THE POWER RANK

What everyone should know about the Croatia national football team

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At the beginning of Euro 2012, The Power Rank assigned Croatia as the 46th best team in the world. This was the worst ranking among the 16 teams. Then a reader pointed out in the comments that Croatia is 8th in the FIFA rankings.

That is a massive difference.

We looked into this further and found two World Cup qualifying games against England in which Croatia lost 9-2 on aggregate. Since our algorithm considers margin of victory, these games greatly depressed Croatia’s rank. When we do not consider these two games in the rankings, Croatia jumps from their current 33rd ranking to 22nd.

We have no explanation why FIFA ranks Croatia 8th.

Then this morning, Marin from Croatia left some insight to his national team. Through apologies for his English and an F-bomb, he essentially says his team is bipolar. Either they believe in themselves and can beat any team in the world, or they wake up on the wrong side of the bed and lose to Georgia. Marin ends by saying, “I love my country, but I really hate to watch any game, any sport where a Croat or Croatia play because that day I will have a headache.”

So Croatia is the VCU of international soccer. In last year’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament, VCU made an epic run from last team in to the Final Four. Point guard Joey Rodriguez even admitted that they didn’t take some of their conference opponents seriously, a move that almost left them out of the tournament. They decided to play once the big dance started, winning 5 games on their way to the Final Four.

Against Italy today, Croatia managed a 1-1 tie after a beautiful finish from Mario Mandzukic in the second half. Croatia has a 3% chance to win Euro 2012 and make our methods seem a little silly. For all of our most updated win probabilities, click here to see our interactive bracket.

What are Germany’s odds of winning Euro 2012 now that they own the Group of Death?

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For updated win probabilities for Euro 2012, click here to view our interactive bracket.

Group of Death

Germany marches on while the Netherlands lingers on the brink of Euro death. Since the Germans are almost certain to make the knock out stage (92%), they now have the highest chance of winning Euro 2012 at 24%. This is higher than Spain’s odds at 20%. The Netherlands now need Denmark to lose to Germany and then beat Portugal by a bunch of goals. It’s still possible. 9.7% possible.

Croatia is ranked 8th in the FIFA rankings?

When we mentioned that Croatia was the worst team in Euro 2012, Morgan kindly pointed out their lofty status in those other rankings. A big reason why Croatia lands at 35th in our rankings are two World Cup qualifying games with England. Croatia lost 9-2 on aggregate in this home and home series. In rankings without those two games, Croatia jumps up to 22nd. (England drops from 9th to 17th.) Moreover, Croatia didn’t astound anyone in a Euro qualifying group with Latvia (85), Georgia (95), and Malta (114). They even lost to Georgia.

Croatia faces a serious test in Italy tomorrow morning.

Home field advantage.

We use a home field advantage of 0.41 goals for Poland and Ukraine, since this was the average advantage over all qualifying matches for Euro 2012. Greg asked why we used all qualifying games instead of only games with teams that qualified.

Great question. First, there are only 248 games in qualifying. Eliminating any of those games reduces our sample size, which reduces the accuracy with which we can calculate home advantage.

Second, the objective is to determine the advantage of playing at home, no matter what the strength of the teams. We’re interested in Luxembourg just as much as Germany. Fortunately, the home and home structure of fixtures between any two teams in qualifying really helps. If Germany only played San Marino at home, they would, on average, win by more than 6 goals. This would seriously skew the estimate for home advantage. But since Germany plays a home and home with San Marino, they might win by 7 goals at home but only 5 goals on the road. In our calculation of home advantage, the large positive goal differential at home for Germany is negated by the large negative goal differential for San Marino at home. This leaves a clean estimate for home advantage when one European country travels to another.

What do you think?

Do the Dutch have a chance? Does Croatia’s play on the pitch seem like that of a top 10 team? Please leave us a comment.

Thanks for reading.

How did Spain’s odds of winning Euro 2012 change after their first group match?

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Spain didn’t look quite right.

Too many long balls over the top. Too many shots from outside the box. Not enough crisp passing between players forming triangles all over the field.

Did Italy’s defense take Spain out of their game? Probably not, as our algorithm ranks Italy’s defense 25th in the world. This isn’t the type of ranking one expects for a country famous for their catenaccio system.

Maybe it’s just Spain’s first game this tourney. Or maybe this core group of players is past its prime. We’ll find out in their next match against Ireland.

Spain’s odds to win Euro 2012 dropped from 22.6% to 21.5%. This is because Croatia beat Ireland today, putting them in control of this group with Italy and Spain. Croatia’s increased chance of making out of the group stage dropped Spain’s odds of advancing from 83% to 80%.

For our most updated win probabilities, click here to see our interactive bracket.

Thanks for reading.