Qatar 2022 World Cup Finals - Football related - Discussion of non TA football - Tartan Army Message Board Jump to content

Qatar 2022 World Cup Finals


Recommended Posts

Well, the qualifiers are finally all finished and the complete lineup for the tournament is now known. Unfortunately for us this thread has to go in the non-TA football section. So disappointing, but we carry on. So anything Qatar 2022 related - from opinions to any good bits of reading relating to the tournament. I am going to be covering events for spitballingpod dot com and possibly as a guest columnist on one other outlet but that is to be determined. To get the thread started here's one that was published today - full roundup of the June playoff matches and some (non-serious) predictions for the group stages now that the picture is complete.

https://www.spitballingpod.com/football/2022/6/15/qatar-2022-the-complete-picture

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 1k
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

I've done a 25,000 simulation run of the upcoming World Cup using Python largely based on the Elo ratings after this month's international fixtures, and is therefore subject to change come November; Qatar are given their home advantage.

Each countries' penalty rating among their top twenty outfield players and saving ability among their best three goalkeepers, based on their Football Manager stats, are used (each weighted with the assumption the better players will be on the pitch and better penalty takers will take penalties). This needs refining and will almost certainly consider players who won't be in their nations' World Cup squad at this stage.

Brazil and Argentina are, unsurprisingly, the favourites to win the competition, achieving the feat 18% and 16% of the time respectively; both make the final over 25% of the time and the semi-finals in more than two in five runs.

Spain (8%), France (7%), Belgium (7%), Netherlands (5%), Portugal (5%) and Germany (5%) were among the top eight of winners.

The most open group is Group B, where England win the group 41% of the time and qualify 68%, easily the lowest of any of the most regular group winners, with lowest rated Iran qualifying 42% of the time.

Ghana were the team to reach the knockout stages the least - with just 7% of runs seeing this outcome. Cameroon (11%) and Saudi Arabia (14%) were the next worst.

Fourteen teams qualified over 50% of the time: Argentina (93%), Brazil (92%), France (82%), Belgium (82%), Spain (81%), Netherlands (79%), Portugal (79%), Denmark (73%), Germany (71%), Uruguay (71%), England (68%), Croatia (56%), Switzerland (53%) and Ecuador (52%).

There are several things I'd want to improve: the aforementioned penalty statistics, but also a climate adjustment. I'm fairly certain countries with climates similar to that of the host nation perform better in major tournaments, but need to have a look at how big this affect is and work out how to calculate a numerical estimate of how different each countries' climate is from that of Qatar.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That seems an impossibly hard statistical model to build.

We could test it against past performance and then also against a coin-flip for each match as well. See how much it out-performs each option.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Clyde1998 said:

I've done a 25,000 simulation run of the upcoming World Cup using Python largely based on the Elo ratings after this month's international fixtures, and is therefore subject to change come November; Qatar are given their home advantage.

Each countries' penalty rating among their top twenty outfield players and saving ability among their best three goalkeepers, based on their Football Manager stats, are used (each weighted with the assumption the better players will be on the pitch and better penalty takers will take penalties). This needs refining and will almost certainly consider players who won't be in their nations' World Cup squad at this stage.

Brazil and Argentina are, unsurprisingly, the favourites to win the competition, achieving the feat 18% and 16% of the time respectively; both make the final over 25% of the time and the semi-finals in more than two in five runs.

Spain (8%), France (7%), Belgium (7%), Netherlands (5%), Portugal (5%) and Germany (5%) were among the top eight of winners.

The most open group is Group B, where England win the group 41% of the time and qualify 68%, easily the lowest of any of the most regular group winners, with lowest rated Iran qualifying 42% of the time.

Ghana were the team to reach the knockout stages the least - with just 7% of runs seeing this outcome. Cameroon (11%) and Saudi Arabia (14%) were the next worst.

Fourteen teams qualified over 50% of the time: Argentina (93%), Brazil (92%), France (82%), Belgium (82%), Spain (81%), Netherlands (79%), Portugal (79%), Denmark (73%), Germany (71%), Uruguay (71%), England (68%), Croatia (56%), Switzerland (53%) and Ecuador (52%).

There are several things I'd want to improve: the aforementioned penalty statistics, but also a climate adjustment. I'm fairly certain countries with climates similar to that of the host nation perform better in major tournaments, but need to have a look at how big this affect is and work out how to calculate a numerical estimate of how different each countries' climate is from that of Qatar.

Gotta make allowance for Aussies bringing on their sub keeper for any potential shootout after what happened the other night. The mollusc is demented.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 hours ago, phart said:

That seems an impossibly hard statistical model to build.

We could test it against past performance and then also against a coin-flip for each match as well. See how much it out-performs each option.

 

 

Or whatever animal is assigned the gift of prophecy this time - 'Colin the clairvoyant camel has tipped Iran to beat England'

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, ThistleWhistle said:

Or whatever animal is assigned the gift of prophecy this time - 'Colin the clairvoyant camel has tipped Iran to beat England'

I didn't want to use that one cause the very fact Clyde is able to write a Python program of that complexity is impressive. It took me ages to build a 100 line program to calculate the best fit temperature for cosmic background radiation, and that's just a simple formula then using root mean square deviation to fit the data. Which might sound fancy but is relatively simple.

However i'm confident my program would trounce Toby the terrapin from Munich zoo in analysing COBE data and picking the correct temperature.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

47 minutes ago, phart said:

I didn't want to use that one cause the very fact Clyde is able to write a Python program of that complexity is impressive. It took me ages to build a 100 line program to calculate the best fit temperature for cosmic background radiation, and that's just a simple formula then using root mean square deviation to fit the data. Which might sound fancy but is relatively simple.

However i'm confident my program would trounce Toby the terrapin from Munich zoo in analysing COBE data and picking the correct temperature.

The base of the code was taken from here for the previous World Cup, mostly to save time as I find there's little point in reinventing the wheel, but I find the hardest thing about programming (in this context at least) is simply getting the syntax correct as opposed to the basic logic of what you're attempting to do. As in your example, 100 lines of code to produce something which is conceptually simple can cause major problems as a single thing being wrong with that code messes everything up.

I've made changes to the way a penalty shootout result is calculated, the charts that get produced, some quality of life stuff and I'm looking at a few other changes (including the ones mentioned in my previous post). One thing I would like to do is add a way to input actual results so it can be used during the tournament.

At its simplest all the code does is compare the Elo ratings of each team, use a coefficient to estimate the likely number of goals on average for teams of that skill difference, put that into a Poisson distribution and randomly draw numbers based on that distribution to produce results for each match over a number of simulations.

If two teams have an Elo difference of 100 points - the exact difference between Algeria (41st) and Slovenia (61st) at the moment - the higher ranked team would on average score ~1.38 goals over an infinite number of matches; the lower ranked team ~0.99 goals. Creating a Poisson distribution to determine what chance there is of each team scoring a certain number of goals and working out all the possible scores based on that gives a 46% chance of an Algeria win; a 26.8% chance of a Slovenia win and a 27.2% chance of draw for that specific match (assuming no home advantage for anyone).

This could all be worked out in an Excel spreadsheet, where the Python code is required is for drawing a random number from the calculation for each individual match and progressing the tournament in those thousands of simulations.

Of course with probability, there's never going to be a zero chance of any result happening: at this World Cup we could get a Ghana vs Saudi Arabia final; it's very, very unlikely though.

2 hours ago, ThistleWhistle said:

Or whatever animal is assigned the gift of prophecy this time - 'Colin the clairvoyant camel has tipped Iran to beat England'

Aye, but the real question is whether that camel has been blessed by Allah or not. If it has then we might have a good World Cup to watch. 😁

On 6/18/2022 at 1:05 PM, morrie21 said:

Gotta make allowance for Aussies bringing on their sub keeper for any potential shootout after what happened the other night. The mollusc is demented.

They'll be livid once they find out there's a limited chance of playing in a knockout game, let alone a shootout. If the competition was just penalties, I think their keeper would have a statue in every Australian city centre by the new year.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Clyde1998 said:

The base of the code was taken from here for the previous World Cup, mostly to save time as I find there's little point in reinventing the wheel, but I find the hardest thing about programming (in this context at least) is simply getting the syntax correct as opposed to the basic logic of what you're attempting to do. As in your example, 100 lines of code to produce something which is conceptually simple can cause major problems as a single thing being wrong with that code messes everything up.

I've made changes to the way a penalty shootout result is calculated, the charts that get produced, some quality of life stuff and I'm looking at a few other changes (including the ones mentioned in my previous post). One thing I would like to do is add a way to input actual results so it can be used during the tournament.

At its simplest all the code does is compare the Elo ratings of each team, use a coefficient to estimate the likely number of goals on average for teams of that skill difference, put that into a Poisson distribution and randomly draw numbers based on that distribution to produce results for each match over a number of simulations.

If two teams have an Elo difference of 100 points - the exact difference between Algeria (41st) and Slovenia (61st) at the moment - the higher ranked team would on average score ~1.38 goals over an infinite number of matches; the lower ranked team ~0.99 goals. Creating a Poisson distribution to determine what chance there is of each team scoring a certain number of goals and working out all the possible scores based on that gives a 46% chance of an Algeria win; a 26.8% chance of a Slovenia win and a 27.2% chance of draw for that specific match (assuming no home advantage for anyone).

This could all be worked out in an Excel spreadsheet, where the Python code is required is for drawing a random number from the calculation for each individual match and progressing the tournament in those thousands of simulations.

Of course with probability, there's never going to be a zero chance of any result happening: at this World Cup we could get a Ghana vs Saudi Arabia final; it's very, very unlikely though.

Aye, but the real question is whether that camel has been blessed by Allah or not. If it has then we might have a good World Cup to watch. 😁

They'll be livid once they find out there's a limited chance of playing in a knockout game, let alone a shootout. If the competition was just penalties, I think their keeper would have a statue in every Australian city centre by the new year.

def Linear_regression(x,y):
  sum_x=sum(x)
  sum_y=sum(y)
  sum_xsquared=sum(x*x)
  sum_xy=sum(x*y)
 
  num_pairs=len(x)
 
  inter = ((sum_y*sum_xsquared) - (sum_x*sum_xy))/\
  ((num_pairs*sum_xsquared) - (sum_x*sum_x))
 
  grad = (num_pairs*sum_xy-(sum_x*sum_y))/\
  (num_pairs*sum_xsquared-(sum_x*sum_x))

I have linear regression saved as very useful for working with linear functions. This was one I wrote for hubble constant. Which is amusing as the guy is a atstrophysicist.

Very interesting stuff, i'm shite at python so going to have a read of the scrip and steal anything useful from that dude!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/19/2022 at 12:18 PM, phart said:

I didn't want to use that one cause the very fact Clyde is able to write a Python program of that complexity is impressive. It took me ages to build a 100 line program to calculate the best fit temperature for cosmic background radiation, and that's just a simple formula then using root mean square deviation to fit the data. Which might sound fancy but is relatively simple.

However i'm confident my program would trounce Toby the terrapin from Munich zoo in analysing COBE data and picking the correct temperature.

 

Fair play to him knocking it up defo and might use Clyde's model and Colin's gifts for my world cup accumulator.  

Had an assignment in Risk Management where we created a model to work out what gave best bang for your buck from the budget assigned by the council to knock down an old site and regenerate another - Can’t remember the program but it ran on Excel via a modelling tool so the code wasn’t particularly difficult although for a beginner took me yonks.  There was only about 20-30 options with each having two scores from memory so not particularly complex. 

 

I ran it based on different budgets to take into consideration for underspending so came in on actual budget etc or what they could get spending an extra 10% for example.  However, the bit always remember was getting mid-90% for the assignment as managed to identify the ‘trick’ within the question in that a few of the options were politically undesirable so, despite giving something like the top 20 results when involved, would likely be a challenge to get sign off.  Without those options in didn’t need the model to work it out as some of the other options were basically fluff so one of the conclusions was that it doesn’t matter the abilities of the model if the person responsible for making the decision isn’t really listening to its output unless it’s bent to what they want it to say.     

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/15/2022 at 2:06 PM, morrie21 said:

Well, the qualifiers are finally all finished and the complete lineup for the tournament is now known. Unfortunately for us this thread has to go in the non-TA football section. So disappointing, but we carry on. So anything Qatar 2022 related - from opinions to any good bits of reading relating to the tournament. I am going to be covering events for spitballingpod dot com and possibly as a guest columnist on one other outlet but that is to be determined. To get the thread started here's one that was published today - full roundup of the June playoff matches and some (non-serious) predictions for the group stages now that the picture is complete.

https://www.spitballingpod.com/football/2022/6/15/qatar-2022-the-complete-picture

Thanks, that's a good post, I enjoyed that. 👍

I think Senegal in Group A could be dark horses (to emerge from the group, not to win the thing!). On paper at least they have a good side.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, scotlad said:

Thanks, that's a good post, I enjoyed that. 👍

I think Senegal in Group A could be dark horses (to emerge from the group, not to win the thing!). On paper at least they have a good side.

Cheers Scotlad, appreciate you reading and feeding back. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No Sex In The World Cup Rooms? | Host Country Qatar Bans Sex And Drinking From The Games - The Shadow League

Seven year prison sentence possibly for outside of marraige relations.  Imagine spunking a shitload of money going there to spend your nights drinking tea and playing Scrabble. 

Some poor b@stard will pull a stunner and end up on BBC24 being dragged out his portacabin by Qatar riot police.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

49 minutes ago, ThistleWhistle said:

No Sex In The World Cup Rooms? | Host Country Qatar Bans Sex And Drinking From The Games - The Shadow League

Seven year prison sentence possibly for outside of marraige relations.  Imagine spunking a shitload of money going there to spend your nights drinking tea and playing Scrabble. 

Some poor b@stard will pull a stunner and end up on BBC24 being dragged out his portacabin by Qatar riot police.  

Bet the fifa big wigs will still be allowed to bed their expense account call girls without any risk of jail 🫣

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, ThistleWhistle said:

No Sex In The World Cup Rooms? | Host Country Qatar Bans Sex And Drinking From The Games - The Shadow League

Seven year prison sentence possibly for outside of marraige relations.  Imagine spunking a shitload of money going there to spend your nights drinking tea and playing Scrabble. 

Some poor b@stard will pull a stunner and end up on BBC24 being dragged out his portacabin by Qatar riot police.  

I should be fine taking the wife then!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/19/2022 at 1:55 PM, Clyde1998 said:

The base of the code was taken from here for the previous World Cup, mostly to save time as I find there's little point in reinventing the wheel, but I find the hardest thing about programming (in this context at least) is simply getting the syntax correct as opposed to the basic logic of what you're attempting to do. As in your example, 100 lines of code to produce something which is conceptually simple can cause major problems as a single thing being wrong with that code messes everything up.

I've made changes to the way a penalty shootout result is calculated, the charts that get produced, some quality of life stuff and I'm looking at a few other changes (including the ones mentioned in my previous post). One thing I would like to do is add a way to input actual results so it can be used during the tournament.

At its simplest all the code does is compare the Elo ratings of each team, use a coefficient to estimate the likely number of goals on average for teams of that skill difference, put that into a Poisson distribution and randomly draw numbers based on that distribution to produce results for each match over a number of simulations.

If two teams have an Elo difference of 100 points - the exact difference between Algeria (41st) and Slovenia (61st) at the moment - the higher ranked team would on average score ~1.38 goals over an infinite number of matches; the lower ranked team ~0.99 goals. Creating a Poisson distribution to determine what chance there is of each team scoring a certain number of goals and working out all the possible scores based on that gives a 46% chance of an Algeria win; a 26.8% chance of a Slovenia win and a 27.2% chance of draw for that specific match (assuming no home advantage for anyone).

This could all be worked out in an Excel spreadsheet, where the Python code is required is for drawing a random number from the calculation for each individual match and progressing the tournament in those thousands of simulations.

Of course with probability, there's never going to be a zero chance of any result happening: at this World Cup we could get a Ghana vs Saudi Arabia final; it's very, very unlikely though.

Aye, but the real question is whether that camel has been blessed by Allah or not. If it has then we might have a good World Cup to watch. 😁

They'll be livid once they find out there's a limited chance of playing in a knockout game, let alone a shootout. If the competition was just penalties, I think their keeper would have a statue in every Australian city centre by the new year.

Aye, Nae bother Sheldon.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 months later...

Opening article for my World Cup coverage. Will be in the main covering it for spitballingpod.com although I have been asked to submit a couple of pieces to SportsLook also, which I am more than happy to do.

Anyway, here's what I wrote to introduce things - it wasn't easy. Will just be focusing on the football the rest of the way

https://www.spitballingpod.com/football/2022/11/11/introducing-qatar-2022

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If anyone wanted any evidence of corruption at FIFA this World Cup is it.

How in hell can they have not only awarded Qatar the World Cup but also how can they have not admitted their mistake and backtracked years ago on the grounds:-

Qatar is far too small to host the biggest global sports tournament in the world - it is akin to the FIA allowing a Grand Prix to be held in my living room.

Qatar lacks the infrastructure for such a tournament.

Qatar lacks any history of interest in the sport.

Qatar are notorious for lack of workers' rights treating those that built the stadia inhumanely.

Qatar (as seen this week) treats homosexuality like a crime.

Gobsmacked FIFA have not backtracked.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Caledonian Craig said:

If anyone wanted any evidence of corruption at FIFA this World Cup is it.

How in hell can they have not only awarded Qatar the World Cup but also how can they have not admitted their mistake and backtracked years ago on the grounds:-

Qatar is far too small to host the biggest global sports tournament in the world - it is akin to the FIA allowing a Grand Prix to be held in my living room.

Qatar lacks the infrastructure for such a tournament.

Qatar lacks any history of interest in the sport.

Qatar are notorious for lack of workers' rights treating those that built the stadia inhumanely.

Qatar (as seen this week) treats homosexuality like a crime.

Gobsmacked FIFA have not backtracked.

Russia wasn’t much better 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 hours ago, Big Ramy 1314 said:

So if I am correct, there will be no football in the Scottish premier the entire World Cup, but all other divisions are on... Correct ?

Yes.

 

20 hours ago, Caledonian Craig said:

If anyone wanted any evidence of corruption at FIFA this World Cup is it.

How in hell can they have not only awarded Qatar the World Cup but also how can they have not admitted their mistake and backtracked years ago on the grounds:-

Qatar is far too small to host the biggest global sports tournament in the world - it is akin to the FIA allowing a Grand Prix to be held in my living room.

Qatar lacks the infrastructure for such a tournament.

Qatar lacks any history of interest in the sport.

Qatar are notorious for lack of workers' rights treating those that built the stadia inhumanely.

Qatar (as seen this week) treats homosexuality like a crime.

Gobsmacked FIFA have not backtracked.

Sepp Blatter has been good enough to admit it was a mistake (after spending his bung probably)...

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/nov/08/sepp-blatter-qatar-hosting-world-cup-mistake

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Toepoke said:

Yes.

 

Sepp Blatter has been good enough to admit it was a mistake (after spending his bung probably)...

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/nov/08/sepp-blatter-qatar-hosting-world-cup-mistake

 

Start of his election campaign to get back as fifa head bung taker, I’d trust Trump, Truss & Bojo more than him & they’re all lying crooks 🤯

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...



×
×
  • Create New...