Soccer

Look Out, Messi: Erling Haaland Is Coming For Your 50-Goal Club

By Daniel Levitt

Jan. 31, 2023, at 6:00 AM

After Erling Haaland scored twice in his first league game after the World Cup break, one British newspaper described him as “Head and shoulders above the rest.” It was a reference to the Norwegian’s striking long blond hair and a popular shampoo brand. Ever since he signed with Manchester City last summer, there’s no better way to capture how much Haaland has dominated English football.

While the reigning English Premier League champions have yet to storm to their third consecutive league title — City trails this season’s surprise team, Arsenal, by five points with 18 games left to play — Haaland has, on an individual level, more than justified the fear opposing managers felt when a player with his combination of size (he’s 6-foot-3), speed and skill arrived from German side Borussia Dortmund. Entering the new season, the main question was how large the forward’s scoring tally would be. Some said he’d break Andy Cole and Alan Shearer’s single-season EPL record of 34. Others went further and predicted 40.

Few, if any, went on record saying he’d eclipse 50. But after 19 games, Haaland has already netted 25 goals. Among the EPL records he’s already broken include: quickest player to score 10 goals (six games); quickest player to score three hat tricks (eight games); fastest player to 20 goals (13 games) and only player to ever score 20 times before January, despite this season containing a six-week break for the World Cup. With 18 games to go, he’s currently on pace for a previously-unheard-of-in-English-football 49 if he plays all of City’s remaining matches and maintains his per-game rate of scoring.

Whenever Haaland touches the ball — or is even near it — defenders throughout the league are on high alert for potential embarrassment. Surrounded by some of the world’s most gifted playmakers — Kevin De Bruyne, Bernardo Silva and Phil Foden, to name just three — the 50-goal mark is not out of the question this season.

And it’s not just English records Haaland has in his path of destruction, either. Looking at the best single-season totals ever in Spain’s La Liga, Italy’s Serie A, Germany’s Bundesliga and France’s Ligue 1, Haaland is quickly climbing the combined record books of Europe’s Big Five leagues. If the Norwegian forward continues at his current strike rate, only Lionel Messi’s mesmerizing 50-goal La Liga campaign for Barcelona in the 2011-12 season will stand in his way for the most in the Big Five leagues’ history.

What makes Haaland’s inaugural EPL campaign even more outstanding, though, is that he’s doing it at just 22 years old. Messi was 24 when he scored 50 and had spent the previous seven seasons building rapport with Barcelona’s first team. When Cristiano Ronaldo netted 48 times for Real Madrid three seasons later, he was 29 and well into his prime. Then there’s the fact that Haaland is doing this in a league regarded as the richest — the EPL is forecast to generate €7.1 billion this season, almost double that of second-place La Liga, according to Statista — and best in the world — English teams have performed best in UEFA’s Champions League and Europa League in the past three seasons, according to UEFA’s Country coefficients.

Similar to Messi and Ronaldo before him, Haaland will forever be compared to a contemporary star: Kylian Mbappé. The French phenom burst onto the scene in the 2016-17 season, when he helped Monaco win its first league title in almost two decades with 15 goals as a 17-year-old. PSG then shelled out £166 million to make him the most expensive teenager ever, and the second-most expensive player in the world. So far in his already illustrious career, Mbappé has won five Ligue 1 titles, three French Cups and the 2018 FIFA World Cup with France. After his hat trick in the 2022 FIFA World Cup final last month, the 24-year-old is generally considered as the best in the world.

Haaland’s trophy cabinet is a lot emptier by comparison — Haaland won the Austrian Bundesliga and Austrian Cup with RB Salzburg, and the German Cup with Dortmund. But in terms of individual scoring prowess, it’s Haaland who has been most clinical in front of goal to start his career, compared with any of his three peers.

As Haaland continues to assault the record books, it’s fitting the man leading him toward the game’s pinnacle is the same manager who guided Messi to the top. Pep Guardiola is a serial winner — the Spaniard won 14 trophies with Barcelona, seven with Bayern Munich, and in Manchester he has 11 and counting. More so, Guardiola has taken countless players with strong potential and made them elite. At Barcelona, aside from Messi, Pep helped the likes of Andres Iniesta and current Barcelona manager Xavi Hernandez take their games to the next level. At Bayern, he did the same with Robert Lewandowski. And now at City, De Bruyne, Rodri and João Cancelo have all become arguably the best in the world at their position.

But with Haaland, Guardiola has arguably his most advanced player of all at such a young age. As one more measure of his greatness, Haaland took just 20 games to score 25 goals under Guardiola — the quickest to do so, in eight fewer games than Messi. Perhaps the scariest factor of all is how great Haaland might end up becoming under Pep when he becomes even more polished.

Haaland’s ascent isn’t totally limitless. His country’s lack of international success might end up becoming Haaland’s kryptonite in the GOAT debate. The world just witnessed how Messi’s World Cup triumph with Argentina may have cemented his place above Ronaldo, Pelé and Diego Maradona. But Norway, on the other hand, has qualified for only three of the 22 FIFA World Cups — the most recent coming in 1998 before Haaland was even born — and has made just one of the 16 UEFA European Championships. That said, if Haaland can somehow drag his nation to the latter stages of a major tournament, it could be his greatest achievement — aside from the assault he’s currently conducting on the Premier League’s record books.

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Soccer

Liverpool Can’t Spend Its Way Out Of This Mess

By Terrence Doyle

Jan. 25, 2023, at 6:00 AM

When the 2022-23 Premier League season began, the FiveThirtyEight Club Soccer Predictions model gave Liverpool the second-best odds of winning the title.¹ More than five months and 20 matchweeks later, however,² the Reds sit ninth in the table, behind minnows like Brentford, newly promoted Fulham, and Brighton & Hove Albion, and the model gives them a less than 1 percent chance of domestic glory.³

At the same time last season, Liverpool sat in third, nine points behind eventual champions Manchester City, but with a game in hand. The model favored City then — and was eventually vindicated — but Liverpool played nearly flawless soccer from that point forward, buoyed by the signing of former Porto forward and Colombia national team superstar Luis Díaz during the winter transfer window. The Díaz signing was, by and large, one of the great masterstrokes in the history of Premier League winter signings: His non-penalty expected goals plus expected assists per 90 minutes played (npxG+xAG/90) ranked in a tie for ninth (with Phil Foden and Riyad Mahrez) among players with at least 11 starts. 

Of course, the Reds ultimately fell agonizingly short in their pursuit of a record-tying 20th English top-flight title — thanks to an Aston Villa collapse — but their brilliant winter transfer business gave them a puncher’s chance. 

The same can’t be said this season, even if they did recently lure Dutch forward Cody Gakpo — one of Europe’s most exciting young attacking talents, and one of the breakout stars of the 2022 World Cup — away from PSV Eindhoven. As good as Gakpo is now (and as world-class as he may eventually become),⁴ it’s far too little, far too late. Besides, Liverpool’s issues don’t lie with its forward line — they lie (mostly) with its midfield (and an inability to keep opponents from scoring first). 

To put it lightly, Liverpool’s midfield is a mess. It is a miserable combination of being too old and too injured. Club captain Jordan Henderson — whose presence at Liverpool has been simultaneously fraught (unfairly) and decorated — was probably never meant to play as many minutes as he has in his age-32 season. The same goes for maestro Thiago Alcántara and destroyer Fabinho, both of whom are on the wrong side of 29. 

A year ago, those three comprised one of the best midfields in world soccer — a combination that (more or less) brought Liverpool to the precipice of an unprecedented quadruple.⁵ As such, they each played more than 2,300 minutes across all competitions, which is a lot of minutes for any player, let alone players in (or approaching) their 30s. It’s impossible to know what manager Jürgen Klopp was thinking at the beginning of the season, but it’s also somewhat unbelievable to think he planned to play his midfield elder statesmen as much as he’s been forced to this season. However, long-term injuries to Curtis Jones, Naby Keita, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and loanee Arthur have given Klopp precious few options but to run it back.

Signing a midfielder during the transfer window (which ends Jan. 31) would make sense — probably more sense than signing a forward, even as Díaz and fellow forward Diogo Jota are sidelined with long-term injuries of their own — but to this point, Liverpool hasn’t dipped its toes into the market to improve its fortunes. And it might just be that Liverpool can’t be fixed (at least not this season). When a team relies on a strong press — which is to say, when a team relies on defending from the front (Díaz and Jota are two fantastic pressing forwards, but have been out for months) — and the press is broken, it makes the midfield’s job, and the job of the back line, a lot harder.

So, is Liverpool’s season over? Not exactly. The league title is almost certainly out of touch, and the same can be said for a top-4 finish, which would be borderline catastrophic financially — Champions League qualification equals tens of millions of dollars that clubs can use to reinvest in the squad and facilities, making them more attractive to potential future signings. But the Reds are still alive in the FA Cup and the Champions League. Klopp’s teams have historically been monsters in knockout tournaments — Liverpool has reached the final in three of the past five Champions League campaigns, winning one, and won the FA Cup last season — so silverware is still a possibility.⁶ But without signing a midfielder (or two, or three), that possibility is dwindling by the day.

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2022 World Cup

Argentina And France Lived Up To The World Cup Final's Hype — And Then Transcended It

By Terrence Doyle

Dec. 19, 2022, at 1:36 PM

The 2022 FIFA World Cup Final was simultaneously billed as a heavyweight bout between Argentina and France (two of the world’s most iconic and successful soccer-playing nations) and Kylian Mbappé and Lionel Messi (two of the best players to ever set foot on a pitch). And the match certainly lived up to its billing — even if it took more than an hour to find its footing as an all-time classic.

The game’s roller-coaster ride lifted Argentina early, as La Albiceleste was dominant in the first half — it won the expected goals (xG) battle by a whopping 1.49 (including one penalty shot) to 0.00, according to StatsBomb.⁷ After just 36 minutes, Argentina found itself up 2-0 against a French team that couldn’t find a single first-half shot,⁸ let alone a first-half goal. The situation was so grim for Les Bleus that manager Didier Deschamps decided to make two first-half substitutions — Randal Kolo Muani for Ousmane Dembélé, and Marcus Thuram for Olivier Giroud — in the 41st minute, apparently not trusting that his team could make it to halftime without sustaining further damage.

For Argentina, the opening 45 minutes were magnificent. After Messi converted a penalty in the 23rd minute — something he’s weirdly struggled with in his career — he made an audacious pass from midfield to Julián Álvarez, who quickly sprung a sprinting Alexis Mac Allister, who found Ángel Di María⁹ arriving at the back left post to make it 2-0 in the 36th minute. France was rattled; Argentina was in dream land. It looked like the titanic showdown would be a massive letdown.

The second half was a different story, though it took some time for that story to develop. Kolo Muani and Thuram gave France more flexibility up top, allowing Mbappé to drift into more central areas on the pitch.¹⁰ Kolo Muani was able to get open in the 68th minute to register France’s first shot of the match, while Thuram made the second-most progressive passes for France, despite playing just 80 minutes.

If the subs supplied the spark, it was Mbappé who (eventually) lit Lusail Stadium ablaze. After a relatively pedestrian opening 70 minutes, during which he attempted zero shots (!!!), the French maestro took over. He scored a penalty in the 80th minute to put France back within touching distance before scoring one of the greatest goals in World Cup history¹¹ to knot things up at 2-2 just 96 seconds later. In less than two minutes, Argentina had gone from dreaming of the eventual victory parade through Buenos Aires to fighting for their World Cup lives. That’s what happens when you get punched in the mouth — twice — by the only player on Earth who breathes the same rare air as Messi.

Of course, Messi was still on the pitch. The same Messi who made and received the most progressive passes on the day. The same Messi who, at 35 years old, is still capable of terrorizing the best defenders in world soccer. The same Messi whose legacy — for better or worse — probably hinged on winning this particular soccer match. So when Messi scored in the 108th minute, it felt as if the Soccer Gods had finally had their say. It would be Messi and Argentina’s day to shine, and Mbappé and France would have to wait another four years; there would be no repeat. 

But the Gods are fickle, aren’t they? To make things interesting — as if they weren’t already — Argentina conceded a second penalty with less than two minutes remaining in the second half of extra time. Up stepped Mbappé, and suddenly the score was level again, this time at 3-3. In the cruelest¹² scenario possible, the 2022 World Cup would be decided on penalties. 

Lucky for Messi and Argentina, goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez is one of the finest penalty-shot stoppers in the world — mind games and all.¹³ Martínez stopped Kingsley Coman’s shot — France’s second — and did enough to put Aurélien Tchouaméni off on France’s third. In a satisfying bit of symmetry, it was Gonzalo Montiel — whose handball in the 116th minute resulted in Mbappé’s hat-trick goal from the penalty spot — who tucked away the winning penalty in the bottom left corner of Hugo Llloris’s goal.

And so, finally, Argentina hoisted its third World Cup trophy, and Messi got his seat at the head of a table that includes the likes of Diego Maradona and Pelé. He also got the Golden Ball, awarded to the tournament’s best player, but something tells us he doesn’t care all that much about that one. For Messi, Qatar was about a win for his team or bust. And what a win it ended up being. 

2022 World Cup

Mbappé vs. Messi Is The World Cup Final Soccer Fans Deserve

And one that could represent a changing of the guard in the sport.

By Terrence Doyle

Dec. 16, 2022, at 10:29 AM

When Argentina and France met in the round of 16 at the 2018 World Cup in Russia, the two traditional soccer powerhouses produced the most exciting game of the tournament. ¹⁴ It had everything, from a breathtaking 80-yard run that resulted in an early penalty, to a 30-yard wonder strike that leveled the score at 1-1 just before halftime, to multiple lead changes, and everything in between. In total, La Albiceleste and Les Bleus produced seven goals on the day, with France eking out a 4-3 win.

For Lionel Messi and Argentina, the sound of the final whistle at Kazan Arena might have felt like a death knell. The GOAT turned 31 a few days before the match kicked off, and a player’s 30s are rarely as productive — or as physically kind to him — as his 20s. Another World Cup had come and gone without Messi lifting the brilliant gold and malachite trophy to the heavens in praise of the Soccer Gods. And he would not get another chance to do so until he was 35.

For France and wunderkind Kylian Mbappé, the final whistle represented something much different — proof that Les Bleus were yet again among the world’s elite national teams¹⁵ and evidence that a changing of the guard might be underway. Messi’s two assists kept Argentina in the game, but Mbappé’s two goals propelled France to the quarterfinals — and, eventually, a World Cup title.

Of course, reports of Messi’s demise proved to be extremely premature. In the 141 domestic-league matches he’s played in since that cruel defeat,¹⁶ Messi has scored 104 goals and added 67 assists for a downright superhuman goal-involvement rate of 1.2 per match. Over that same timespan, meanwhile, Mbappé has racked up 118 goals and 38 assists in 129 domestic-league matches — matching Messi’s obscene goal involvement rate of 1.2 per match.¹⁷

Now, we all get to watch them square off one last time on the global game’s biggest stage. For Argentina, it would be the first World Cup title since Diego Maradona and company brought it home from Mexico’s Estadio Azteca in 1986. For France, it would mean the first repeat World Cup champions since Brazil pulled it off in 1962. For Messi, it would cement his legacy as the greatest player to ever play the sport. For Mbappé, it would make some question whether the former’s claim is legitimate — and plant the seeds for an argument to the contrary. 

Before the final, we wanted to track each team’s trajectory from the last World Cup to the present using Elo ratings. Argentina finished 2018 with an Elo rating of 1915, placing it as the 13th-best team in the world — below the likes of Croatia, Switzerland and rival Uruguay. But in every subsequent year, Argentina has climbed higher and higher up the rankings — eventually finding itself ranked No. 1 in the world, as of Dec. 14, 2022. 

The story has been much different for France: Since winning the World Cup in 2018, Les Bleus have finished each year with a top 3 Elo rating — despite a relatively lackluster showing at the 2021 European Championship. 

Before the tournament began, the FiveThirtyEight World Cup model saw Brazil as the favorite to win the whole thing. (Indeed, the model believed that right until Brazil was knocked out by Croatia on penalty kicks.) But France and Argentina never lagged too far behind, with the third- and fourth-best¹⁸ pre-tournament odds, respectively. Be it based on Elo ratings or our model, two of the world’s four best national teams — one each from the world’s two preeminent confederations, CONMEBOL and UEFA — are about to square off for soccer’s biggest prize. 

Thanks to Messi’s agelessness — and in spite of Mbappé’s meteoric rise — the changing of the guard remains incomplete. Maybe that all changes this Sunday. Or maybe it never changes at all. There’s only one way to find out.

Check out our latest World Cup predictions.

2022 World Cup

You're Not Imagining Things. There's Way More Stoppage Time At This World Cup.

And it's having more of an impact on the action than ever.

By Ty Schalter

Dec. 15, 2022, at 1:55 PM

With the finalists of the Qatar 2022 men’s World Cup decided, it’s a perfect time to look back on some of the incredible moments that shaped the tournament: Morocco’s stoppage-time brace against Belgium that set the tone for their run to the semifinals, Kylian Mbappe’s sparkling second goal against Poland that put him in the lead for the Golden Boot and sealed a knockout-round win in the 91st minute, and Argentina blowing a 2-0 quarterfinal lead to the Netherlands 11 minutes past the end of regulation time (before forcing, and winning, a penalty-kick shootout that kept Lionel Messi’s World Cup title hopes alive).

Wait a minute — just how much of this World Cup has happened during stoppage time?

From the opening match, it was clear that this competition’s official time was going to be unusually kept; Ecuador’s 2-0 cakewalk against their Qatari hosts went on 10 minutes and 18 seconds longer than expected. FIFA referees committee chairman Pierluigi Collina soon confirmed that throughout this World Cup, officials would be adding much more time than usual, at least in part to punish teams that deploy time-wasting tactics.

With all but two matches¹⁹ in the books, the record is clear: These games have been running far longer, on average, than in any previous World Cup. But according to ESPN’s Stats & Information Group, it isn’t a one-off. It’s an acceleration of a decadeslong trend:

In Russia 2018, there was a then-record average of 7.3 added minutes per regulation game (i.e., excluding overtime periods). But that was still, according to FiveThirtyEight’s research, nowhere near how much time should have been added if officials were really trying to account for every second the ball was out of play. Thirty-one of the 32 games FiveThirtyEight measured undercounted stoppages by at least two full minutes. Twenty-one undercounted by at least five minutes, and 11 undercounted by an incredible eight minutes or more. Had 2018’s officials accurately tracked every lost second, an average of 13.2 minutes would have been added to every game — nearly double the actual average.

The 2022 added-time average, 11.6 minutes, isn’t quite that high. But it’s a 59 percent increase over 2018, a 93 percent increase over the prior record, set just four years before that, and a 136 percent increase over 2010. All that added time doesn’t just stretch out the length of the game, it means a larger share of all minutes being played are ones that weren’t originally on the game clock. And with stoppage time accounting for so much of these games’ total time, it’s no surprise that a decent chunk of the tournament’s most meaningful soccer has been played beyond the 45th and 90th minutes.

Some of that is because a record 11.5 percent of all the regular-time soccer at this World Cup has been played after the referee’s watch has already run for 90 minutes. But even after accounting for all that added time, a disproportionate amount of offensive action has still been concentrated within it. In Qatar, 12.6 percent of all goals have been scored — and a record 13.8 percent of all expected goals have been generated — during stoppage time.

It’s not unusual to see such a flurry of activity during the extra minutes officials add to the clock, since those moments are usually among the most frenetic in any game — particularly at the end of the second half, where the majority of regulation stoppage time takes place. (The average 2022 World Cup game has seen 7.6 extra minutes tacked onto the end of the second half, nearly double the 4.1-minute average added to the end of the first half and more than the average added to entire games in 2018.) Only one World Cup since 1986 — the 2010 tournament in South Africa — didn’t feature a disproportionate share of xG taking place during stoppage time, relative to its share of all minutes. The desperation of a close game in its final minutes is a good recipe for creating scoring chances.

But because there has been a concerted effort to add more time than what the game clock prescribes — and it’s clearly working — that means stoppage time is taking on a more prominent role in determining the outcomes of World Cup games. And that trend might continue: The last time there was such a significant jump in stoppage, from 1990 to 1994, there was a one-cycle-later spike in the share of goals and xG generated during those minutes. In 1998, the share of minutes played in stoppage time only increased from 5.4 percent to 5.8 percent — but the share of xG generated in those minutes jumped from 6.0 percent to 10.1 percent, presumably because teams could actually plan tactics for what to do with all that extra time. If this trend repeats itself, the expanded field of 48 teams might show up to the 2026 men’s World Cup co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico prepared to make even better use of their games’ extended final minutes.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. One might even argue it makes for a more exciting product, despite taking longer to consume. Actual xG generated during non-stoppage time has been roughly flat over the last three World Cups, so it’s not like the regular-time action has been more boring. But it’s definitely a different thing than we’ve seen in World Cups past. And if the trend toward ever-increasing amounts of stoppage time continues, it’s a thing soccer fans should get used to seeing more of at the game’s most famous tournament.

Neil Paine contributed research.

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2022 World Cup

Where Will The Goals Come From In The World Cup Semifinals?

By Terrence Doyle

Dec. 13, 2022, at 6:00 AM

During the past three weeks, a lot of ink has been spilled to bemoan a perceived lack of goals scored at the 2022 World Cup. Whether due to a spate of early 0-0 draws during the group stage or goals being taken off the board by way of VAR — its dystopic eye focused on exerting maximum joylessness on a tournament already fraught with surveillance concerns — the claim remained the same: The first World Cup on Middle Eastern soil wasn’t producing enough scoring.

In reality, though, the 2022 World Cup is producing goals at precisely the same rate as almost every World Cup dating back to 1998.²⁰ Including World Cup 1998 in France, four of the past six renditions²¹ yielded exactly 1.3 goals per game — the same rate as in Qatar, through the 2022 quarterfinals. By contrast, the 2006 (Germany) and 2010 (South Africa) World Cups produced just 1.1 goals per game.

And since this tournament isn’t some dull, goalless anomaly — but rather quite typical when compared with its predecessors — let’s take a step back before the semifinals to look at how those goals are being scored. Specifically, we’re going to focus on the four remaining teams and where their goals have been coming from — with an eye on where they may come from going forward as well. 

Argentina

La Albiceleste have scored 1.69 goals per 90 minutes in Qatar, making them the seventh-most prolific scorers at the tournament. In total, Argentina has scored nine goals — two from the penalty spot, and seven from open play. Predictably, Lionel Messi has been involved in six of those goals, scoring four and assisting on two others. In Qatar, Messi has nominally been deployed as a forward, but his role for club and country has always been more nuanced than the definitional realities of any one position. 

Almost everything Argentina does going forward goes through Messi, who has mostly occupied spaces on the right and right-middle portions of the attacking third of the pitch at this World Cup. A quick look at an Argentinian “touch-map” in the attacking third (courtesy of ESPN’s Stats & Information Group) confirms this — these are the areas from which Argentina prefers to initiate attacks in the opposition’s half. 

It’s perhaps no coincidence, then, that four of Argentina’s seven non-penalty goals have come from the right side of the field.

World Cups don’t offer significant sample sizes — and they are full of chaos — so anything can happen during Argentina’s semifinal duel with Croatia. But if Messi and company do end up winning it all in the desert, it’s a safe(-ish) bet that the winning goal(s) will come from the right part of the attacking third.

Croatia 

There isn’t a ton to be said about Croatia’s goal-scoring prowess because Croatia mostly doesn’t have any goal-scoring prowess: In five games, the Checkered Ones have scored just six goals. They’ve only led their opponents for 46 minutes in Qatar,²² and four of their six goals came in the same match.²³ What we do know about Croatia is that they spread attacking third touches pretty evenly across the pitch, and when they do score, they’re mostly doing so from the middle of the penalty area. 

In 2018, Croatia made a habit of forcing penalty shootouts during the knockout stages en route to a somewhat unlikely run to the final. (They lost, badly, to France in that final.) The same has been the case in 2022 — two knockout stage matches, two penalty shootout wins in games they arguably deserved to lose.²⁴ Croatia rode its luck in 2018, and that luck eventually ran out. But that team was different from the current iteration in one crucial way — it could score goals. Croatia’s 2.0 goals per 90 minutes were tied with France for the third-most at World Cup 2018 in Russia. Maybe Croatia’s stifling defense will be enough against Argentina. Maybe they can force another penalty shootout, and maybe they can break Messi’s heart. Or maybe their luck will run out a few days earlier this time around.

France 

Les Bleus are the highest-scoring team remaining in Qatar, and most of their goals are coming from two sources: left winger Kylian Mbappé and center forward Olivier Giroud. As such, most of their goals are coming from the left or center of the penalty area. 

The distribution of French touches in the attacking third is relatively balanced between the left and right sides of the pitch (if a bit skewed to the left because a lot of the offense works through, or to, Mbappé).

Expect more of this in France’s semifinal matchup against Morocco. Les Bleus can attack the left flank with Mbappé, a lightning-fast winger,²⁵ or they can switch play to the right and focus on crossing the ball to their more traditional target man, Giroud. Either way, expect them to be dangerous … and expect them to be hungry. No team has repeated as World Cup champions since Brazil in 1962.

Morocco

The Atlas Lions have only scored five goals in five games in Qatar. That hasn’t mattered, however, because they’ve only conceded once — an own goal in the group stages against Canada.²⁶ Indeed, they’ve been the stingiest team at the tournament, allowing just .19 goals per 90 minutes, by far the fewest. 

Alas, this piece is about goals scored, not goals conceded (or the lack thereof). Which brings us to Morocco’s goal chart:

Aside from one goofy Hakim Ziyech goal scored from way outside the penalty area — caused by a ridiculous error by Canadian goalkeeper Milan Borjan — every Moroccan goal has come from inside the box. Again, it’s not a lot of goals. But due to historically great defense from this Moroccan team, goals have been rendered nearly immaterial.

The Atlas Lions have already made history as the first African team to reach a semifinal at the World Cup. If they keep defending the way they’ve done to this point — and find a way to pop a few more goals in the box (or maybe get another gift or two from an amenable goalkeeper) — they might rewrite the history books a couple more times before this tournament is over. 

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2022 World Cup

Supernovas And Surprising Stars Who Might Decide The World Cup Quarterfinals

By Terrence Doyle

Dec. 8, 2022, at 1:49 PM

The quarterfinals of the 2022 World Cup kick off on Friday — and as it stands, Brazil remains favored to win the whole thing (at 33 percent), while Portugal (14 percent), England (14 percent), Argentina (13 percent), and France (12 percent) have roughly the same odds of lifting the trophy two Sundays from now. Ordinarily at this stage in the tournament, we’d break down each head-to-head matchup and try to figure out which teams stood the best chance of advancing to the semifinals. On this occasion, however, we thought it would be fun to profile individual players instead. 

Based on their domestic seasons, there are some players we all expected to produce in this World Cup. But expectations are tough to live up to — so it’s still impressive when a star lives up to that kind of billing on the biggest stage. And then there are players who are tearing things up after giving little indication they were capable of it on the club side of things. Without further ado, let’s get into a couple of players who embody each archetype. 

Stars everyone expected to succeed

Lionel Messi, Argentina: 

What else can be written about Messi that hasn’t been written before? At 35 years old, Messi is still among the world’s elite players.²⁷ He’s probably lost a step, and he no longer plays in one of the world’s two best leagues, but he’s still shredding Champions League defenses (with eight goal involvements in five games). There’s not a single soccer fan on God’s green earth who didn’t expect him to turn up as an impact player in Qatar. 

So far, so good in that regard. Messi ranks in the top two for goals scored, the top 10 in shot-creating actions per 90 minutes, the top five for expected assists, and he paces the field for total progressive passes and passes made into the penalty area. Not bad for a guy whose legs have played 558 professional games at the club level and 169 at the international level — the majority of those being starts. 

With Messi, the facts are the facts: This is his last chance at a World Cup. He doesn’t need to win in Qatar to solidify himself as the GOAT. But a World Cup win — and a Golden Ball — would make his claim airtight. 

Kylian Mbappé, France:

It should come as a surprise to exactly no one that Mbappé currently leads the Golden Boot race, and is the favorite to win the Golden Ball, too. A typically exceptional start to his Ligue 1 season — just 12 goals in the first 14 games, no big deal — has carried over to the World Cup. The 23-year-old is the best player on the planet, and he’s playing like it in Qatar. So far, Mbappé has taken the most shots, has the most non-penalty expected goals, has created the most shot-creating actions and goal-creating actions, and has the most goal contributions (seven) too. Simply put, he’s been far and away the most dangerous player at the 2022 World Cup. 

In a sense, it always felt like this was going to be Mbappé’s World Cup. When France won in 2018 in Russia, he emerged as the tournament’s best young player (and was probably its second-best player, period, behind Croatia’s Luka Modrić). Now, as players like Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo age out of their dominant best, it’s Mbappé who has taken the throne as the world’s best player. 

So far, Mbappé hasn’t disappointed in Qatar. And if he keeps it up, France just might become the first team to repeat at the World Cup since Brazil did so in 1962. At which point, who knows — maybe we might have to start rehashing the GOAT conversation before Messi is even done? 

Club underperformers who saved their best for Qatar 

Richarlison, Brazil: 

Believe it or not, Richarlison has not scored a single Premier League goal in the 2022-23 season, despite making 10 appearances for Tottenham Hotspur — five of those starts. To be sure, it’s been a disappointing first season in North London for him. His non-penalty expected goals per 90 minutes (npxG/90) rate of 0.34 — the best of his career to date — suggests the ball will start going into the back of the net sooner or later, but for now he’s got nothing to show for his decent underlying numbers at the club level. 

So when Brazilian manager Tite named Richarlison in his final 26-man squad ahead of the likes of Liverpool’s Roberto Firmino — who’s experiencing a bit of a renaissance this season on Merseyside — pundits and fans alike were left scratching their heads.²⁸ And yet, in spite of his lackluster domestic form, Richarlison has been one of the best players at the World Cup — and one of many bright spots for a Brazilian team that looks poised to claim its sixth title. He ranks fifth in npxG/90, and scored what might be remembered as the best goal of the tournament in Brazil’s opening match win against Serbia. And let’s not forget the ridiculous goal he scored against South Korea, which included a series of audacious juggles (including a few with his head). 

As we said earlier, Brazil is the favorite to win it all — something that was true both before the tournament and now still in the lead-up to the quarterfinals. If Richarlison continues playing as brilliantly as he has to this point, the Seleção will be a tough nut to crack. 

Marcus Rashford, England: 

The Manchester United forward has had a strange old time of it in the past couple of Premier League seasons. After three consecutive EPL campaigns with 16 or more goal involvements and double-digit scores, Rashford hit a bit of a bump in the road in 2021-22, finding the net just four times and providing just two assists. His underlying numbers were down significantly from 2019-20 — from 0.44 npxG/90 to 0.23 — when he scored 17 goals and was among the top forwards in England, if not all of Europe. He fell out of favor with United’s interim manager, Ralf Rangnick — and struggled with injuries — making just 13 starts over the course of the season. It was a season to forget for one of the brightest young stars at Old Trafford since the vaunted Class of ‘92. 

Things are going a bit better for Rashford in the EPL this season. He’s already tallied as many goals and assists as he did a season ago, and he’s started all but one game for the Red Devils. Still, he isn’t exactly lighting the league on fire, either — his npxG/90 of 0.33 is good for just 18th in the Premier League. But domestic form — good, bad, mediocre or otherwise — doesn’t always predict international form, and that’s certainly been the case with Rashford at this World Cup. The United star sits atop the npxG/90 rankings, and trails only Mbappé in the race for the Golden Boot.²⁹ 

England probably had enough firepower already in Harry Kane, Bukayo Saka, Raheem Sterling, Phil Foden and Callum Wilson to register as serious contenders. Now that Rashford appears to be back to his old self as well, you really have to start wondering if football might finally be coming home this year.

Check out our latest World Cup predictions.

2022 World Cup

Kylian Mbappé Is Having A World Cup For The Ages

By Ty Schalter

Dec. 7, 2022, at 1:36 PM

If France won the last men’s World Cup thanks in part to then-19-year-old Kylian Mbappé, then should Les Bleus repeat in Qatar he ought to take the Jules Rimet trophy home for himself. The full-grown phenom has been, well, phenomenal: After scoring twice in France’s 3-1 win over Poland on Sunday, he’s tallied two more goals than anyone else at the tournament — and France is three wins away from their third title in the past seven World Cups.

After over a decade of waiting for Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi to lead their countries to World Cup victories, smart analysts have concluded the legacy of a modern all-timer shouldn’t depend on winning a quadrennial team competition where the teams are assigned via matching passports. The global concentration of money and talent in top European club teams means the World Cup is not the same competition Pelé took by storm in 1958.

But two weeks shy of his 24th birthday, Mbappé already has netted as many World Cup goals as Messi (nine), and more than Ronaldo or Diego Maradona (who both have eight). He’s averaged a blistering 1.52 goals per 90 minutes in Qatar, behind only England super-sub Marcus Rashford. If France takes its 48 percent chance to beat England on Saturday, Mbappé’s scoring pace projects him to tie Pelé for fifth on the all-time World Cup scorers list by this tournament’s end. And Mbappé is not just scoring goals. He’s having one of the all-around most productive World Cups ever (or at least since detailed data is available, starting in 1966).

According to StatsPerform’s model, Mbappé leads the tournament in combined expected goals plus expected assists per 90. In fact, among players who played at least 90 minutes across three games or more in any given World Cup, Mbappé is generating the third-most xG plus xA since ‘66:

Of course, it helps that Mbappé’s passport pairs him up with a lot of other great players. His fellow Frenchmen Olivier Giroud and Antoine Griezmann rank fourth and fifth in combined expected goals and assists, according to StatsPerform’s models; Griezmann, attacking midfielder Ousmane Dembélé and left back Theo Hernández rank first, sixth and eighth in chance creation. But France was also loaded with talent in 2018, when they won the whole thing, and Mbappé was merely a key part of an ensemble cast. This time, their goals — and their title hopes — run a lot more through his feet. Here are Mbappé’s percentile ranks among all World Cup players in various categories of offensive chance creation in 2022, versus in 2018:

Mbappé is near, if not at, the top of all forwards in Qatar in almost any scoring-related rate stat one could name. Compare his rates of chances created, shots taken and expected goals plus assists to his 2018 output, and Mbappé’s transformation into a dominant scorer is clear. He’s taking shots more than three times as often, scoring goals more than twice as often, and creating chances more than half and again as often as he did in Russia.

But it’s more than that: France has reshaped its entire attack around his quality. In 2018, it was all about the speed of Griezmann and the finishing of Giroud. Mbappé was just one of a swarm of dynamic supporting attackers; he finished fifth on the squad in shot frequency. Yet his average of 0.284 xG per shot³⁰ meant that when he did take his chances, they were great chances. In his 2022 chart, that same stat looks like a glaring deficiency: With just 0.128 xG per shot, he’s ranked 45th of 95 forwards this World Cup. But that’s a reflection of his new primary role – when you take 21 of your team’s 70 shots, they can’t all be bangers.

And as remarkable as Mbappé’s transformation is, France’s might be even more so:

In Russia, France was rather direct: They were the seventh-fastest team pushing the ball upfield, and ranked midpack in average passing-sequence duration and number of passes.³¹ In Qatar, they’ve been much more deliberate. France’s passing sequences have been the seventh-longest, on average.³² They rank 25th in direct speed upfield, and 27th in the share of passes going forward. Only Spain, Argentina and Germany have averaged more touches per 90 minutes.

How do you say “tiki-taka” in French?

What’s more, the slow build-up toward Mbappé has created much more actual offense than 2018’s quick upfield scrambles: In 2022, France has created chances 69 percent more often, taken shots 29 percent times more often and scored 12.5 percent more often.

To an extent, France manager Didier Deschamps was forced into this change by the simple fact that four years have passed. Giroud is 36 and Griezmann 31; both are well past their peaks as scorers. Mbappé’s potential to become an all-time great has been obvious since he scored nearly a goal per game for AS Monaco, in France’s Ligue 1, as a teenager. But putting a World Cup title defense solely on a 23-year-old’s shoulders is a huge amount of pressure.

“For us to win the FIFA World Cup,” Deschamps nevertheless told Fox Sports’s Jenny Taft, “Mbappé needs to be at his best.” Plenty of players have crumpled under those kinds of expectations — including, arguably, Ronaldo and Messi. But Mbappé has shined.

Mbappé can’t win it all by himself. And had he been born in a less-traditional soccer power, he might not even be at this tournament, let alone in a position to win it. His accomplishments at the club level lag far behind many of the greats he’s outshining in Qatar (including his Paris Saint-Germain teammates Messi and Neymar). But even if France loses on Saturday, it won’t make a dent in Mbappé’s reputation as one of the best players in the world (with or without a “young” qualification). And if he leads France back to the top as the unquestioned focal point of the team? His international résumé will stand among the very best of all time — and he’ll have plenty of time to make it better.

Check out our latest World Cup predictions.

2022 World Cup

What To Watch For In The 2022 World Cup’s Round of 16

By Terrence Doyle

Dec. 2, 2022, at 1:48 PM

Ten days before the World Cup began, we tried to predict which group might be the tournament’s Group of Death. In doing so, we discovered that Qatar 2022 contained two of the 14 most difficult groups by average pre-tournament Elo rating among all World Cups dating back to 1970.³³ One of those groups — Group E — contained two of the past three World Cup winners (Spain and Germany), and two teams we labeled as “plucky underdogs” (Costa Rica and Japan). 

As it turns out, that label was probably a bit patronizing: Japan beat Spain on Matchday 3 to top the group, and Costa Rica — despite getting throttled 7-0 in their opening match against Spain — came within 17 minutes (plus stoppage time) of finishing in second place. In the end, three late Germany goals broke Costa Rican hearts, but they weren’t enough to send Die Mannschaft through to the knockout stages. It was a Group of Death for somebody — just not necessarily who our model expected. 

So with the caveat that predicting what will happen at a World Cup is more art than science (or more luck than art?), let’s survey the remaining field and handicap their chances of winning the most famous trophy in soccer. 

Our model still has Brazil as favorites,³⁴ and in fact it gives the Seleção better odds to win the tournament today (30 percent) than it did before it began (22 percent). All that, despite a nasty ankle injury for Neymar (who should be back for the knockout stages). Brazil has the fourth-best expected goals differential per 90 minutes (xGD/90) at the tournament despite playing in what probably ended up being the real Group of Death. (Again, Groups of Death are complicated.)

Expected goals isn’t the be-all, end-all statistic in a tournament that doesn’t allow for meaningful sample sizes, especially not in the group stage. (For example, in a domestic league season, xG offers more signal than noise after roughly 10 matches.) Germany has the best xGD/90 at the tournament so far, and they’re headed home before the knockout round in a second consecutive World Cup. Indeed, World Cup group stages are often about vibes and whatever the Soccer Gods are feeling from one moment to the next. But still, Brazil is scary good, and a worthy favorite going forward. Our model gives South Korea — Brazil’s likely Round of 16 opponent — just a 16 percent chance of advancing to the quarter-finals. Things are looking good for the Seleção — and they’ll look even better once Neymar gets healthy.

Meanwhile, Brazil’s major CONMEBOL rival Argentina — led by the GOAT himself, Lionel Messi — came out on top of their group, despite a disastrous Matchday 1 loss to Saudi Arabia, the third-weakest team at the tournament according to our Soccer Power Index. Messi and company went on to win their next two matches, and are set to square off against Australia — whom our model gave just a 22 percent chance of advancing beyond the group stage before the tournament began — in the Round of 16. With an 83 percent chance to move on, Messi’s probably got this one. (But again…it’s the World Cup, etc., etc.) 

Of course, this wouldn’t be a World Cup without asking if football ³⁵ is or is not coming home. England managed to top Group B — and did so playing better soccer than that nation’s mostly hysterical media would have you believe — which means they’re set to square off against Senegal on Dec. 4 at Al Bayt Stadium. Senegal is famously without Sadio Mané, but they were probably the best team in Group A despite finishing second. (They probably deserved a point or more in their opening-match loss to the Netherlands.) This will be anything but straightforward for the Three Lions, which could spell trouble for Harry Kane — whose legacy hinges on success in Qatar. 

Among the European powerhouses, England is joined in the knockouts by France, Portugal, the Netherlands, Croatia and Spain, who will square off against Group F winner Morocco on Dec. 6 at Education City Stadium. Although La Roja has a negative goal differential aside from that landslide win over Costa Rica, its underlying numbers (sixth in xGD) have been among the tournament’s best so far, setting up an interesting clash versus the Atlas Lions.

At least those teams avoided the fate of the other European nations who stumbled out of the tournament before the knockout stages began. We all know about Germany’s “absolute catastrophe” by now, while Denmark, who was pegged by just about everyone as the dark horse in Qatar — and who we said would be “fun” to watch³⁶ — lost two and drew one in Group D, managing to score just one measly goal. And it turns out that Belgium’s so-called golden generation is about as shiny as a hundred-year-old penny. After stealing a win against Canada on Matchday 1, the Red Devils lost to Morocco and drew against Croatia en route to yet another underwhelming tournament performance.³⁷

As for Japan, their reward for topping our presumptive Group of Death (and beating two of the best teams on the planet) is a knockout-round showdown with Croatia, runners-up at the 2018 World Cup. Some reward for the Samurai Blue — but it should be a reward for viewers, as the most evenly matched battle of the Round of 16. (We give Croatia a slim 54-46 advantage.) 

Finally, there’s the USMNT. Christian Pulisic’s heroic goal in the 38th minute against Iran put the Yanks through to the knockout stages for the first time since the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. ³⁸ A hard-fought victory against a highly disciplined, exceptionally well-coached and technically gifted team like Iran proves that the U.S. is playing to win — not just for respect. Still, they’ll have to go through Virgil van Dijk and the Netherlands if they hope to make it another step closer to the promised land, and our model gives the Oranje a 66 percent chance to end the Americans’ tournament.³⁹ 

And even if the Yanks do upset the Dutch, their next opponent would probably involve that Messi guy. In which case, it’s probably best not to look too far ahead. 

Check out our latest World Cup predictions.

2022 World Cup

Does Harry Kane's Legacy Ride On This World Cup?

By Daniel Levitt

Dec. 1, 2022, at 6:00 AM

In international football, England’s Harry Kane is as stellar as they come. As his team prepares to take on Senegal in the Round of 16 at the 2022 FIFA World Cup, he needs just three more strikes to pass Wayne Rooney’s mark of 53 and become the country’s all-time leading goal scorer. And if the Three Lions win and advance to the semifinals in Qatar — which they also did in Kane’s first World Cup four years ago — Kane will have been captain for the entirety of what is arguably England’s most successful era.

That’s on top of his domestic record, which is only growing after a whirlwind first portion of the 2022-23 Premier League season. Twelve goals in his first 15 games puts Kane on pace for 30 in a single season, a feat only achieved 11 times before by nine players⁴⁰ in the Premier League’s 30-year history. Thirty goals usually leads to the Golden Boot award, and, if not for Erling Haaland’s astonishing debut in English football — Haaland is on pace for more than 50 so far for Manchester City — Kane would be on his way to tying Thierry Henry for a record fourth award. As it is, Kane needs only five more goals in his next eight games to become the fastest ever to 200 Premier League goals, and another 66 to overtake Alan Shearer as the Premier League’s all-time leading goal scorer.

But despite all of Kane’s individual accomplishments, his lack of a team trophy — either internationally or at the club level for Tottenham Hotspur — has been the biggest sticking point in his career to date. With England still four wins away and carrying only a nine percent chance of lifting its first World Cup since 1966 (according to FiveThirtyEight’s predictions), is it possible for Kane to be considered the G.O.A.T of English football without hoisting a piece of championship hardware?

Kane’s undeniable success would suggest yes. After all, you win football matches by scoring more than the other team, and few have been better at supplying those scores. While critics will point to his comparative lack of production in the games that would have given him that elusive first trophy — in 13 semifinals and finals for club and country, Kane has scored just three times — his overall rate of one goal per every 1.5 games will most likely leave Kane sitting top of the scoring charts for both the Premier League and England when his career is over.

Still only 29 years old, Kane hasn’t yet played long enough to enter the record books for all-time appearances. But being on the right side of 30 means Kane still has a potentially long domestic and international career ahead of him. The nature of his traditional No. 9 position — which allows him to be the focal point on offense while limiting his running relative to wider attacking players like Raheem Sterling and Marcus Rashford — could help Kane continue to play at the top level for many seasons to come. 

After a string of injuries plagued him early in his career — Kane missed an average of 11 games per season between 2016-17 and 2020-21 — he hasn’t missed a game for Tottenham due to injury since an ankle problem kept him out for two games toward the end of the 2020-21 season, according to Transfermarkt. Barring a major injury, Kane could join Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard as the only players ever to make at least 100 appearances for England and 500 in the Premier League.⁴¹ 

Then there’s arguably Kane’s most underrated achievement: his mostly successful captaincy of the national team, particularly compared to what came before. 

When Kane took over the reins before the 2018 World Cup, England was in the midst of arguably its most dismal spell of international play since it failed to qualify for four straight major tournaments from 1972 to 1978. His captaincy was preceded by the glitz and glamor of England’s ‘Golden Generation’ — a series of England teams between 2002 and 2006 that featured some of the world’s biggest names, including Gerrard, Lampard, David Beckham, Rio Ferdinand, John Terry, Michael Owen and Wayne Rooney — which failed to advance past the quarterfinals of three straight tournaments, falling well short of lofty expectations.

Then came an era that was filled with mostly laughable and embarrassing moments. England failed to qualify for the 2008 European Championship under manager Steve McClaren, who was branded “A wally with a Brolly” after he stood on the sideline holding an umbrella in the final minutes of a 3-2 home defeat to Croatia that ended England’s qualification hopes. At the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, archrival Germany beat England 4-1 in the Round of 16. At the 2014 World Cup in Brazil under manager Roy Hodgson, England finished at the bottom of its group with only a point against Costa Rica to cling onto. And then at the 2016 European Championship, still with Hodgson at the helm, it lost to Iceland — a country of just 335,000 people — in the Round of 16.

But those follies ended with the arrivals of manager Gareth Southgate and Kane as captain. Among English captains, Kane has enjoyed the best winning percentage at major tournaments, with 11 victories in 16 games. The only captain to come near Kane’s record — and, admittedly, it’s a big name — is Bobby Moore. Under Moore, England won the 1966 World Cup on home soil, reached the semifinals of the 1968 European Championship⁴² and then lost in the quarterfinals at the 1970 World Cup.

Kane can’t match the shiny items in Moore’s trophy case, but it hasn’t been for a lack of trying. In addition to his efforts with the national team, he’s been the catalyst behind one of the most successful Tottenham spells since it won the original English First Division in the 1960-61 season. And he led Spurs on their historic run to the 2019 UEFA Champions League Final, only to lose to a historically great Liverpool team. A lack of spending power compared with the likes of Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea — Tottenham has just the fifth-highest net spend in the Premier League in the past five seasons — has also hindered their chances at becoming the kings of England.

With so many different factors contributing to a team’s success, the debate for many superstar athletes is how much the lack of a title takes away from their greatness and their place in history. But there’s little question over whether team trophies add to a player’s legacy and overall resume.

And if lifting the FIFA World Cup Trophy as captain is the final jewel in Kane’s crown, time is running out. No player has ever captained England at more than three major tournaments,⁴³ and with Declan Rice waiting in the wings to take over, the 2022 World Cup could be Kane’s last as captain.⁴⁴ Whether it’s Mike Trout, Henrik Lundqvist or Dan Marino, we know that countless great athletes plying their trade often fall through the cracks and don’t win anything.

The foundations of Kane’s legendary career have already been laid. And should he lead England to the promised land and win the World Cup in Qatar (or even in four years’ time in North America), there would be virtually no argument against his status as the greatest player ever born on English soil. Without that accomplishment, though, there will always be a question around what’s missing from Kane’s career — and it’s up to him to erase those doubts this month.

Check out our latest World Cup predictions.

2022 World Cup

The World Cup's New High-Tech Ball Will Change Soccer Forever

By Ben Dowsett

Nov. 22, 2022, at 6:00 AM

When the 2022 World Cup made its debut on Sunday, it kicked off one of the most significant in-game uses of technology in sports history.

All tournament long, match balls will contain a sensor that collects spatial positioning data in real time — the first World Cup to employ such a ball-tracking mechanism. This, combined with existing optical tracking tools, will make VAR (video assistant referees) and programs like offside reviews more accurate and streamlined than they’ve ever been. Combining these two forms of tracking has long been a holy grail of sorts in technology circles, and FIFA’s use of the ball sensor in particular will serve as a highly public test case over the next four weeks.

Like so many other parts of the burgeoning world of sports tech, the setup used at the World Cup is both an endpoint and the foundation of a whole new era. Years of research and testing were needed to get here — this particular ball sensor was in development and testing for six years before receiving full FIFA certification — but events like this could quickly catapult emerging technology into the public eye through applications that stretch well beyond officiating.

What went into the development of today’s tracking technology, and what are its key uses at this World Cup? How has the tech been tested, and how can players, teams and fans alike be confident that it’s accurate and consistent? And maybe most importantly, what does this same technology portend for the future of analysis, fan engagement and team data across the world’s most popular sport?

I spoke to people across the world of sports tech to find answers around one of the field’s boldest experiments to date.

Which technology is being used, and how does it work?

FIFA’s application of this technology at the 2022 World Cup is being termed a “semi-automated offside” program – one that’s largely run by AI features, but retains a vital element of human confirmation.

Within every match ball is a device designed by KINEXON, a major player in the performance-tracking world across several sports. Per the company, this device weighs 14 grams (just under 0.5 ounces), and actually houses two separate sensors operating simultaneously:

• Ultra-wideband (UWB) sensor: A type of technology that’s superior to GPS or Bluetooth for precise positional data, plus can transmit data in real time to constantly track the ball’s position.
• Inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensor: A sensor meant to detect nuanced movements of an object in space.

“While the ultra-wideband helps me to have the position of an object, the IMU gives me the granular movement in three dimensions,” said Maximillian Schmidt, co-founder and managing director of KINEXON.

So any time the ball is kicked, headed, thrown or even so much as tapped, the system picks it up at 500 frames per second. Data is sent in real time from sensors to a local positioning system (LPS), which involves a setup of network antennas installed around the playing field that take in and store the data for immediate use. When a ball flies out of bounds during the course of play, and a new ball is thrown or kicked in to replace it, KINEXON’s backend system automatically switches to the new ball’s data input without the need for human intervention.

KINEXON’s in-ball device is supported by suspension technology provided by Adidas, designed to house the sensor at the central interior point of the ball and keep it secure in a consistent location.⁴⁵

Paired with this ball sensor is optical camera tracking from Hawk-Eye, a system well known for its work in tennis. Twelve Hawk-Eye cameras are set up around the stadium, tracking both the ball itself and each player 50 times per second. Twenty-nine separate points of the body are tracked for players, including limbs.

When combined, these two data sources allow for offside decisions that are not just highly accurate, but also available much faster than in the past – a major priority for FIFA in this World Cup cycle.

“We debriefed in 2018 after the World Cup,” Nicolas Evans, head of football research and standards for FIFA Technology Innovation, said. Such a debrief is standard after each World Cup, according to Evans. “The biggest area for improvement we saw was the time it took to make offside decisions.”

With that in mind, data from both KINEXON and Hawk-Eye is run through artificial intelligence software that’s programmed to generate automated offside alerts to officials in the match’s video room. Instead of manually combing through plays, a time-consuming process, AI programs auto-generate alerts that can then be confirmed by video match officials.

The software also generates 3D renderings of the spatial data, which will be overlaid onto TV broadcasts and in-stadium monitors to give fans a direct look at how each reviewed call was decided.

How accurate is this data? How is it tested?

Some readers might have an understandable question at this point: “How do I know this data consistently reflects the true positioning of the players and ball?”

The first concept to understand here is refresh rate, which is measured in Hz and refers to the number of times per second that a given display is able to draw a new image. Standard 50Hz video, a common format used for HD monitors today, is generating a new image 50 times per second (or a “frame rate” of 50 frames per second, for those more familiar with that term). Anyone who has slowed a video down to frame-by-frame mode knows the sensation of slight periods of time passing between each frame – and for 50Hz video, that gap is 20 milliseconds per frame (for 60Hz video, it’s 16.66 milliseconds per frame, and so on).

With KINEXON’s ball-tracking system, that data is coming in at 500Hz, meaning any gaps in true positioning are below two milliseconds long – or 10 times shorter than standard 50Hz lags. Furthermore, the use of a PTP master clock allows synchronization between KINEXON and Hawk-Eye data that’s precise down to one-millionth of a second, per Evans, ensuring the two feeds are never out of whack with one another.

To check each component of the system, FIFA has conducted tests in both controlled and live settings.

For both the KINEXON ball sensors and Hawk-Eye’s optical camera setup, a format known as “ground truth testing” is required by FIFA’s Quality Programme for Electronic Performance Testing Systems (EPTS). The approach utilizes a minimum of 36 high-quality Vicon motion-capture cameras, combined with reflective markers designed for these cameras placed on the ball itself and every player for ultra-accurate detection. As players and the ball move around the testing pitch, both these Vicon cameras and the KINEXON/Hawk-Eye setups run simultaneously – and researchers compare the two outputs to assess the accuracy of the latter systems. This testing is augmented by the use of other tools, such as a laser to detect events like high-speed player sprints.

Another kind of test is also vital here, especially for one of the world’s most-watched sporting events: Ensuring that the addition of a sensor inside the ball is imperceptible to the players kicking it. Since it’s all too easy to envision a scenario in which a prominent player blames the feel of the “different” World Cup ball for a missed penalty or some other on-pitch failure — igniting a worldwide controversy — eliminating such concerns is naturally important.

Adidas is the key entity responsible for this kind of testing, which sources familiar with the program⁴⁶ report is done in two ways:

• Blind player testing: With the help of clubs in places like Spain, Germany and England, extensive blind testing was carried out to see if players could tell the difference between “normal” balls and balls infused with the sensor/suspension setup without knowing which was which ahead of time.
• Mechanical shooter testing: In a lab setting, robotic shooting devices can be programmed to “kick” the ball at varying speeds, spins and directions. High-speed cameras then evaluate the flight of the ball, ensuring that the presence of the sensor does not create abnormal flight paths.

This testing was performed in several professional and grassroots settings, such as the 2021 FIFA Arab Cup in Qatar and the 2021 FIFA Club World Cup in Abu Dhabi. In addition, Evans said FIFA ran several of its own additional blind tests, including at a team workshop in Qatar earlier in 2022.

“Together with our partner Adidas, large-scale sample blind tests have been carried out where no differences could be observed by players between the connected ball and the regular ball,” Evans said.

These and similar forms of tech also have been getting real-life test runs for years now. An earlier version of KINEXON’s sensor-infused ball was used alongside jersey tracking in 2018 in Germany’s fourth-tier Regionalliga to bring real-time data to a live TV broadcast; a newer setup was used earlier this year during a German academy club match. The Hawk-Eye camera setup, meanwhile, has been utilized in the UEFA Champions League group-stage matches throughout the early part of this season in the lead-up to the World Cup.

Of course, none of this guarantees an incident-free event. Unforeseen circumstances can come up in the world of tech. Equipment can malfunction. Even in the likely scenario that the tech works perfectly from start to finish, good luck convincing crazed sports fans of that if their country’s top player has trashed the tracked ball or suggested the system isn’t accurate.

Such possibilities are all but unavoidable in the end. But the companies involved are confident they’ve met every important threshold to introduce this new level of technology into the world’s most important soccer competition.

“[It’s] probably as good as it’s ever been in this type of technology,” Evans said.

This is the tip of the technological iceberg

The 2022 World Cup is barely scratching the surface of the potential capabilities of this sort of technology – which go well beyond officiating.

Before long, this combination of ball- and optical-tracking could be a familiar tool to everyone involved with the sport — much like Second Spectrum tracking in the NBA or Hawk-Eye in tennis. Teams and players could use the resulting data for next-generation tactical analysis; broadcasts could use it to visualize the game and draw in new viewers. Fans could eventually have access to a vast ocean of new stats that were never possible until now.⁴⁷

In fact, this already has started happening.

Earlier in 2022, KINEXON’s ball sensor was used in a Liga Portugal relegation match, along with sensors in player jerseys to track their movements. More than 300 different metrics were collected in multiple categories, including technical data (shot and pass speed, ball possession time, distinct ball actions), performance data (dribbling speed, accelerations and sprints — both with and without the ball — plus measures of athlete “load”) and tactical data (for both teams and players, tactical concepts such as space control, pressing, ball gains/losses and counters can be tracked).

Possible applications of this data, especially once it’s a more standardized part of the game and the parties involved become familiar with using it, are virtually limitless.

“We can use that information in real time to tell new stories,” Schmidt said. “[We can use] them to create virtual worlds, augmented overlays, insights on performance of players.”

For one thing, expect soccer fans to have new ways of enjoying the game based on this advanced tech. The first layer here will be broadcast improvements: More 3D immersive graphics, similar to the offside renderings 2022 World Cup viewers will see, could be used in several new ways – even those that viewers control. We’ll also see overlaid on-screen data, much like the LA Clippers’ “CourtVision” broadcast option that displays tracking information and a digitized view of the court during play.

And the next wave after that is even more exciting to think about. The world of virtual reality offers tantalizing potential; imagine watching plays (or even an entire game) from the direct vantage point of Kylian Mbappe, Karim Benzema or any other player of your choosing. Evans and others in the space also expect this data to eventually make its way into the world of video games, merging real and digital realms.

That’s just on the fan side. As the 2022 World Cup tracking setup becomes more commonplace around soccer, players and teams will now have a wealth of new data, particularly surrounding the ball – the true heartbeat of the sport. Tactics, analytics and even all-important health and performance improvements are all on the table.

Said Schmidt: “More and more leagues are now thinking about, ‘How can we enhance the already existing dataset with new insights from the ball?’ Because it’s the head of the game.”

So as tech continues to change the way we view sports, the 2022 World Cup stands poised to serve as a watershed moment. When you see that first “semi-automated” offside call, remember what it took to get to this point – and daydream about what the near future holds.

Check out our latest World Cup predictions.

Which World Cup Player Should You Root For?Take our quiz to find the best player for you in 2022.Start

1. Fame

I want a player who …

Is a hidden gemIs kind of well-knownIs famous!

2. World Cup odds

How important is contending for the title?

I prefer underdogs.A trophy would be nice.We’re here to WIN.

3. World Cup experience

Grizzled veteran or first-timer?

Experience is overrated.I want someone who’s been there before.

4. Origin

Where should they hail from?

EuropeAsia or AfricaThe Americas

5. Penalty kicking

Should this player be good at shooting penalties?

Shootouts are silly anyway.Be at least OK at it!Yes, give me a player who lives for that moment.

6. Position

Which position is your favorite?

ForwardMidfielderDefender

7. Goals

Do you prefer the glory of the goal or the joy of helping teammates?

There’s nothing like a pretty pass.You can’t win if you don’t score!

8. Fouls

What are your feelings on flo– err, drawing fouls?

I’d rather hit someone than be hit.Flopping is just the smart thing to do.

Kylian Mbappé

Kylian Mbappé (France) is a great fit for you. Les Bleus won their second World Cup title last time around — now they’re looking to become the first back-to-back champ since Brazil in 1962.

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Why Kylian Mbappé?

Kylian Mbappé matches 7 of your 8 answers. So does Karim Benzema.

1. Fame

I want a player who’s …

Famous!

Kylian Mbappé matches your choice

020406080100Fame index

MORE INSTAGRAM FOLLOWERS

MORE INSTAGRAM FOLLOWERS

Our “fame index” is calculated as the percentile of each player’s Instagram follower count among the total player pool.

2. World Cup odds

I want a player who’s …

Part of a team with strong odds

Kylian Mbappé matches your choice

020406080100Team’s odds of reaching Round of 16

STRONGER TEAM

STRONGER TEAM

3. World Cup experience

I want a player who’s …

Had at least one World Cup under their belt

Kylian Mbappé matches your choice

01020Number of previous World Cup matches played

MORE EXPERIENCE

MORE EXPERIENCE

4. Origin

I want a player who’s …

From Europe

Kylian Mbappé matches your choice

From Europe

From Asia or Africa

From the Americas

5. Penalty kicking

I want a player who’s …

Not a good penalty shooter

Kylian Mbappé matches your choice

−2−10123

BETTER ON PENALTY KICKS

BETTER ON PENALTY KICKS

6. Position

I want a player who’s …

A midfielder

Kylian Mbappé doesn’t match your choice

A forward

A midfielder

A defender

7. Goals

I want a player who’s …

Mainly a goal scorer

Kylian Mbappé matches your choice

020406080100Share of goals vs. assists

MORE GOALS

MORE GOALS

8. Fouls

I want a player who’s …

Draws more fouls

Kylian Mbappé matches your choice

−202Fouls committed vs. fouls drawn (adjusted for position)

MORE FOULS DRAWN

MORE FOULS DRAWN

Take the quiz again

2022 World Cup

Brazil Is The Favorite And Messi Is The Star, But The 2022 World Cup Is Up For Grabs

By Terrence Doyle

Nov. 16, 2022, at 11:11 AM

It’s hard to believe — mostly because it’s currently November and not June ⁴⁸ — but the 2022 World Cup kicks off at Al Bayt Stadium in Al Khor, Qatar, on Nov. 20. The host nation will square off against Ecuador in the first World Cup match ever played in the Arab world. And the start of the tournament comes with plenty of questions about who might lift soccer’s most prestigious trophy.

Will it be Brazil, the betting favorite? Or could France become the first nation to repeat since 1962? Is Spain’s new golden generation — piloted by teenagers like Barcelona midfielders Gavi and Pedri — as good as its previous golden generation? ⁴⁹ Does Lionel Messi have enough left in the tank to lead Argentina to glory and further cement himself as the G.O.A.T.? Is football finally coming home?⁵⁰ Which squads could shock the world? Is there any shine left on Belgium’s underachieving golden generation?

Last week, we used Elo ratings to measure historical Groups of Death at the World Cup, and also to see where this year’s groups rank — or if a Group of Death even exists this time around. (TL;DR: We’re not sure/it’s complicated.) Today, we’re back with our full-fledged World Cup forecast model to take a broader look at the field and try to answer who’ll be the last team standing on Dec. 18.

FiveThirtyEight’s 2022 World Cup forecast

2022 World Cup teams by title odds, according to the FiveThirtyEight forecast model

			Odds To …
Team▲▼	Group▲▼	SPI Rk▲▼	Make Rd of 16▲▼	Win Group▲▼	Make Final▲▼	Win Final ▲▼
Brazil	G	1	91%	72%	32%	22%
Spain	E	2	81	47	19	11
France	D	5	83	55	17	9
Argentina	C	6	84	60	16	8
Portugal	H	4	81	53	15	8
Germany	E	3	76	40	14	7
England	B	7	80	55	15	7
Netherlands	A	7	79	53	12	6
Denmark	D	11	65	29	7	3
Uruguay	H	10	65	30	7	3
Belgium	F	9	62	36	6	3
Croatia	F	12	54	28	4	2
Switzerland	G	13	48	13	4	1
United States	B	16	53	22	4	1
Mexico	C	17	54	21	3	1
Senegal	A	18	51	21	3	1
Ecuador	A	19	48	19	3	1
Morocco	F	15	46	21	3	1
Serbia	G	14	41	11	3	1
Japan	E	21	34	11	2	<1
Canada	F	20	37	15	2	<1
Poland	C	22	38	13	1	<1
South Korea	H	23	36	12	1	<1
Tunisia	D	24	31	10	1	<1
Iran	B	27	34	12	1	<1
Wales	B	25	32	11	1	<1
Cameroon	G	26	20	4	<1	<1
Saudi Arabia	C	30	24	7	<1	<1
Australia	D	28	22	6	<1	<1
Qatar	A	32	22	7	<1	<1
Ghana	H	29	18	5	<1	<1
Costa Rica	E	31	8	2	<1	<1

Front-runners 

The obvious team to start with is Brazil. Like we said up top, the Seleção has the shortest betting odds to win in Qatar. Brazil is also ranked first by the FiveThirtyEight Soccer Power Index, and our model gives it a field-leading 22 percent chance of winning the whole thing. Its squad features superstars from the world’s biggest and most competitive leagues — players like Alisson (Liverpool), Casemiro (Manchester United), Gabriel Jesus (Arsenal), Neymar (Paris Saint-Germain), Raphinha (Barcelona) and Thiago Silva (Chelsea). In fact, Brazil is so stacked up front that it left Liverpool forward Roberto Firmino off the squad, despite the fact that he ranks ninth in the Premier League in non-penalty expected goals per 90 minutes.⁵¹ Brazil will have to navigate the tournament’s toughest group by Elo rating, but if it gets through unscathed, the rest of the field should be terrified. 

Next up: Spain. La Roja enters the tournament in something of a strange position — probably not as great as the iteration that won three consecutive major tournaments from 2008 to 2012,⁵² but certainly good enough to be considered a contender. Our model thinks Spain is the second-best men’s national team in the world, and gives it the second-best odds at winning in Qatar (11 percent). Jordi Alba and Busquets are the only players remaining from the team that completed an historic treble at Euro 2012 in Kyiv, but the kids are alright. If they come to play, Spain has a real shot at celebrating the winter holidays as world champions. (If they don’t, Spain could find itself in the same position it did in Brazil in 2014: eliminated in the group stage.)

France, the defending champ, enters the tournament with the third-best odds according to our model (9 percent). Les Bleus have plenty of continuity from their cup-winning squad four years ago — for example, Ousmane Dembélé, Olivier Giroud, Antoine Griezmann, Hugo Lloris, Kylian Mbappé, Benjamin Pavard and Raphaël Varane — and have added current Ballon d’Or holder Karim Benzema to the mix.⁵³ With Benzema leading the line and flanked by the likes of Dembélé and Mbappé, France will be amongst the most dangerous teams in the attacking third in Qatar. It hurts to lose midfield geniuses N’Golo Kanté and Paul Pogba to injuries, but Real Madrid teammates Eduardo Camavinga and Aurélien Tchouaméni should help blunt the pain. No one should be shocked if France pulls off the repeat.

Finally, there’s Argentina. La Albiceleste (The White Sky and Blue) will likely go as Messi goes. Messi is 35 now, but he’s still among the game’s elite players. After a slow start to his time in Paris, he’s now shredding Ligue 1 defenses with the same regularity he shredded La Liga defenses for the previous decade-plus. The same is true in the Champions League. So far this season, Messi has 26 goal contributions in just 19 matches across all competitions. Messi has probably done enough in his career to stake sole claim to the G.O.A.T. moniker, no matter what happens in Qatar. But a World Cup championship would remove any doubt. 

Knocking on the door of contending

Our model gives Portugal the joint fourth-best odds (tied with Argentina at 8 percent), but its most famous player — Cristiano Ronaldo — is a shadow of the superstar he used to be. In 10 Premier League matches, Ronaldo has scored just one goal and hasn’t registered a single assist. His decline comes at an inopportune time for Portugal, which will be without Liverpool forward Diogo Jota, who’s nursing a calf injury. Bruno Fernandes, Bernardo Silva and Rafael Leao will have to do a lot of heavy lifting on the offensive side of the pitch for Portugal to have any chance of winning its first World Cup. Prediction: Ronaldo retires without the thing he desires most. 

Let’s move from the Iberian Peninsula to Germany and England (the rivalry that keeps on giving). According to our model, each has a 6 percent chance of winning soccer’s biggest prize. Despite its long-ish odds, Germany has the third-best men’s national team in the world according to FiveThirtyEight’s SPI, so expect Die Mannschaft to mount a legitimate challenge. A win would give Germany its fifth World Cup title — and draw them level with Brazil as the most successful team in the history of the tournament. As far as England goes, football either is or is not coming home — it all depends on who you ask. As expected, national team manager Gareth Southgate made headlines for his squad selection. The omission that sticks out more than most: AC Milan center back (and Serie A winner) Fikayo Tomori. The defender is one of the best playing in Italy right now, but therein lies the issue: Southgate doesn’t appear to have much time for players who do their thing outside of the Premier League. Instead, the England manager stuck with his guns and made the curious move of selecting Harry Maguire ahead of Tomori. (Maguire has fallen out of favor at Manchester United.)⁵⁴ 

Last among the next-best tier of teams: the Netherlands. Oranje will rely heavily on defenders Nathan Aké, Matthijs de Ligt, Jurriën Timber and Virgil van Dijk. Manager Louis van Gaal likes to play three at the back, and it will certainly consist of some combination of these four. They’re all world-class defenders — with van Dijk being arguably the best center back in the world — and they’re all goal threats from set pieces. Typically, international tournaments are more tactically rudimentary than league play, mostly because players don’t get as much time to train together and internalize the kinds of hyper-intricate systems they’re used to playing in during a club campaign. In these cases, sometimes the path to glory is paved with stout defending and well-organized set piece play. So don’t count the Flying Dutchmen out. 

Dark horses

The dropoff from the “next-best” to this group is sharp. Belgium is unquestionably the most talented team in this category, boasting the likes of Kevin De Bruyne, Eden Hazard, ⁵⁵ and Romelu Lukaku. Perhaps no golden generation has received as much criticism as Belgium’s, which has underachieved at every major tournament it’s played in. Is this the last hurrah for this crop of players — or is their best already behind them? 

And while we don’t expect Croatia, Denmark or Uruguay to go the distance, they should all be fun to watch in Qatar.⁵⁶ Things to watch for include: Luka Modrić playing in his last World Cup (probably); Christian Eriksen continuing his incredible comeback from suffering cardiac arrest at Euro 2020; and Darwin Núñez creating chaos for every defender in Group H (and maybe beyond). 

The leftovers

Let’s be honest: Probably none of Switzerland, the United States, Mexico, Senegal,⁵⁷ Ecuador, Morocco or Serbia will win the World Cup. But our model gives them all a 1 percent chance of doing just that. We’re including them here because it’s fun to dream — and isn’t that what World Cups are all about anyway? As for the remaining 13 teams — including the host nation? Each has a less than 1 percent chance of glory in December. There are dreams, and then there are delusions. 

Check out our latest World Cup predictions.

2022 World Cup

What's The 2022 World Cup's Group Of Death? It's Tough To Pick Just One.

Even the weakest group this year is strong by historical standards.

By Terrence Doyle

Nov. 10, 2022, at 2:47 PM

Each time a World Cup rolls around,⁵⁸ pundits and fans predictably focus on a few recurring narratives. What country has the best odds to go the distance? Which player will be the breakout star of the tournament? Who will win the Golden Boot? What about the Golden Ball? Will there be a “Hand of God”-like on-field controversy that defines the tournament for years to come? Why do we watch this stupid sport — which always seems to break our hearts — anyway? 

But perhaps the most interesting (if often futile!) question of all is: Which group is the tournament’s Group of Death? It’s a fun question, one that has the ability to drum up plenty of controversy (and make some wonder if the Group of Death is actually just a myth). But if you’re looking for clear answers, you probably won’t find any this time around.  

Is it Group B — featuring England, Iran, the U.S. and Wales — which has the highest average world ranking as defined by FIFA? What about Group E, which features two of the past three winners (Spain and Germany) alongside two plucky underdogs — Costa Rica and Japan — with sneaky high world rankings of their own? Then there’s Group G: Brazil currently ranks first in the world rankings — and is the odds-on favorite to win the whole damn thing — while Serbia and Switzerland each rank in the world’s top 25. And we’d be foolish to forget about Cameroon, which finished third at the most recent African Cup of Nations and is primed for a strong showing in Qatar. 

Or is Group C the Group of Death because it features Lionel Messi and Robert Lewandowski? They’re both old men now, but they’re still two of the best players in the world — and two of the best players to ever kick a soccer ball, period. Does a battle between all-time greats chasing the game’s top prize for (probably) the last time qualify as Group of Death-worthy? We’re not sure! 

What we’re trying to say is: Picking a Group of Death is hard — and not always straightforward. 

To be fair to the 2022 World Cup, that’s historically been the case more often than not, too. Picking a Group of Death is more of an art form than a science. Sure, there were years when it was easier to pin down than others, as was the case before the 1970 World Cup. ⁵⁹ At Mexico ‘70, Group 3 — they used numbers rather than letters back then — contained England (the reigning champs) and Brazil (perennial tournament favorites). In that rendition, an aging but still-brilliant-enough Pelé led the Seleção through a difficult group stage and, eventually, to the ultimate prize. That remains the highest-rated group since 1970 according to Elo ratings, and by some margin. So in that instance, the eye test matched up with the subsequent data. 

But that hasn’t always been the case. Take 1982, for example. There wasn’t a clear-cut Group of Death in the first group stage, but there was perhaps the Group of Death to end all Groups of Death in the second,⁶⁰ featuring Italy, Brazil and the reigning champs, Argentina. Italy got through with a perfect record, and went on to spank West Germany in the final at the Bernabeu in Madrid. Again, though: There was hardly a clear Group of Death to start the tournament, and identifying them beforehand is sort of the whole point of Groups of Death. ⁶¹ We want to know these answers from the jump!

So with all of that historical context in mind, let’s look at what the numbers have to say about the 2022 field. Specifically, we used Elo to rank each of the 32 teams participating in Qatar, and then ranked each group based on the average strength of its members. And you may have already noticed in the historical Elo table above that Group G is the strongest group at this year’s World Cup, followed by Group E. 

As a matter of fact, Group G is the sixth-strongest group by Elo since 1970. It’s not exactly the Grupo de la Muerte that we saw in 1970, but it’s not an easy group to navigate either. However, when looking at the difference between Group G’s average Elo and the rest of the field — relative to how historical Groups of Death compared with their fields — it’s clear that 2022 breaks with the long-term trend of World Cup group draws getting more imbalanced over the years. After four decades of steadily widening, the gap between the weakest and hardest groups at the tournament has closed this year.  

So by that measure, even the least-deadly group of 2022 — Group A, featuring the Netherlands, Ecuador, Senegal and of course, the host country of Qatar — is still relatively deadlier than usual. 

But what does it mean to be in the Group of Death anyway? Does it really affect a team’s chances of winning the World Cup? Or is it just an arbitrary (if amusing) rhetorical device pundits and fans like to use to drum up interest going into a big tournament like the World Cup? 

Looking at Elo’s Groups of Death dating back to the 1970 World Cup, only two teams have won the world’s most prestigious soccer prize after grinding things out in the tournament’s toughest group — that legendary Brazil team in 1970, and a generationally great Spain team in 2010. That said, three others have reached the final out of the Group of Death and lost. So in the 13 World Cups since 1970, a total of five finalists have come from so-called Groups of Death — which is actually more than the number we’d expect (4.3) if every group had an equal chance of sending a team to the final. While placement in a Group of Death is not a breath of fresh air, it isn’t exactly a death sentence, either. Like we said: Groups of Death are complicated. 

In that stacked group from 1970, Pele was resurgent and hellbent on proving to the world that he wasn’t washed-up — that he was still, in fact, as earth-shatteringly gifted as the phenom who burst onto the scene for Brazil at the 1958 World Cup in Sweden. On the other hand, England retained important pieces of its veteran core that won the 1966 World Cup at Wembley, ⁶² and was imbued with a crop of new talent.⁶³ Things didn’t work out so great for England — it was bounced 3-2 in the quarterfinal by West Germany after having been up 2-0 at halftime — but Pele and Brazil made history. It was the first Group of Death, and that’s because it was easily identifiable as a group that nobody (probably not even Brazil or England) wanted to be a part of given the pedigree that was on display. 

We haven’t had such an obvious Group of Death since — and we certainly don’t this year. It’s hard to say whether we will in the future, either — especially if FIFA continues its apparent commitment to balanced groups going forward. And that’s probably fine — it’s too hard to define the Group of Death anyway.

Jay Boice contributed research.

English Premier League

Does Brighton Belong Among The Premier League Elite?

By Terrence Doyle

Sep. 28, 2022, at 6:00 AM

Entering Matchweek 9 of the 2022-23 season, the upper third of the Premier League table looks roughly as it always has.⁶⁴ Arsenal sits on top after an excellent start.⁶⁵ Manchester City is in second, doing Manchester City things (read: absolutely demolishing teams). Antonio Conte has Tottenham Hotspur sitting in third and playing as well as it has since dismissing Mauricio Pochettino in the fall of 2019. Erik ten Hag seems to have turned things around at fifth-place Manchester United. And though Liverpool got off to a sputtering start, the underlying data — namely, expected goal differential⁶⁶ — suggests the Reds will be just fine when all is said and done. 

There is, however, one major glitch in the matrix: Brighton & Hove Albion currently sit in fourth.

This might not seem too surprising to anyone who’s paid attention since Graham Potter took over as Brighton manager back in 2019. “Potter Ball” got off to a bit of a shaky start when it was first introduced to the South Coast in 2019, but starting with the 2020-21 season, Potter’s Seagulls were a borderline elite Premier League outfit in terms of expected goal differential. During large stretches of the previous three seasons — and particularly during the previous two — the Seagulls played beautiful, free-flowing, progressive soccer, even if their final place in the league table didn’t do their play on the pitch much justice. 

Indeed, if it weren’t for some truly dismal finishing and bad luck — Brighton underperformed its xG differential by 22 net goals in 2020-21 and 2021-22 combined — the Seagulls might have already made the leap from plucky and fun mid-table almost-rans to a club that has a legitimate chance at challenging for European places. So in that sense, Brighton’s performance this season could be seen as a continuation of the club’s multi-year ascent under Potter. 

There’s just one problem: Potter is gone now. 

Yes, to the detriment of Albion fans across the globe — or maybe they just exist on England’s South Coast? — Potter jumped ship earlier this month for the much sexier (and much more lucrative) confines of Chelsea and Stamford Bridge. Brighton managed to replace Potter with Italian manager Roberto De Zerbi, whose Sassuolo team — a similarly small and overachieving club in Italy’s Serie A — punched above its weight during his tenure.⁶⁷ But losing an era-defining manager during the middle of the season isn’t ideal, regardless of the quality of the replacement, so it’s not unreasonable to wonder what kind of an effect the swap will have on Brighton going forward. 

So far this season, Brighton is playing some of the best soccer in England, so much so that the FiveThirtyEight Club Soccer Predictions give it a 24 percent chance of qualifying for the Champions League — by far the best odds for any club outside of the traditional Big 6. And not for nothing, Brighton currently sits in the top 25 of all club soccer teams on the planet — two positions higher than Man United — according to the FiveThirtyEight Soccer Power Index. In other words, the talent is there. If De Zerbi can pick up where Potter left off, Brighton might have a puncher’s chance at something it’s never done in its history — qualifying for Europe. 

To be sure, the loss of Potter is a blow for Brighton. It’s not that long ago that the Seagulls were struggling to remain in the top flight under his predecessor Chris Hughton, let alone dreaming about the Top 4. Its first-ever season in the Premier League — 2017-18 — was undistinguished at best and ignominious at worst. The Seagulls couldn’t score; the Seagulls couldn’t defend; the Seagulls narrowly escaped being relegated as quickly as they were promoted. 

Brighton’s second season in the Premier League was even worse than its first, and culminated in Hughton’s sacking. Though the Seagulls finished 17th and staved off relegation by a measly 2 points, Hughton — a Republic of Ireland and Tottenham Hotspur legend during his playing days — managed to secure just 11 points from January 1, 2019, through the end of the campaign. Brighton was safe, but Hughton’s job ultimately was not. In stepped Potter, who changed the tenor of the club’s entire history. Now that he has departed, a huge question looms over Brighton’s season: Can De Zerbi keep it going?

Check out our latest soccer predictions.

English Premier League

Does Spending Big Save Newly Promoted Premier League Teams From Relegation?

By Terrence Doyle

Aug. 25, 2022, at 12:15 PM

The English Football League Championship’s playoff final is often referred to as the “richest game in soccer” because of the substantial windfall its winner receives upon joining the Premier League. Through a mix of guaranteed shareholder profits and broadcast money, newly promoted teams stand to make hundreds of millions more per season in the Premier League than they otherwise would in the Championship. It’s not a bad incentive for clubs grinding it out in the second tier of the English pyramid — arguably the most physically demanding league in the world — especially since most of them operate on razor-thin margins even in the best of times. (And these are certainly not the best of times.)

Last season, the Championship playoff final was won by Nottingham Forest, a former giant of European soccer. Forest was a dominant force in the late 1970s and into the 1980s — it was the champion of England for the 1977-78 season and won consecutive Champions League titles (yes, that Champions League)⁶⁸ in 1978-79 and 1979-80. But the past three decades haven’t been as kind to the Tricky Trees, who’ve mostly languished in the second or third tier of English soccer. Before this season, players wearing Forest’s iconic red jerseys last kicked a ball in the Premier League in 1999. 

Now that Forest is finally back in the Premier League, it will benefit from the cash injection that comes with its regained status — and it’s already trying to leverage that in order to stay at the top tier of the sport. But will it work? 

Because of the riches associated with Premier League soccer, clubs that earn promotion to the big-time would do almost anything to stay there — which mainly means spending gaudy sums in the transfer market on better players. In that sense, Forest is no different than its newly promoted predecessors. Since the summer transfer window opened in June, Forest has spent a net amount north of $155 million⁶⁹ to strengthen its squad — the second-biggest outlay in Premier League history for a newly promoted team after adjusting for inflation. And there are indications that it might not be done shopping just yet. (Forest has until Sept. 1 to buy more players. The window next opens in 2023 for the entire month of January.) 

This is part of a steady trend of growing spending for newly promoted clubs. Since the dawn of the Premier League era,⁷⁰ they have, on average, spent roughly $32 million (all figures are adjusted for inflation) in the transfer market to prepare for the season following promotion. But that number rose sharply — to an average of more than $47 million — in the latter half of this period, from the 2007-08 season onward. There were just three instances of newly promoted clubs spending $40 million or more on transfers from 1992-93 to 2006-07; there have been 21 instances since then, including 13 of a team spending at least $60 million. Forest may be an outlier — they’re only the second newly promoted club in league history to eclipse the $150 million mark — but given the way things are trending, it might not be for very long.

To be fair to Forest, it didn’t really have a choice but to spend big. Four of the club’s starting 11 from the EFL Championship final were at the club on loan deals and left after the season ended. Roster depth is key to success in the Premier League, especially now that clubs are allowed five substitutions per match. Plus, Forest might still be traumatized by the 1998-99 season, when it entered the Premier League with a negative net spend — meaning they actually sold more in the transfer market than they bought — and were promptly relegated again after finishing dead last. 

Also feeding that fear could be that 45 percent of newly promoted teams have been relegated at the end of their first season back in the Premier League. But the good news for Forest is that spending big seems to protect newly promoted clubs. Out of seven newly promoted teams to spend $90 million or more in the transfer market, just one — Fulham in 2018-19 — was relegated after its first season back in the EPL. And 82 percent of newly promoted teams that spent more than $50 million stayed up in Year 1, too. 

Still, just as money can’t buy history,⁷¹ it also doesn’t guarantee success. Forest’s illustrious past means it isn’t worried about the former. The latter remains to be seen — though you can’t say it's not trying.

Check out our latest soccer predictions.

English Premier League

No Mané. No Sterling. No Problem.

Even after losing star forwards in the offseason, Liverpool and Man City are the Premier League favorites.

By Terrence Doyle

Aug. 4, 2022, at 6:00 AM

The 2022-23 Premier League season kicks off this weekend, and there’s one question on the minds of many soccer fans: Does any team other than Liverpool or Manchester City have a real shot at winning this thing? The northwestern rivals⁷² have been head and shoulders above the rest of England — and most of the rest of the world, for that matter⁷³ — for the better part of the past half-decade. But this season, two names will be conspicuously missing from the teams’ rosters: Sadio Mané and Raheem Sterling.

In late June, Mané went from Liverpool to German powerhouse Bayern Munich for a transfer fee of more than £27 million. Not to be outdone, Sterling was on the move from City less than a month later, heading to Chelsea for £47.5 million. Twin losses of that magnitude might offer hope for a wide-open EPL table this year. Let’s not get too carried away, though: Entering Matchweek 1, the FiveThirtyEight SPI model still ranks City as the favorite to win the league at 46 percent, followed by Liverpool at 30 percent. By contrast, the model gives Chelsea, Tottenham, Arsenal and Manchester United a combined 19 percent chance at domestic glory.⁷⁴ The more things change, the more they appear to stay the same.

And make no mistake, the status quo would mean another thrilling installment of the Man City-Liverpool rivalry, the best in world soccer right now. In each of the past five seasons, one of the two has won the title,⁷⁵ and on two occasions the teams were separated by just one tiny little point. Since the beginning of 2018-19 — which could realistically be categorized as the season that truly sparked the arms race between the two clubs — they are separated by a total of one point (358 for City, 357 for Liverpool), which borders on the absurd. To put those numbers into sharper focus: Chelsea was the next best over that span with 279 points. No other team has gotten remotely close to the levels of City and Liverpool in the era of Pep Guardiola and Jürgen Klopp.

For most of the past five years, both teams have been borderline impenetrable in their own defensive third — each conceded less than one expected goal per game — and outrageous in the attacking third, with each scoring more than 80 goals in at least four of those five seasons.⁷⁶ Among both teams’ embarrassment of riches in attack, Mané and Sterling played leading roles. 

For the majority of their respective teams’ runs of dominance, Mané and Sterling clearly belonged among the Premier League’s elite forwards. In the past five seasons, neither finished lower than 15th in non-penalty expected goals per 90 minutes or expected goals plus assists per 90 minutes. Each player is capable of playing on the left, through the center and on the right of a forward line, and each has contributed at least 149 Premier League goals plus assists in his career to date. 

It’s impossible to know whether Liverpool or City would have been as dominant without Mané and Sterling — or if they can be going forward — but it’s hard to imagine they will be demonstrably better. In many ways, Mané, who was just named Africa’s best male soccer player,⁷⁷ and Sterling — who has won the Golden Boy, the PFA Young Player of the Year, the FWA Footballer of the Year and a slew of other honors — have both defined these historically excellent Liverpool and City teams. And now, just like that, they’re gone.

For most teams, losing a Mané or a Sterling would be catastrophic. Superstar-size holes in an offense are hard to fix. But for City and Liverpool, not so much. 

City was quick to gobble up Julián Álvarez from River Plate — adding the consensus best player in South America from a season ago — and Erling Haaland, perhaps the most exciting young talent in world soccer behind Kylian Mbappé, from Borussia Dortmund. Both players lit up their domestic leagues last season, and both stand to benefit from playing with exquisite passers such as Kevin de Bruyne, Bernardo Silva and João Cancelo. City’s tactical approach might change a bit — Álvarez and Haaland play more as traditional strikers and aren’t likely to occupy the same spaces Sterling did on the wings — but the team shouldn’t struggle to put the ball in the net.

And for Liverpool, the preparation for life after Mané began earlier this year. When the Reds signed Luis Díaz from Porto in January, the Colombian made an immediate impact, tallying an impressive (and very Mané-like) 0.59 expected goals plus assists per 90 in his first 13 league games with the club. Díaz started out on his preferred left wing, while Klopp moved Mané to a central role in the forward line. The shake-up proved effective — Mané scored eight goals in 14 appearances after his return from Africa’s Cup of Nations, perhaps the biggest reason Liverpool clawed its way back into a title race that looked over after the holiday fixtures. But Díaz’s excellent play on the left wing suggested Liverpool had found its Mané replacement, even if they didn’t need it for another half-year.

Liverpool wasn’t done signing forwards, either. In June, they splashed a club-record £85 million fee for Darwin Núñez. The Uruguayan is still a bit raw, but he slashed through defenses — including Liverpool’s — during his second full season with Benfica en route to 32 goals in all competitions. Klopp and company loved what they saw when the two clubs met in the quarterfinals of the 2021-22 Champions League. Not long after, they put their money where their mouth was. 

Clubs hit the refresh button all the time. It’s part of the game. Still, it will take some time to get used to the fact that Sterling plays for Chelsea and Mané no longer plays in the Premier League at all. How much will Liverpool and City miss their legends? A little bit, probably. But much to the chagrin of the chasing pack, probably not enough for the gap to close. In other words, the Premier League is still a two-horse race, despite an offseason of volatility.

Check out our latest soccer predictions.

Soccer

Why Aren’t There More Black Managers In English Soccer?

By Tim Wigmore

May 31, 2022, at 10:52 AM

The English Premier League is filled with elite Black talent. Manchester City pair Raheem Sterling and Kyle Walker, Manchester United duo Jadon Sancho and Marcus Rashford, Liverpool’s Trent Alexander-Arnold, Chelsea’s Reece James, Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka — all are excelling on the pitch. Ten players on the England squad that reached the final of the UEFA European Football Championships last summer were Black. 

But the success of English soccer’s Black players has not translated into other opportunities at clubs. Though the issue of Black representation in soccer management has been discussed for decades, progress has been glacial — if it is even visible at all. Forty-three percent of players in the Premier League in 2021 were Black, as were 34 percent of players across the next three divisions that make up the top 92 clubs in the English football pyramid. But only 4.4 percent of managerial positions typically associated with professional playing experience are held by Black people, as documented in new research by the University of Michigan sports economist Stefan Szymanski. The lack of diversity among head coaches, then, is even starker than in the NFL, where six out of 32 current head coaches are members of a racial or ethnic minority, with four of them Black.⁷⁸

In English soccer, an overwhelming number of managers are ex-professional players. Yet Black former players have routinely been overlooked for prominent jobs. Of the 94 men who played in the Premier League or Football League since 2004 and hold a UEFA Pro License, the highest professional qualification available to managers, three-quarters held management positions in either league in 2021. Just 23 percent of them were Black. There have been only 28 Black managers in the history of the English professional game, according to the Black Footballers Partnership, a body advocating for better representation of Black people in leadership positions in the sport. (The organization also commissioned Szymanski’s new research.)

Black footballers also historically faced discrimination when it comes to their earnings. A paper from Szymanski details how, from 1986 to 1993, an all-white team’s wage expenditure was about 5 percent higher than that of an equally successful team fielding an average proportion of Black players. The Black players were consistently underpaid. 

Subsequent research has shown that, from the mid-1990s, Black players have been paid wages in line with their performances and no longer suffer from economic discrimination in the game. Yet barriers to management, and other coaching positions, evidently remain. Last year, only 10 percent of Black players to retire since 2004 had any managerial or coaching position at a professional English club; for white players, the figure was 50 percent, according to Szymanski. 

One explanation for the lack of Black managers is the difficulty of assessing potential managers and the findings that, in most cases, managers have relatively little impact on team performance. Managers in soccer, like leading figures in other sports, are often appointed through informal networks and contacts within the game, rather than a transparent application process. Delroy Corinaldi, the co-founder of the Black Footballers Partnership, said this system tends to disadvantage Black people, who are generally locked outside these networks. “The decision-makers in the game and ecosystem are largely from a similar group, unlike on the pitch.” 

The underrepresentation of Black people in senior executive positions in soccer is even starker than among managers. Just 1.6 percent of those in major executive, leadership and ownership positions are Black, according to Szymanski’s research: The only two Black owners or co-owners of professional clubs he found were at Burton Albion and Salford City, relatively low-profile clubs in the English third and fourth tiers. This lack of Black owners appears to contribute to the lack of Black managers. “[T]here is, and always has been, a ­disconnect ­between owners and Black former players,” Stan Collymore, a former England international player, wrote in 2020.

English soccer history illustrates how leading decision-makers have often harbored racist beliefs. In 1991, Ron Noades, who was then the chairman of Crystal Palace, gave a television interview in which he discussed what he termed “the problem with Black players” and outlined his racist views. “When it’s behind them it’s chaos,” Noades said. “I don’t think too many of them can read the game. When you’re getting into the mid-winter you need a few of the hard white men to carry the athletic Black players through.” 

Such attitudes aren’t as far in the past as English soccer would like to believe. In 2018, West Ham’s director of player recruitment, Tony Henry, wrote in an email that the club would not sign any more African players, complaining that African players had “a bad attitude” and could “cause mayhem” if they were not selected for matches. In 2020, Greg Clarke resigned from his role as chairman of the Football Association after making racist comments during a hearing in the British Parliament. 

English soccer could look to another league as an example of better representation: the NBA. In the 2021 NBA offseason, seven of the eight head coaching vacancies were filled by Black coaches. Overall, according to The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, Black people during the 2020-21 NBA season made up 50 percent of head coaches, 53 percent of assistant coaches and 40 percent of general managers. These numbers reflect the dominance of Black players in the league: Almost 75 percent of NBA players are Black.

So far, English soccer’s approach to encouraging Black managers has focused on voluntary measures. It took until 2019 before the English equivalent of the Rooney Rule — which the NFL has shown is no panacea — became mandatory in the second to fourth tiers of English soccer; the Premier League has refused to implement the rule. Only around half of clubs in the Premier League and the next three divisions have adopted targets from the Football Association’s “Football Leadership Diversity Code” established in 2020; last year, most of the voluntary targets were missed too.

The Black Footballers Partnership believes that the rate of change in English football has been so slow that the sport must take more radical action. It argues for greater targeted learning opportunities for Black current and former players to develop their coaching, designed by Black people working in the sport, and better-funded structures to unite Black current and former players. Most notably, the Black Footballers Partnership advocates introducing compulsory hiring quotas for ethnic minorities: a recognition, Corinaldi said, that voluntary measures have failed. His hope is that, when it comes time for the current generation of leading English Black soccer players to enter management, they will have a fair chance. 

But how would the same game have looked to viewers who literally couldn’t see race?

Sam Gregory was working for the Canadian data provider Sportlogiq a couple of years ago when Toronto FC director of analytics Devin Pleuler came to him with an idea. The company’s broadcast tracking technology can capture how players move their limbs and reproduce their stick-figure skeletons in a two-dimensional render. If Gregory’s Sportlogiq colleagues and Pleuler showed the same clips to different viewers as either a video or an anonymized animation, they could measure how attitudes toward race and gender affect how we see soccer.

The resulting paper, “Pace and Power: Removing unconscious bias from soccer broadcasts,” caused a stir when they presented it at last month’s New England Symposium on Statistics in Sports. Of the 47 sports fans who watched a two-minute clip of the World Cup TV broadcast, 70 percent said that Senegal, whose players were all Black, was “more athletic or quick.” But of 58 others who saw an animation of the same two minutes without knowing which teams they were watching, 62 percent picked Poland, whose players were all white, as the more athletic side.⁷⁹ The physical advantages that supposedly defined the African team’s style of play disappeared as soon as their skin color did.

Gregory sees it as a good sign that audiences who watched the video and the stick figures didn’t show significant disagreement on the survey’s other three questions, about which team was more technically skilled, tactically organized or physical.⁸⁰ “The fact that we got such similar results suggests that at least people were able to tell what’s happening from the renders,” he said.

The athleticism flip-flop offers a new kind of evidence of a prejudice that affects how Black players of every nationality are perceived. For decades, researchers have documented media stereotypes of African players as “‘powerful,’ ‘big-thighed,’ ‘lithe of body,’ ‘big,’ ‘explosive,’ and like ‘lightning,’ attributes that were to be contrasted with ‘the know-how that England possess.’” As Belgian forward Romelu Lukaku, who is Black, told The New York Times, “It is never about my skill when I am compared to other strikers.” Now, for the first time, researchers have a way to isolate how race influences direct perceptions of the game.

Gregory hopes that measuring unconscious bias will be a step toward changing conversations about Black athletes. “Last year there were all these discussions around Black Lives Matter, and there were player protests,” he said. “Obviously the issues off the pitch were more important than the issues on the pitch, but it does feel like even when that conversation was happening, there was very little discussion about racial bias in the way we talk about players.”

The study also examined attitudes toward gender by showing viewers a pair of two-minute clips, one from the American top-flight National Women’s Soccer League and another from League Two, the English men’s fourth tier. Even though the NWSL draws more fans to games, its average player earns about a quarter as much as the average player in League Two. Gregory and Pleuler were curious whether this “clear gender pay gap” could be explained by a difference in the quality of the soccer shown on TV, as some have argued.

People who watched the broadcasts said that the men’s game was “higher quality” by a 57 percent to 43 percent margin. Those who saw the renders with genderless stick figures preferred the women’s match, 59 percent to 41 percent. The results weren’t statistically significant across a small sample of 105 mostly male respondents, but Pleuler believes the line of research is promising. “I think these results are suggestive that your average soccer fan can’t tell the difference between something that does have a large investment level and the women’s game, which does not,” he said.

Watch: https://abcnews.go.com/fivethirtyeight/video/chaotic-fictional-football-coach-fivethirtyeight-74531599

Unconscious biases don’t just color the way fans and media talk about sports. They could hurt players’ earnings and career prospects, not to mention cost points on the table for teams that aren’t spending their money wisely. Gregory, who’s now the director of analytics at Inter Miami, thinks body pose data might help clubs check their player evaluations. “Scouting to me is the obvious one,” he said. Skin tone has previously been shown to correlate with differences in Football Manager ratings, which clubs sometimes use in their real-life scouting process. Anonymized renders could help determine whether pro scouts exhibit similar biases.

“The idea is that over time, hopefully people will realize that this is a source of bias and they’ll be able to change it within themselves,” Gregory said. “None of us are unbiased in anything we do, so I think a big part of challenging bias is acknowledging it.”