Semifinal Stat Pack
03 July 2006, 15:31
Mike Stevens breaks down the critical statistics ahead of this week’s big matches:
As an American sports fan, I have to love numbers. I am not necessarily happy about being dependent on statistics to enjoy sports, but that’s the way it is. Acknowledging the problem is the first step.
Soccer usually offers a relief. The sport’s fluid, uninterrupted style of play makes it hard to quantify performance. And even if commentators have stats, most keep busy calling the game as it unfolds free from the concerns of filling dead air between innings, during huddles or after a timeout is called.
Not so, this World Cup. I knew I was in for trouble shortly after German striker Miroslav Klose put the second ball in the back of Costa Rica’s net in the Cup’s opening match. ESPN’s Dave O’Brien had the call. What did he let us know? That Klose, who was celebrating his 28th birthday by killing the hopes of tens of thousands of soccer-mad Costa Ricans, was the first player to score two goals on his birthday in the opening match of a World Cup being held in his own country. The clauses piled up, one after the other, oblivious to the joy on the field or the replay showing how Klose struck.
O’Brien, a baseball play-by play announcer by trade, was doing what he knows best, deploying a blizzard of stats to fill air time. The approach works well in baseball or football where play stoppage is a way of life. It works less well in soccer. The stats-heavy approach, combined with more than a few mispronunciations and bungled rules interpretations, has 4,000-plus calling for ESPN to fire their announcing crew.
Still, with play quiet for the day, it’s worth taking a look at some pertinent numbers relating to the four remaining teams. On top of traditional stats such as offside tallies and foul totals, a British information management company called Information Builders recently offered a more diverse data set that includes running team totals for bullying the referee, faking injuries and players seen not singing their own national anthem.
Italy has racked up 28 dives, according to the analysts at Information Builders. But the Azzurri seem to know their anthem with only two players forgetting to sing along to ‘L’Inno di Mameli.’ In contrast, French players have been caught close-mouthed 22 times during ‘La Marseillaise,’ the French national anthem. But Les Bleus didn’t take this category. That dubious honor goes to Serbia and Montenegro get who had 33 players abstain during their national anthem, understandable seeing as their country disintegrated shortly before the Cup began.
In the quarterfinals we have two stellar matches numbers wise. France and Portugal will be battling for the tantrum award. Going into Wednesday’s match, the French have a World Cup-leading 23 tantrums entered in the books already. Mon Dieu! But Les Bleus better keep those tantrums coming because Portugal is close on their heels having thrown a collective 22 fits so far.
The home team looks to have the advantage when Germany and Italy meet tomorrow. Germany has racked up 11 goals so far. Italy has 9. At the end of the day, it’s all about putting the ball in the net. Goals people. As Dave O’Brien and the ESPN crew might remind us, 11 is more than 9.
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Excellent analysis, Mike Stevens.
Did anyone out there gather from the GER-ITA game that Germany has never lost in Dortmund? I’m sure glad they repeated it again b/c I can’t imagine anything more important to the game and I didn’t cath it the 12th time they mentioned it!
I would even venture to guess that ESPN’s stat fetishism is a matter of station policy rather than something stemming from the (baseball) background of some of the announcers. The stats they have been spouting are so inane and inapposite that I get the sense that the announcers know it. On the air, they seem to sense that the onslaught of stats is extremely awkward in this game, and deliver them with lifeless monotone.
It seems as if there were a bunch of ESPN stat-goons, standing menacingly behind the announcers, arms folded, making sure they stick to the party line of a stat-saturated broadcast.
I watched both broadcasts (ESPN and UNIV) of the GER-ITA game and I really have to go with the boys at UNIV.
This was more or less their call on Del Piero’s goal:
“GOLAZO! GOLAZO! Viva el espectaculo! Viva la emocion! Viva la Mundial” Or something to that effect. To capture it truly, I should have added more exclamation points and “all caps”.
One last thing though, Stevens. You hold yourself out to be a stat-master, but you failed to cite goals against in your comparison of GER (three) and ITA (just one, and an own-goal at that). So goal-differential-wise, the two were dead even.
Ciao
— Gianluigi Buffon · 05 July 2006, 14:03 · #