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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 →]

Nothing is quite so much fun as when your Windows installation craters for no particular reason. I’ve only been semi-attached to the internet since early March. The siren song of Linux is calling me, but I’m resisting her temptations for now…

Now things are slightly fixed, and I see some folks have made some more comments on the ranking systems. Thanks a bunch, you weren’t being ignored. I was just electronically crippled.

The next round of qualifying chances (Forza Slovakia!) will be  up soon! Thanks for your patience.

So we had a few more qualifiers played, some friendlies to help assess team strength and now its time to update from our last installment.

To review, I simulate the remaining World Cup qualifiers based on the Statistical National Team rankings I do and then assess the qualification chances of the remaining teams. The full qualification chances for all remaining teams can be found here. [Read more →]