THE POWER RANK

Podcast: Mike Goodman on World Cup predictions, soccer analytics

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On this episode of The Football Analytics Show, I talk with Mike Goodman, a writer who explains the finer points of soccer analytics. His content has appeared on FiveThirtyEight, The Athletic and Grantland among other outlets, and he’s the managing editor at Stats Bomb.

In previewing the World Cup, we discuss:

  • The evolution of soccer analytics from goals to shots to expected goals
  • The reason goal based analytics is still useful
  • Mike’s top 4 countries that could win the 2018 World Cup
  • Why the numbers underestimate Spain
  • How expected goals might criticize the roster construction of Spain, Belgium

Mike does such an excellent job explaining the analytics, and I highly recommend listening to get up to speed on analytics before the World Cup.

Historian Ron Chernow dominates the non-soccer part of the conversation that ends the show.

To listen to the show in iTunes, click here.

To listen to the show here, click on the right pointing triangle.

The most underrated team in sports

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Chile gets no respect.

They won the South American championship over Brazil and Argentina in 2015. They won a special North and South American tournament in the US last year.

My numbers put them at 3rd in the world before the Confederations Cup, or the World Cup Light that FIFA holds the year before the actual World Cup. This tournament features the champions of each continent.

However, no one gave Chile a chance. The markets odds were +320, or about 24% win probability, and Chile got even less respect from commentators.

In the semi-final, Chile outplayed Portugal but the game remained scoreless after 120 minutes. Chile advanced by saving 3 straight penalty kicks against Portugal.

Now Chile faces Germany in the final on Sunday at 2pm Eastern. My numbers give the following probabilities for 90 minute regulation:

  • 41% for Germany to win
  • 31.5% for Chile to win
  • 27.5% to tie

Chile is not the favorite. However, don’t be surprised to see them win the tourney, especially since many of Germany’s stars won’t play in this game.

And there’s reason to trust my world soccer numbers. A published research paper studied the predictions from my algorithm and found them quite worthy.

I wrote about the lessons learned from this study. It’s probably most interesting for the results on ensembles, which I use in my football predictions.

To check out the article, click here.