Just like millions of viewers around the world, I too have been spending hours watching FIFA world cup football matches on TV. I don’t like spending hours watching TV. But when its FIFA world cup time (which is once every 4 years), I am glued to the idiot box. Blame it on PaWaRa, my school teacher in 8th grade who instilled this passion.
So while watching the match day before yesterday (it was Holland vs. Chile), the commentator said, “This has been a world cup of late goals” as both teams maintained 0-0 until 77 minute mark when Leroy Fer scored a goal for Holland.
That got me thinking,
Is this really a world cup of late goals?
But I quickly brushed away the thought to focus on the match.
Later yesterday, I went looking and downloaded all the goal data for 2006, 2010 & 2014 FIFA world cup matches (2014 data for first 36 matches).
Lets examine the hypothesis “2014 has been a world cup of late goals”.
Attempt 1: Distribution of goals on 90 minute timeline
There have been 147 goals in 2006, 145 goals in 2010 and 117 goals in 2014 (as of 24th June, 2014). Out of all these goals, only 5 goals were scored after the 90 minute mark. So I ignored these 5 goals for our analysis.
Also, I assumed that any goals scored in injury time are part of the 45th minute or 90th minute mark (for simplicity).
One more: I have included data only up to 23rd of June, 2014 – so only first 108 goals of this edition are considered. This reflects accurately the moment commentator made that remark.
Lets see the chart.
Each dot depicts a goal. The dots are filled with semi-transparent color, so we can see the density of goals at each point of the 90 minute timeline.
As you can see, there is no clear pattern of late goals in 2014.
While we could see higher density of dots in first half of 2006 & 2010 editions, that can be attributed to having full data vs. partial data (for 2014).
Attempt 2: % of goals scored in each 15 minute block
May be if we look at % of goals scored in each 15 minute block, we can conclude something.
This gives an indication that 2014 world cup indeed has slow first half. But then you also see conflicting proof with more goals scored in last 30 minutes in 2006 & 2010 editions.
Attempt 3: What if we consider only first 100 goals in each world cup
Lets remove some noise. The commentator said this has been a world cup of late goals. If we consider only first 100 goals (ie first 30 odd matches) in each world cup may be we can see how 2014 fares compared to 2010 & 2006 editions.
Here too the chart does not reveal much. If anything, we can conclude that 2006 has clear pattern of high number of goals in first & last 30 mins.
While 2014 has high density in the last 30 mins, it has good distribution throughout the 90 minutes.
Attempt 4: Lets consider only the first goal of each match
I guess the impression of slowness is created if you have to wait a lot of time to see the first goal in any match. After that usually things pick-up.
So what if we consider only the first goal times in each match.
This is what we get.
Now this is clear. You can see that 2014 has high density in first half. Remember, for 2014 only 36 matches data is considered where as 2010 & 2006 have 64 matches data.
But we can also see the high density of goals in first half for 2006.
If you look at the average wait time for first goal, 2006 is the least with 30 mins and 2014 is in second place.
So if any, we could say 2010 was the world cup of late goals.
Attempt 5: Cumulative % of goals by minute
If a particular world cup has many late goals, then it will show thru when we plot cumulative goal distribution (as a %).
Here is what we get.
From this you can see that 2014 line lags behind 2006 & 2010 for first 60 minutes, before climbing to top place.
This does indicate that 2014 has a lot of late goals.
But the difference is negligible, so we cannot really say much.
What do you think?
I do feel that some of the matches are slow to watch. But this is purely because I have been looking forward to the world cup and could not wait for the action.
What do you think? Do you think this has been a world cup of late goals?
Also, tell me what you think about this analysis? Wow or meh?
About the data
Thanks to Soccer Worldcups & Wikipedia from where I obtained this data.
More like this
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26 Responses to “FIFA Worldcup Excel Spreadsheets [Roundup]”
Nice roundup! Do you know of any one-page spreadsheets which will be updated by an administrator after each game? Would be nice to be able to print out the latest results whenever I feel like checking them as I probably won't be following closely every day.
I actually haven't tried any of the above ones yet, but I thought I'd mention this one that I found which makes a nice one-page form you can fill in dynamically. http://exceltemplate.net/sports/world-cup-2010-schedule-and-scoresheet/
I would like to recommend you these one: http://www.anotagol.com/
You can choose your interface language (english, spanish, italian, portuguese, german or french) and your country for the timezone of match. I like it very much.
An awesome online world cup calendar in flash.
http://www.marca.com/deporte/futbol/mundial/sudafrica-2010/calendario-english.html
Got one more tracker in excel (one page)
http://cid-b09e57e6e960505c.office.live.com/browse.aspx/.Public
[...] Passend zu gerade laufenden Fußball-WM gibt es auf Chandoo.org alles wissenswerte über Excel-Anwendungen für den Fußball-Fan. [...]
Great!!!
I strongly recommend this :
http://www.en.excel-soccer-2010.de/downloads
Chandoo how you found this ...
@Rohit.. really beautiful file. I missed it during my research. Now, I recommend it. 🙂
Hi Chandoo - thanks for the recommandation 🙂 - Regards
[...] Excel, then print it on the other side of your Match Schedule from step 2 above. There are several other Excel spreadsheet templates you can download, but this is probably the only one-page version you can find; plus, it [...]
Does anybody know how to re-create this(?): http://www.marca.com/deporte/futbol/mundial/sudafrica-2010/calendario-english.html
...or do you know where a template can be found? I am DYING to have something like this on my site. When I found it, I had been looking for the longest time for a circular calendar. I found a couple that weren't adequate. Then I stumbled upon this one and my eyes nearly popped out of my head. If anyone can lead me in the right direction, I would be eternally grateful!
Thanks in advance!
Robert
@Robert...
Doing something like that is a lot of work. You can probably get it done with some hired help from a flash developer.
@Robert, the World Cup flash in the Spanish Marca newspaper is impresive, but not much as my own animated spreadsheet with the Goals of 2010 World Cup South Africa in Excel that I just published into my blog:
http://pedrowave.blogspot.com/2010/06/goals-of-2010-world-cup-south-africa-in.html
Download from here:
http://cid-6b219f16da7128e3.office.live.com/view.aspx/.Public/Goals%20South%20Africa%20Animated.xlsx
And start to enter the goals of the rest of matches.
Has anyone seen, or made, a Spreadsheet where you can record the scorers and see a 'top scorers' chart. Would be a nice enhancement
@Neil... checkout this one http://www.inflexionary.com/sports/world-cup-2010-excel
it uses macros to fetch scores from web (and provides very comprehensive analysis too)
@All.. Thanks for the comments. I have updated the post with few more links now.
Hi,
Check this dashboards too:
http://dashboards.org/world-cup-dashboards-and-visualizations/
😉
[...] Here is a collection of FIFA World Cup Spreadsheets if you are more in to that sort of thing. | [...]
[...] Cup fever is here!In FIFA Worldcup Excel Spreadsheets Roundup, Chandoo has some links to useful World Cup tracking workbooks. Only one of them (the first one) [...]
[...] World Cup fever is here!In FIFA Worldcup Excel Spreadsheets Roundup, Chandoo has some links to useful World Cup tracking workbooks. Only one of them (the first one) [...]
Hey, you missed ours! It has everything you need and more, but not a whole pile of silly extras (National Anthems, etc). I'll be making another one for the 2014 world cup. We had over 4000 hits on it!
@Michael Harwood.
Where is it then? You should have posted a link
Sie sollten an einem Wettbewerb teil zu nehmen für einen der besten Blogs im Web. Ich werde empfehlen Sie diese Seite!
Google translation: You should take part in a contest for one of the best blogs on the web. I will recommend this site!
[...] and welcome to the forum, Maybe these similar spreadsheets might give you a few initial ideas: FIFA Worldcup Excel Spreadsheets [Roundup] | Chandoo.org - Learn Microsoft Excel Online If you have specific areas / formulae / layout choices for parts of your spreadsheet that you are [...]
Calling all football fans around the globe! The biggest football festival will kick off on the 12th June 2014 and everyone is placing their bets of who will have the honour of lifting the golden trophy.
Use our free interactive Excel templatel to predict the World cup finalists ! No macros !
http://www.spreadsheet1.com/world-cup-2014-free-excel-prediction-template.html
I also made a Worldcup-tracker, with MS Access, which can also generate reports in Excel
e.g. a match-schedule with locations on y-axis and dates on x-axis, see:
http://worktimesheet2014.blogspot.com.es/2014/05/excel-with-match-schedule-for-2014-fifa.html
and:
http://worktimesheet2014.blogspot.com.es/2014/05/match-access-app-to-track-world-cup.html
where can i find raw data in excel file format of fifa world cups (1930-2014)
@Vivek
Have a read of: http://chandoo.org/forum/threads/goal-of-world-cup.17637/
The location is mentioned in Somendra's comments
Free XLSX Prediction Spreadsheet for World Cup 2018 Russia!
https://www.spreadsheet1.com/fifa-world-cup-2018-russia-free-prediction-templates-for-excel.html