Predicting the Lionesses

Well done England in the FIFA Womens World Cup Finals. So close!

Our previous blog post compared our predictions for the tournament. Now that you have had chance to digest all of that (and if you didn't yet see it, just scroll to the previous post...) we thought it time to dive deeper and see who was the best at predicting England's performance.

Unlike in the overall report/analysis we were able to make things a bit more exciting - no scoreline exceeded 6 goals for either side (the limit of the dice) so every score at the end of normal time was include But the extra twist was that instead of using the outcome (win, lose, draw) at the end of normal ti,e we used the outcome at the very end of the game including after extra time or penalty shoot outs - thereby ensuring all players picked up points for the R16 game v Nigeria, meaning a more exciting measurement %!

	Actual Score	AG	KT	Dice
England v Haiti	1v0	5v0	4v0	2v1
England v Denmark	1v0	3v1	0v0	0v3
China v England	1v6	1v2	1v1	3v0
R16 England v Nigeria	0v0 (4v2 pens)	3v0	2v0	2v1
QF England v Columbia	2v1	2v0	2v0	0v0 (0V0AET), (1V2 Pens)
SF Australia v England	1v3	2v3	1v1	2v1
Final Spain v England	1v0	0v3	1v2 aet	0v1
Outcome overall (3 pts)	21	18	9	6
Goals Home (1 pt)	8	2	4	0
Goals Away (1 pt)	8	2	2	0
Total Points	37 (100%)	22 (59.46%)	15 (40.54%)	6 (16.22%)

Alex won this one with nealy 60%

Kevin was second place

But the dice had no faith in England and will be jailed for treason!

FIFA Women's World Cup 2023: England so far

England's Lionesses have scrapped their way past a robust Nigeria side to qualify for the Quarter Finals of the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup.

This was very different to the previous routing of China and had more in common with the opening game against Haiti as England were closed down quickly and not allowed the amount of time on the ball that they enjoy.

A disallowed penalty was controversial and a later red card may haunt them now with a key player missing from future games.

However we still have hopes for England whose squad has strength in depth and is built on reliable foundations.

Here is how our predictions for England are looking so far. Alex has correctly predicted England to win every game, although was way off with the scorelines. Meanwhile Kevin has been a good predictor of England's defence correctly identifying the away goals for each game. The random dice are way off!

	Actual Score	AG	KT	Dice
England v Haiti	1v0	5v0	4v0	2v1
England v Denmark	1v0	3v1	0v0	0v3
China v England	1v6	1v2	1v1	3v0
England v Nigeria	0v0 (4v2 pens)	3v0	2v0	2v1

FIFA Women's World Cup 2023

The FIFA Women's World Cup kicks off in just a few hours time and promises to be another exciting event.

As usual we have tried to predict the winners and also rolled dice as a 'control test' to see if either of us can predict more accurately than random chance.

Dr Alex Gillett

Champions - USA

Second  - England

Third - Brazil

Fourth - Netherlands

Dr Kevin Tennent

Champions - USA

Second  - Germany

Third - Sweden

Fourth - England

Random Dice

Champions - Spain

Second  - Colombia

Third - USA

Fourth - Australia

So, even the dice think that the USA will be there or thereabouts, the big question is; can the current European Champions England reach the final as Alex has predicted, the third place play-off as Kevin suggests, or be way off the pace such as the dice 'thinks'?

The dice do think that Australia's home advantage will help.

The FIFA Women's World Cup Finals Group Stage is Over - How Close Were Your Predictions?

The FIFA Women's World Cup Finals Group Stage is Over.

There have been many highs: High scoring teams, new records set, and free-flowing football.

There has been some controversy too, mainly around VAR.

And let's not forget the disappointment, even heartbreak, of the valiant Scotland team whose 3-0 lead against Argentina was unpredictably (or perhaps predictably!) cut to a 3-3 draw in the closing minutes.  Or the crying fans of Thailand who saw their team on the wrong end of thirteen goals from the USA.

It all goes to show what an exciting roller-coaster ride this tournament has been so far.

So, how close were your predictions?

Just like we did for last year's 2018 men's FIFA World Cup, here at Soccer Mad Boffins we had a go at guessing the outcome of each game, and calculated final Group standings based on the results.  We also rolled dice for a comparison to see if random chance or good old gut instinct and brain power would be better.  

Our friend and colleague Jon Fanning, also from University of York joined in the fun too.  The results make for interesting reading and can be found in the report that you can read by clicking on the link at the end of this article. 

So what are you waiting for? Download the report now and see how we compared to each other, to the dice, and how our performance at predicting France 2019 contrasted with our attempts to predict Russia 2018.  

Could you have done better?

You can read the article for free on the Researchgate website by clicking here: 

Soccer Mad Boffins FIFAWWC Group Stages Predictions Report


The DOI for the report is:

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.24401.38248

FIFA Women's World Cup 2019 - predictions

With the FIFA Women’s World Cup almost upon us, we decided to repeat the fun of last year’s Men’s tournament and map out three scenarios: Kevin’s predictions, Alex’s predictions, and the predictions of a dice roll.

A quick explanation as to how the dice roll scores were calculated

-        If rolling a 1, 2, or 3 that’s the score,

-        If rolling 4 or 5 it counted as ‘nil’, and;

-        Rolling a 6 meant roll again and use whatever number comes up (so the upper limit of normal time is 6 goals but it is fairly unlikely to come up).

So what are the predictions?

As usual at the end of the Group Stage we will show all of our predictions and those of the dice vs the reality.  If we can find them, we will also try to compare with any algorithm type predictions as proposed by statisticians working for business consultancies and universities.

We cannot all get every prediction right, so we will then try to do another set of predictions based on who actually gets out of the Group Stages and as the knock-out rounds unfold.

But in the meantime we had a go at predicting the entire tournament…

Random Dice Rolls…

The dice interestingly predict England to get as far as the Round of 16 before losing 0 – 1 China

Scotland meanwhile are set to lose 1 – 0 to Jamaica in Quarter Finals using this method of prediction.

To get there, Jamaica will surprisingly beat USA 3 – 0 in the Round of 16, and eventually reach the final before losing to South Korea 10 – 9 after penalties

Winner: South Korea

Alex

Predicts England to finish in fourth place, losing 1-3 to Brazil in third place play-off.

Predicts Scotland to reach the Round of 16 where they lose 1-2 to Canada.

Hosts France are predicted to knock out the USA by 2-0 in the Quarter-Finals, and England 2-1 in the semi-finals, ultimately winning the tournament having beaten China 2-1 in a hard fought final.

Winner: France

Kevin

England will finish in 4^th place, ultimately losing 0-2 to a strong Japanese team whom he predicts will be the surprise package of the tournament, and will eventually finish 3^rd in the world. 

To get there, Japan will graduate Group D in second place (pipping Scotland to the post – the Scots taking 3^rd place in the Group and not progressing) then Holland 2-1 in the Round of 16.  A controversial 4-1 drubbing of Brasil sees them glide comfortably through the Quarter Finals before running out of steam 1-2 at the hands of Germany in the Semis.

Kevin believes the USA will knock-out another Womens’ soccer superpower China in the round of 16, (2-2 after normal time and then 7-6 to USA after penalties), then they will lose 2-3 to hosts France in the Quarter Finals.

Kevin predicts France to ultimately reach the final, where they will lose 0-2 to Germany.

Winner: Germany

Soccer Mad Boffins Summer World Tour

Following our success at the University of York CEGBI/CSWL summer conference (see previous post) - we have in recent weeks also had our research on referees discussed in the 'Uses of the Past: History and Memory of Organizations' Professional Development Workshop at the Academy of Management (AoM) in Vancouver, Canada.  Here we discussed the ethnographic character of the archives generated by referees as they travelled around the world, and how we can use them to document the development of refereeing as a profession.  Vancouver is of course fresh from hosting the final of the FIFA Women's World Cup and FIFA signs were still on display!  Kevin also visited the Olympic Village from the 2010 Winter Olympics, perhaps one of the better legacy sites from an Olympics. This is the second Olympic venue visited by a Soccer Mad Boffin this year.  Alex visited the Barcelona Olympic Venue and village in January.

Next month we will be attending the Management and Business History Track at the British Academy of Management (BAM) in Portsmouth, where we will discuss the findings from our 1966 FIFA World Cup Project. We are working on bigger plans for outputs from this, so watch this space!

FIFA Women's World Cup 2015 - A Feast of Football

Whilst the world of football was rocked by events in Switzerland around the FIFA presidency elections, the FIFA Women's World Cup Finals kicked-off in style with a 1-0 victory by this year's hosts Canada over China (who were the inaugural hosts way back in 1991).

There have been some tremendous score lines including Germany's 10-0 win over Cote D'Ivoire, Cameroon's 6-0 victory over Ecuador, Switzerland's 10-1 win , also against Ecuador.  There have also been a couple of 4-0's, a 3-2, and a 3-3, and we are not yet past the group stages. Of course, there have also been many matches with substantially lower score lines, but there is no denying that it has been entertaining: 88 goals in 28 matches, at the time of writing, an average of 3.143 goals per game, but only two goalless draws so far (Canada v New Zealand in Group A, and USA v Sweden in Group D).

England's 2-1 win over Mexico was a great advertisement for the tournament, a close scoreline with goals at either end and a high standard of technical ability throughout.  FIFATV have made highlights available on youtube:

The remainder of the group fixtures take place today (16th June) and tomorrow (17th June), with the Second Stage of 'knockout' fixtures beginning on 20th June and culminating in the Final on July 5th.
More information can be found at FIFA.com: http://www.fifa.com/womensworldcup/news/index.html and also via the BBC at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/womens/