FIFA World Cup 2018: Penalties and analytics from football teams
With backroom staff processing data for teams at World Cup 2018, the penalty-takers and goalkeepers are making their own luck.
Every team has at least one analyst whose only job is to study the penalty patterns of their opponents.Carlos Bacca isn’t the surest of penalty takers. The Colombian centre forward misses one in four attempts. But that wasn’t the only reason Jordan Pickford fancied his chances against him. The England goalkeeper was armed with crucial intel: when in pressure, Bacca shoots to his right.
On Tuesday night, in their Round of 16 match in Moscow, Pickford — and England — used this stat in the crudest way possible. When Bacca took his shot, Pickford leaped to his right, parrying the ball away with his outstretched hand. It was the most crucial moment of a dramatic shootout as England, scarred by decades of failure, finally won a tie-breaker.
It should also provide closure to one of football’s favourite cliches — that penalties are predominantly down to luck. This logic might have been true a decade ago, when the use of statistics and technology was at a primitive level. But as teams have shown in the last few years, especially in this World Cup, the sport has become smarter. There is science behind penalties, not just luck.
Every team has at least one analyst whose only job is to study the penalty patterns of their opponents. On Tuesday night, Pickford and David Ospina, the Colombian goalkeeper, guessed the right way almost every time. But most kicks were so well hit that it was practically impossible to save them. Of course, it’s impossible to say what the penalty taker will do at that exact moment. But the data helps goalkeepers take an educated guess, thus giving them a better chance of saving the penalty.
Read more on https://indianexpress.com/article/fifa/fifa-world-cup-2018-penalties-and-analytics-from-football-teams-5246150/.
This post is from https://indianexpress.com/
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