Final pre-tournament thoughts

Some rambling thoughts, interspersed with some cool World Cup facts that I’ve discovered in the past few days.

* Brazil is responsible for 11% of all victories in World Cup history. They’ve won 67 times.  Meanwhile, the 47 least-winning teams in World Cup history combined have fewer wins than them. The teams are Scotland (4), Japan (4), Peru (4), Cameroon (4), Nigeria (4), Bulgaria (3), Northern Ireland (3), Colombia (3), Costa Rica (3), Ecuador (3), Ireland (2), South Africa (2), Morocco (2), Norway (2), Australia (2), Senegal (2), East Germany (2), Algeria (2), Saudi Arabia (2), Ukraine (2), Ivory Coast (2), Tunisia (1), Wales (1), Iran (1), Cuba (1), Slovakia (1), Slovenia (1), North Korea (1), Jamaica (1), Greece (1), Honduras (0), New Zealand (0), Angola (0), Israel (0), Egypt (0), Kuwait (0), Trinidad and Tobago (0), Bolivia (0), Iraq (0), Togo (0), Canada (0), Dutch East Indies (0), United Arab Emirates (0), China (0), Haiti (0), Zaire (0), El Salvador (0).

* Speaking of which, my prediction for tomorrow is that Brazil will add to their all-time lead: Brazil 2 – 0 Croatia

* Brazil won their 67 matches in 97 chances. The 47 bottom teams took 369 chances to get 66 wins.

* If you aren’t already reading zonalmarking.net, you absolutely should be. Wonderfully detailed tactical analysis for every team at the tournament, which is comprehensible even to someone like me who only sort of gets this stuff. And in a few places, he says pretty much the same thing that I did n my general preview a few days ago (albeit in much more detail). It’s always nice when experts confirm my thoughts.

Brazil has scored the most goals in World Cup history (210) but is only four ahead of Germany.  Brazil has been the all-time leading scorers in the tournament ever since 1950, but Germany has been on their heels most of that time, usually within about 10 goals of catching them, and getting as close as just 3 goals away in 1990.

* Further thoughts on the US team: I’m still not super-optimistic, but the more I’ve thought about the system that we’re playing (a diamond midfield), I’m getting a little bit more enthused. My general feeling is that international teams who ‘overperform’ almost always do so because they function as a coherent unit. They get guys to play roles, rather than just relying on individual talent. And this diamond really does capitalize on that idea. Beckerman is a severely limited player, who is almost certainly not one of the four or five best US midfielders. But he is tremendously disciplined and will play the very specific role he’s been given very well. We don’t really have any great wingers, nor do we have all that much pace. Which is bad because we’re probably going to be trying to play on the counter a bunch. But this diamond formation facilitates that. Altidore isn’t really very good at holding up play and giving the other attackers time to run into things. And there’s no getting around that being a problem. But the diamond helps a bit by making Bradley a much easier option for holding up play in the midfield. I still think we’ll be three-and-out, but I’m starting to convince myself that it wouldn’t be totally crazy if they make it out of the group.

* Italy has the most draws in World Cup history. This is not remotely surprising. Mexico has the most losses (24).  Which is impressive in a sense; you have to be consistently pretty good to rack up that many losses.  Germany and Argentina, for example, are tied for second with 20 losses.  But Germany picked up those losses while winning 48 more games than Mexico.

* The 538 predictions are useless. Don’t pay any attention to them. It includes a ton of stupid or indeterminate inputs that seem to have created some positive feedbacks, throwing some of their predictions beyond the realm of counter-intuitive into utterly absurd.  There is absolutely zero chance that Brazil is an 88% chance to win each of their group games. That’s a ludicrous result that calls the whole thing into doubt.  If you want a more helpful model, check out Michael Caley’s.  It is better because it attempts to do less, making it a useful starting point for conversation rather than an incredibly complex GIGO system.

* Over the past three World Cups, only four teams have lost their opening match and still escaped the group. One is Spain in 2010, who lost their first match and then only conceded one more goal on their way to victory. The other three were Ghana in 2006, Ukraine in 2006, and Turkey in 2002. Ghana lost to Italy, who went on to win. Turkey lost to Brazil, who also went on to win. Basically: if you lose your opening match, you better be the best team in the world or have lost to the best team in the world. Otherwise, you’re pretty much toast.

 

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