The 2018 FIFA World Cup is the 21st eventof the FIFA World Cup. The competition was held in Russia from June 14th toJuly 15th, 2018. It was the first time that the World Cup was held in Russia.It was also the first time that the World Cup was held in Eastern Europe.
There are a total of 32 teams from fivecontinents participating in this event. Except that the host Russia teamautomatically obtained the qualifications, the remaining 31 teams qualified forthe pre-selection events organized by the continents. In this World Cup, thereare world-class superstars such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Rio Messi, Neymar daSilva, Pogba, and Grizman. At the same time, the World Cup also introduced VARtechnology, which refers to video assistant referees. The essence of this isthe use of video playback technology to help the referee to make a correctdecision. VAR will not make any decision on its own, but will help the refereeto make a decision.
So far, the second round of the World Cupin Russia has already been completed. By visualizing and analyzing the data ofall the teams in this World Cup, it can help the fans to better see which teamis in a better state. At the same time, there is a background story tounderstand that since the first World Cup, the teams that won the World Cupchampionships have been teams in Europe or the Americas. So where are thestrengths of European and American teams compared to those of other continents?Through data visualization, you can also find this problem.
First，themost exciting things in a football game is the moment of goal. However, a goalmay need to be returned in countless shots. Analysing the shots, shots, andgoals of each continent's team allows us to clearly understand their offensivecapabilities. As shown below.
As we can see from the chart below, theprobability of scoring goals for European teams is far ahead of the other threecontinents. The American team has a slightly higher probability of scoringagainst Asian and African teams. This is in line with the distribution of thestrength of the world football in the past decade. European and American teamsare better than African and Asian teams.
Second, fouls are a tactic in football games.For some teams whose players lack technology, they can only make up for thedifference through physical confrontation. Through the three indicators ofshooting, fouling, and infringement in the chart below, it can be seen whichcontinents teams are adept at using physical countermeasures and whichcontinents have superior team techniques.
There is no doubt that the African,American and European team players’ football skills are relatively outstanding,so the frequency of violations is relatively large. At the same time, inaddition to the Americas, the teams of the other three continents are good atusing physical countermeasures, so there are more fouls.
Third, through data analysis, it can beconcluded that the continent’s team’s overall strength is stronger in thisWorld Cup, which can be used to analyze the trend of the World Cup championthis year.
It can be seen from the above figure thatthe teams in Europe and the Americas, like the previous World Cups, have almosthalf the number of successful games, and the winning percentages of African andAsian teams are less than 50%. Therefore, no accident, this World Cup championshould still be obtained by the American or European teams.
