Many readers will have watched the final of the Euro 2012 soccer championships on Sunday in which Spain demolished a tired Italian team by 4 goals to nil. The result, Spain's third major championship in a row, confirms the team as the best in the world and one of the greatest in history. ...... Spain's famous strategy of accurate quick-fire passing, known as the tiki-taka style. ..... a quantifiable representation of a team's style, identifies key individuals and highlights potential weaknesses. ..... think of each player as a node in a network and each pass as an edge that connects nodes. ..... the Spanish team pass more often..... image captures 417 passes by the Spanish team versus 266 for the Netherlands. ..... That the goal keeper was the Netherland's best connected player itself speaks volumes. ..... Players with a high betweenness centrality are crucial for keeping the momentum of the game going ..... the famous PageRank algorithm which measure's a player's popularity, as judged by the number of passes he receives from other popular players. ..... adding another node to represent the opponents goal and would record the number of shots .... measure the accuracy of passes .... The defensive strength of a team could also be incorporated in the model by tracking passing interceptions and recovered balls .... a way of collecting and analysing the data in real time to produce a network-based analysis of a game as it happens ..... In terms of data analysis, football has always lagged behind more statistically-friendly games such as American football, baseball and cricket, because it lacks the long pauses during which data can be gathered and analysed. That looks set to change.
For once I was not going to take my chances. I was wrong about Brazil, I was wrong about Argentina, and I was wrong about Germany. When you can't beat them, join them. For the World Cup Final, I was throwing my hat for whichever team Paul The Octopus had picked, and Paul had picked Spain, so I was for Spain. But then I show up and during the first 10 minutes of the game it was so very obvious Spain was dominating the game.
Someone once asked me a long time ago, can we call you Paul? P for Paul, P for Paramendra. No, you can't call me Paul, I remember saying. What did I know?
This was the roughest game of the entire World Cup. There were so many fouls, countless yellow cards. The most brazen foul of the entire Cup happened in this game. It was an out and out flying kick. That is a martial arts term. Bam, you hit the other person in the chest and he falls like a tree trunk. That dude was still holding his chest 60 minutes later.
The first 10 minutes or so Spain dominated. Then the game got rough all the way to half time. Then Spain dominated, and there was some rough play. But then the teams decided risking a red card was not worth it, and so there was some good play, and Spain dominated again.
By now I was all out for Spain. Forget the octopus, this team was good. Or maybe not forget the octopus. I was emotionally invested in Spain's success. During extra time I was pining for that one goal. And it happened. But before that someone on the Dutch team got a red card. That is how you give a game away. By getting a red card. 10 is a seriously small number on a soccer field. You end up with 10 players and the opposing team sees a big, gaping hole on the field, on your side.
I was scared it might go all the way to penalty kicks. Because then all bets are off. The team that dominated the game does not necessarily win the penalty kicks part. There it is pretty much a toss up.
But, thank God, the Spanish team scored.
After the goal, the goalkeeper started crying, more like bowling. And I am thinking, poor guy, he feels bad he lost the game for his team. But then I noticed the jersey. No, this was the Spanish goalkeeper. These were tears of joy. Another sign this was the team that deserved to win.
This should have been a 4-4 to extra time, not a 0-0 to extra time game. There were so many obvious misses by both sides.
But then the Spanish side scored one goal, and there were maybe three minutes left, and I was not worried for them. They were the superior team. They could hold the slim ground. And they did.
It is a new world order in World Cup Soccer. The superpowers of the previous decades all fell by the wayside. France, Italy, England, Brazil, Argentina, Germany. They all fell.
One reason this was such a rough game was because for the two teams this was very much a first. This was their one shot at glory, and they were going to kick balls and limbs, whatever got in the way. They might not even get into the Final next time. There was desperation.
The Spain-Germany game was the best game of World Cup 2010, and the Spain-Netherlands game was the most dramatic.
Can't wait for 2014. In 2014 I might want to watch the Group Stage games as a neutral observer before I pick my teams. Pick your teams at the onset of the Round Of 16. Ugh, my picks made me look like an amateur.
Spain won. They dominated the game in the beginning, in the middle, and the end. And they won. They scored one goal and they won. This Spain-Germany game was the best game I have watched so far during World Cup 2010. There was no need for one superstar to emerge. These were two great teams that went for it. It was quite a display. What a game.
