existent to awful.

[7,052,770]

For everyone's reference:



It's too small of a sample size to really judge how good his probabilities are, but on first glance they seem pretty good. He really blew Group D, but that's what happens when England is surprisingly bad AND Costa Rica is surprisingly good in the same group. You can see how his formula gave Costa Rica more respect as the tournament went on.

Here is a very rough breakdown at the levels of odds. It's still too early for any valid mathematical analysis (I guess I could run the Chi-Square test if anyone wants), but again his numbers appear to be doing pretty well:
CATEGORY   Y   N   PERC%
0-14         1   15   6.3%
15-24       4   26   13.3%
25-34      15   37   28.8%
35-44       8   17   32.0%
45-54       6    6   50.0%
55-64       5    1   83.3%
65-74      10    1   90.9%
75+          7    1   87.5%

[Lief 🗽]

Sanity prevails! http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/jul/03/luis-suarez-training-suspension-fifa

Let's hope FIFA reduces further this ridiculous and completely unjust punishment.

[patrick1]

Can someone tell me why Barcelona is seeking Suarez? Seems an impulse buy with huge risk.

[NewYorkExpress]

Can someone tell me why Barcelona is seeking Suarez? Seems an impulse buy with huge risk.

Ratings/attendence must have been down last season.

[Franzl]

[Antonio the Sixth]

I think this will be one of the first matches where I'm not rooting for anyone. I just hope the best team will win.

[bore]

I think this will be one of the first matches where I'm not rooting for anyone. I just hope the best team will win.

The whole point of the tipping competition is to give you someone to root for in each match

[Keystone Phil]

Yeah, seeing one of the teams advance from France-Germany will be painful for anyone that isn't awful. That said, it has the potential to be a classic!

[minionofmidas]

Can someone tell me why Barcelona is seeking Suarez? Seems an impulse buy with huge risk.

Ratings/attendence must have been down last season.

There is that thing hanging over their head...

http://elpais.com/elpais/2014/04/02/inenglish/1396441975_310435.html

They've successfully prevented it from being in force this summer... but are fully expecting it to be next summer. So they're getting two years' worth of transfers in.

[Tender Branson]

If anyone wants to watch the game with actual German commentary:

Link

[Tender Branson]

Good game by Germany so far, much better than in the Algeria game.

Not that France is playing bad or anything, Germany is just better.

[Tender Branson]

Lulz:

[GMantis]

If anyone wants to watch the game with actual German commentary:

Link

"Diese Sendung steht Ihnen aus rechtlichen Gründen leider nicht zu Verfügung."
Wonder what lawful reasons are these exactly? Being in the wrong country?

[Keystone Phil]

Massive Neuer save. And the Pigs go home.

[Franzl]

Neuer is a hero!

[Lief 🗽]

Pretty comfortable and straightforward 1-0 victory in the end. Germany could have won by a few more if their final pass/shooting was a little better in the last twenty minutes.

Germany might just end grinding out a championship after all...

[Tender Branson]

Someone needs to do a gif with:

Neuer raises arm, punches ball away and says: "Like I care ..."

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I wonder if they ever go "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL!" when they do it.

[Lief 🗽]

Someone needs to do a gif with:

Neuer raises arm, punches ball away and says: "Like I care ..."

Neuer is one of the top five players in the world, on the level of Messi and Ronaldo, and if you disagree with me I will fight you in real life about it.