Not that I–or probably anyone else–mind, but it’s already clear that there has been a significant increase in scoring at the World Cup this year. Honestly having watched the World Cup over the past 20 years or so I didn’t see this coming. Already teams which are known for their good defense have been punctured–Greece only gave up six goals total in 12 qualification games and they conceded three to Colombia, and Uruguay, which only gave up three goals twice in their 16 qualifiers (including once to Argentina, which you’d expect), gave up three against Costa Rica, maybe the weakest side in the tournament. And then, well, Spain.
I’ve already seen a lot of shoddy defending. There’s been some outstanding offense, but it seems to me that there are also a lot of defenders standing around doing nothing and keepers who have had some real howlers. So what’s going on here? A few things come to mind:
–So many players were involved late in the European club season that they didn’t have proper time to acclimatize to conditions in Brazil. I’ve seen a lot of defenders go down with leg cramp. Even sides like Uruguay aren’t used to it because they’ve got so many players in Europe.
–A lot of teams this time around seem to have subpar keepers. I was surprised Spain stuck with Iker Casillas, and he got ripped to shreds against the Netherlands. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if Brazil or Argentina had a game like that because their no. 1 is questionable as well.
–Seems to me like there have been a lot more fouls called within free-kick range. It might just be my perception but I have seen a lot more free kicks at goal this time around, and referees seem to be cracking down on contact in that area. There haven’t been many goals scored from free kicks, but it puts pressure on the defense and often there’s a breakdown soon after one.
So fluke or trend?
I would caution against drawing conclusions from such a small data set. Eleven games is a meaningless sample.
Absolutely a lot of goals have been scored; 37 in 11 matches, 3.36 per game, which is a full goal higher than 2010 (actually a bit more than a goal in group stage; in 2010 it was about 2.1 goals per game in group play, but goals went up in knockout games.) 2010 was a lower scoring year than most - more goals were scored in 2006, and more still in 2002. 2014 is still way high… but it’s just 11 matches (out of 48 group stage matches) and so it’s wholly possible it’s just two or three flukey games.
Some of the reasons you have suggested COULD be true; it’s entirely possible, and has parallels in virtually any sport I could name, that we are in a time of fewer than normal elite keepers or defensive sides. But, again, we cannot say for sure without more data.
The one explanation I’m skeptical of, though, is the weather in Brazil. It would take some real logical trapeze work to explain why heat is more detrimental to defensive effort than offensive effort.
Not at all on the last point…all the defenders have to be working well together to keep the offense out. One gassed attacker isn’t going to completely hobble an offense, but a single ineffective defeder can cause real problems for a defense.
Are they using a different ball this year? Something not made of leather, but all synthetic material?
You can simply turn that around and point out that attacking is a more mobile activity and so should be more vulnerable to heat exhaustion. Or, to be honest, just make the rather clear observation that there is little connection between hot conditions and scoring. At least in top club play, there is very little correlation between the weather matches are played in and scoring frequency.
Again, we need more data. A few 1-0 or 0-0 games and the average is right back to normal. I’m guessing we’ve just seen a few terrible performances mixed with late game resignation or panic.
Actually, this is the first tournament in living memory where nobody has complained about the ball. It seems to be very similar to whatever they normally play with.
I think an unprecedented amount of teams are playing an attacking style, partly because of early goals (like the Greece game). We just haven’t had the situation where a stalemate has developed.
I’m pretty sure all-synthetic balls have been the norm for many years and several World Cups. A quick Google search seems to confirm that the last real leather World Cup ball was from 1982, so longer than I thought. Link.
However, nearly every time a new ball is introduced, goalkeepers make a fuss about it “moving in the air”. I haven’t yet heard that complaint this time round and in any case I don’t think it would account for the big difference recorded so far, though as noted the sample size is still very small, with nearly half the teams in the tournament yet to kick a ball.
Actually, right now, we have 11 games with an average combined score of 3.36, and a standard deviation of 1.149. If I’m doing my math correctly (and at 5:30 am that’s a distinct possibility) that translates into a 95% confidence interval of +/- 0.777 goals per game…in other words, it already falls out of the 95% confidence interval of the 2010 World Cup group stage average of 2.08 goals per game. Sure, you can say that “if we had a whole bunch of 0-0 games that would change the average”…but that’s sheer theoretical guesswork at this point. After all, there is no guarantee that teams are going to go into a defensive shell later on in the tournament–the first 11 games of the last World Cup saw a mere 1.45 goals apiece. There were a lot more examples of teams holding out for a draw because of fear that a loss would put them in the position of needing two wins to advance. That doesn’t seem to be happening now. Five of those 11 games in 2010 were draws, as opposed to zero (!) at this stage of the 2014 World Cup.
The point is that already we’re seeing a significant change beyond expected random deviation, even at this early stage of the Cup. To be honest, even as a data analyst I was surprised at that. What I have noticed is that a lot of games are ending with three goals. Results with similar scores do cut down on the standard deviation of the total and shrink the confidence interval…that is one of the drawbacks of the model. But from a scientific standpoint, the difference in goals from the World Cup to the last can be considered significant and real, even after only 11 games.
It might be more difficult to develop a cohesive defense on a national team that only gets together periodically than it is for a club team that plays nearly 50 times a year. Joel Campbell terrorized Godin, who was a stalwart for Atletico Madrid, and Lugano, who faced a lot of firepower at West Brom. And Van Persie and Robben just demolished Pique and Ramos, who have helped Spain win a lot of games the last six years and Barcelona and Real Madrid have had some minor success, too, I’ve been told.
Still, that doesn’t really explain why this Cup is seeing so much more scoring so far. And Pique, win, lose or draw, is still really winning because of whom he goes home to.
Well after the last three matches the average goals per match fell to 3.14. But thanks to the increased number of matches the likelihood that the increased scoring is a fluke didn’t change much. Our 95 percent confidence interval is 3.14 goals +/- 0.81. The 1.062 difference in last year’s scoring to this year’s can be explained by natural variation now about 0.52 percent of the time (a difference of 0.81, under rules of the 95 percent confidence interval, can be explained 2.5 percent of the time as a fluke). It seems there is a genuine increase in goals which cannot be explained by chance.
Someone should do a pie chart.