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I like to do keep tabs on my rating system this from time to time, always looking for ways to improve it. Since it appears most everybody took the Confederations cup quite seriously, why not have a look to see how the rating systems did in predicting the outcomes of games. [Read more →]

David writes in a request:

I was wondering if it would be possible for you retroactively to run simulations for the Confederations Cup before the last games were played in Group B. I realize how unlikely the U.S. advancing was, I’m just curious how many times it would have happened in your simulations. Was this a 1 in 100 thing? Or even more unlikely.

Thanks for writing in David. If I was selling Voros t-shirts, I’d send one out to you.

Anyway that’s a good question with implications involving two of my favorite subjects: statistics and philosophy. Anyway first the nuts and bolts. I re-ran the latest National Team rankings to include all result through June 20th. That way it would account for the stink from the US’s first two games and the surprise quality of Egypt’s first two. We dropped a few places down to 22nd, Egypt rose a few up to 42nd. Then I ran 10,000 simulations of the final two games in the group. The results: [Read more →]

That’s as Bad as I’ve Seen the US Look in a Long Time

In my case, that might be _ever_ since I didn’t follow the sport back in the 80s.

Update on US Qualification chances:

USA = What Difference Does It Make%

Someone reading that title would be almost certain this is a political post, and not a post about Asian World Cup Qualifying. They’d, of course, be wrong.

I’ll get to the update later on Thursday but a fascinating “life meets theory” moment evolved today when Saudi Arabia and North Korea came face to face with the mother of all game theory examples, the Prisoner’s Dilemma. [Read more →]

Giuseppe Rossi has claimed yet another victim: the servers at Big Soccer.

Is there no end to his treachery?

Asia finishes its group stages in a couple of days and Africa plays more matches in a week, but the rest of the world waits until August (South America until September).

An important note: Iran plays an absolutely critical World Cup qualifier at South Korea in their final Group Stage match. [Read more →]

This weekend qualifiers are over, so let’s see how everyone is faring going into the midweek matches.

The full qualification chances for every team can be found here.

The National Team Ratings can be found here. [Read more →]

One of the best parts about making mistakes is it gives you opportunities for explanations. I’ve re-run the 10,000 simulations correcting the coding mistake which meant Scotland was always the 2nd place team in Group 9 in UEFA. So many of the changes in results are due to this adjustment.

But some aren’t. [Read more →]

Looking over my latest post (since removed since the numbers are a little wrong), something jumped out at me: of the 11 times the Netherlands didn’t win their group, they didn’t qualify from the playoffs a single time. This meant that either they had some really bad luck in those playoffs, or there was something wrong in the simulator. Then I noticed that none of the other teams in the group, except Scotland, qualified from the playoffs in any of the sims either.

And the error was mine. [Read more →]

A lot more matches were played this week and some teams are moving up and down from the qualification chances posted last time. I was amazed after running the sims that no one hit the 10,000 out of 10,000 mark (though I think if I ran it again one might). So at the moment South Africa remains the only country with “IN” status. A couple are so close that it’s close to a formality (Australia could have officially clinched it had other results gone their way). Some high-powered teams are in some high-powered trouble now.

The full qualification chances for every team can be found here.

The National Team Ratings can be found here. [Read more →]