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A Bunch of Fives So when all is said and done, we analyse where, when and the quantity of times a ball has landed in the back of a net, past and present, or failed to, and somehow deduce why it was destined to be so. That’s the unenviable task of our resident expert Professor Statto, who brings us the benefit of his incisive intellect allied to half a century of football scholarship. And not least, his wry sense of humour.  He leaves the predictions to others, but he’ll provide you with the ammunition to sustain your challenge through your Score Five campaign. He’ll keep you up-to-date with what’s happening in the competition. He’ll lead you along byways exploring weird and wonderful facets of the game past and present, but always in his own inimitable style. Some comedian once suggested that “98% of all statistics are made up”, but the Prof. cordially invites you all to verify any information he presents – if only because he does most of the calculations in his head. Professor Statto and his amazing statistics. ====================================== Visit the Prof's 2008/09 season archives. Previous analysis A Journey Into Football’s Unknown…. Welcome, friends, to the Score Five World Cup 2010 competition! If this is your first time as a ScoreFiver, I can assure you it’s going to be a lot of fun! We all have our favourite teams, but now, as a competitor, every game in every Group will matter to you: The very fact that you’ve forecasted a result for New Zealand v Slovenia on June 15 will mean you’re anticipating the outcome, or maybe even watching the game! If you’ve just finished the season in our English Premier League or Champions League competitions, welcome back. The experience you gained there should be useful when it comes to making your predictions. You’ll be familiar with a host of the players, but even the tipping experts are going to discover that the World Cup 2010 is something of a journey into the "Unknown" – the global showpiece’s first visit to Africa, new teams Serbia and Slovakia, mysteries like North Korea and not least, a ball that is prone to dips and swerves. The name of this Adidas ball is Zabulani, ‘bringing joy to everyone’ in the isiZulu language. I doubt that it’s going to bring joy to goalkeepers, who are already queuing up to criticise it ! But I digress…. Add to that the fact that 31 teams are playing Away, and suddenly, some ‘obvious result’ games aren’t so obvious any more. As the Cup progresses, I’ll be keeping an eye on the various fans' leagues and reporting on which country’s supporters are the best tipsters – national pride is at stake! Two of my statistician friends have challenged me, having confidently made their predictions, one saying that it’s Australia’s year and the other that Germany are en route to their fourth win. We’ll see soon enough: I invite you look out for the scores of Mr. Norman Norman, the pride of Alice Falls (it’s not far from Alice Springs), or Statistical Norm as he’s better known in his professional capacity at the Wagga Wagga Institute of Big Numbers, and Count Zloli Bachvortz, Bavaria’s most aristocratic number-cruncher. These two are already bombarding me with propaganda for their countries. As a Citizen Of The World, I just hope we see some great football and the best team wins. What will it take to win? You’ll have a good chance of scooping the top prize if you can predict half the results – note that’s results, i.e. correctly predicting the home/draw/away, not scores. In the 31 games of our Euro 2008 competition, no-one reached the 50% mark, and the most correct scores tipped by any player was six. The average player managed between two and three, i.e. 7-10%. Let's hope everyone knows more about the World Cup teams! As for the $50,000 jackpot that the Score Five Supremo is generously offering, I’d call it the Mt. Everest of score forecasting. I know the list of matches includes Brazil v 2000/1 outsiders North Korea, and on the same day, the tricky-looking Ivory Coast v Portugal. It must be a million-to-one shot, but we’ve seen all 10 Premier League results correctly nailed in one week by several players, if not all 10 scores. It adds spice to the competition! Meanwhile, in South Africa…. It’s going to be easier for the 32 teams than it is for you! The winners will face only seven opponents, while you’re up against a thousand! Which team is going to win it? Apart from every patriot and the regular experts giving us their views, we’ve even got banks pontificating on who’ll be holding up the trophy on July 11! A senior economist at Swiss bank group UBS has decreed that the Cup will be going to Brazil. As I’m not impressed with how the banks have managed their own business in recent years, I’m tempted to think ‘You stick to what you’re meant to be doing’, but to be fair, UBS did correctly predict the 2006 winners, and six of the eight quarter finalists. Maybe that explains why most of the banks screwed up in 2007 – too many staff busy with football-related research? In our quest to predict the right scores, or at least, the right results, we ought to bear in mind a few lessons from history. The eight seeded teams are seven of FIFA’s top ranked nine, and the hosts. As everyone knows, only seven teams have won the Jules Rimet Trophy, and they’re all present. Of the top nine most successful teams in the history of the tournament, they’re all there, excepting Sweden who didn’t qualify this time. The bookmakers say the winner will come from this group; the leading mathematicians and statisticians aren’t arguing. They reckon the money men usually get it right.
Five Europeans and three from South America: each continent has won the title nine times, but a European team has never won outside Europe. With six of the previous winners having been successful on home soil, I’m surprised that the hosts are as low as 18th in the odds list. All the other African nations will be well supported, and they’ll be more accustomed to the climate too. Could this be the first tournament with an African finalist? Some useful info for you For most fans, the real excitement will only begin when the knock-out stages start on June 26. In our competition, we’ll be coming into the home straight by then! There are 48 games in the Group stage and only 16 thereafter, so by the time we know the last 16 teams, 75% of the tournament is gone. I don’t know about you, but I think predicting the knock-out results will probably be more straightforward than the Group games, because we’ll be dealing with teams we know more about. I’d feel more confident in predicting the outcome of Italy v Denmark (a Quarter-Final expectation of the bookies) than the Group game between lesser-known Slovenia and Algeria. With that in mind, I suggest you take note of a few pointers I’ve prepared to assist you in evaluating the Group games where the bulk of the Score Five points will be won and lost. For each Group I’ve prepared a table showing the latest FIFA rankings, the Group odds and the overall World Cup odds of each team as offered by the biggest bookmakers at June 3. The seeded teams are in bold, as are those ranked in the top 10.
I hope from this you’ll get a better idea of the relative strengths and chances of each team. What will happen when FIFA’s elite come up against unfamiliar opponents such as the 83rd-ranked hosts and minnows like #105 North Korea? The history of the World Cup history includes a long list of upsets: Cameroon beating holders Argentina on the opening day in 1990: European Champions and World Cup holders France humbled by Senegal in 2002: Northern Ireland (the smallest nation ever to reach the Quarter-finals) defeating host nation Spain in 1982 etc. As a young Statto, I vividly remember returning from Goodison Park with a couple of school-pals after seeing Portugal boot Brazil out of the 1966 tournament, and hearing on the radio of an even bigger shock – North Korea beating European powerhouses Italy, who were again the victims in 2002’s most surprising result, this time embarrassed by Japan. Identifying shocks upfront is nigh-on impossible – that’s why they’re shocks – but in your search for correct results, I offer you the 12 most frequent results from over 700 matches of World Cup history, all the way back to the first finals in 1930.
Those 12 results account for 80% of all matches. Note that there isn’t a four or above anywhere in the list, and games with two goals or less account for 47% of all results. In case you’re wondering if the modern expansion of the finals to 32 teams has changed the pattern of results, I’ve checked the 2002 and 2006 results, and those at the top of the list are still pretty much the same as the all-time list. It did leave me pondering one thing: as there’s only one team genuinely playing at home in each World Cup, why has the first-named team won twice as often as the second in recent finals? I’ll have to do some research on that. How often do the favourites hand out a thrashing to some hapless minnow? A score of four or above occurs in 16% – say one in six – matches, while approximately one game in 10 has a four-goal margin, which suggests to me that when the big guys meet the little guys, the underdogs raise their game, the favourites get nervous, or a combination of both. Especially in the early games, teams seem to be more concerned with not losing than winning, which may account for the number of low-scoring encounters. The average goals per game was 2.30 in 2006 and 2.52 in 2002. I’m relying on Zabulani to increase it this time! Right pals, I’d better call a halt there. I’ll be back once the competition is in full swing with further information for you, and a gem of a story from World Cup history. Until then, look after yourselves, and good luck with your predictions. Prof. Statto. |
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