An interesting story from the National News Media has come to our attention.

Cardiff Met will become the first British University men’s side to play in European competition when they take on Progrès Niederkorn in Luxembourg on Thursday.

According to Christian Edwards, the former Swansea City, Nottingham Forest and Bristol Rovers defender in charge of Cardiff Met:

"Two of our players came from the professional game, one has captained Hereford at Wembley, and then you’ve got some boys who have never been at an academy in their lives – we’ve got five farmers from the west.”

We at Soccer Mad Boffins say 'good luck' to the academic footballers of Cardiff Met!


For the full article, reported by The Guardian, visit: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/jun/26/cardiff-metropolitan-university-europa-league


Here is a video clip and article by the BBC:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/48771709

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

The Women's World Cup is off!

So the FIFA Women's World Cup in France has kicked off!  Our dice prediction South Korea fared very poorly in their first match against France who proved to be too wizzy for them.  Loads to look forward too, of course, including today's big England v Scotland match.  The BBC have a useful guide to their coverage and to the tournament in general here which might be useful!

So bookmark that link and get ready for some more soccer mad antics!

The Cricket World Cup Starts Tomorrow!

Time to get your pads on!  England is hosting the 12th Cricket World Cup, which starts at The Oval tomorrow at 10.30am with a match between England and South Africa.  Cricket's equivalent of football's biggest spectacle will involve the top ten 'Test' playing teams and culminate at Lord's on Sunday 14th July, with a structure somewhat different from the football version - all ten teams will play each other in the first round, before the top four teams go on into the semi-finals. England have hosted the Cricket World Cup four previous times - 1975, 1979, 1983 and 1999, but have yet to lift the trophy themselves; famously they exited the competition in 1999 before the official single was released. Perhaps England will triumph this time? Compared to the soccer version, the tournament has been cheap to hold, as existing cricket stadiums have been used - the main case of boosterism in the tournament's history is the infamous 2007 edition in the West Indies, when a reported US$500m was spent constructing new stadiums and supporting infrastructure, but attendances suffered as supporters from the game's commercial heartlands in India and Pakistan found travelling to the Windward and Leeward Islands difficult, perhaps encouraging their teams' early exit from the competition (Majumdar, 2009)!

So why is this tournament of relevance to soccer-mad boffins?  Firstly, there are many historic links between the two sports.  Cricket, a sport favored by the English gentry, emerged as an organized sport a century (or more) before football, and many football clubs were founded to keep cricketers fit during the winter.  Cricket was a bastion of 'gentlemanly amateurism' (until 1973 professional players had to use a separate dressing room from amateurs) and this allowed for many players to play both sports, most notably perhaps C B Fry, who briefly played in the Football League for Southampton. This has become difficult more recently as both sports have professionalised, but many young players still try their hand in both disciplines - of relatively recent players Phil Neville of Manchester United fame played as an opening batsman for England under 15s.

Amateur cricket played on a village green

Secondly, the amateurism theme is one which is important for the history of Sport in Britain in general, and cricket tried to cling onto its amateurism to the extent that in many counties in the South of England eschewed the development of competitive league structures, as they were felt to encourage professionalism. The research of top cricket historian Duncan Stone on this topic is worth reading!  Cricket is still struggling to establish a viable institutional context for professionalization today, with ever shorter forms of the game being introduced, and new franchises complimenting or replacing the traditional county or state based structures around the world.  Though, there is a good commercial reason for this - if played in Test Cricket form, in which games are played over five days, the World Cup would probably take around three months to complete!

Thirdly, it has a link to 1966 - cricket, then a much more visible TV sport than today, cooperated with the English FA by suspending Test Matches for the whole of July 1966!

So, there are plenty of reasons to fish out your long wave radio and tune into the tournament!

Here is a visual guide to cricket for the uninitiated should any of the jargon above (and cricket has a lot of jargon) have you stumped!

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

Readers of this blog might remember that in 2018 Soccer Mad Boffin Alex contributed to a book that was authored by ex-Seattle Sounders FC team captain Ade Webster.

Ade has been busy since then writing another book, with his friend and former team-mate Tony Chursky, the former goalkeeper of the Sounders as well as Canadian National Team.

It is a great book, well worth a read especially for anyone interested in the history of North American soccer and the NASL.

The authors will be donating proceeds from sales of the book to charities. 

The book is available to buy now as paperback or e-book:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MZGMTM5?fbclid=IwAR0esMSt9th1c9luqqhK6_2vpP5TlNsTPEq6BBO94zQBeXwe4yW6sbEj9So





More info: 

Tracing the arc of their 46-year friendship, Adrian Webster and Tony Chursky share the inspiring highs and the deflating lows of being professional soccer players in the early years of the Seattle Sounders in the North American Soccer League. Providing anecdotes and first-hand news accounts from the past, they demonstrate how their time together, both before and during the Sounders years, shaped the paths they chose after their careers came to a close. 


Sounders Together, Friends Forever is an uplifting book by Adrian Webster and Tony Chursky, two former Seattle Sounders. It traces the highs and lows of soccer, with a friendship lasting from the beginning of the professional game in North America, and follows two players with hopes and visions for their soccer careers, revealing all the hard work and sacrifices chasing their dream of playing against top players and elite teams of the early 1970’s. 

Dave Gillett - Original Seattle Sounder

Latest Paper Published in International Journal of the History of Sport

We are thrilled that our latest paper has been published by International Journal of the History of Sport.

Entitled 'Opportunities for all the Team: Entrepreneurship and the 1966 and 1994 Soccer World Cups', this paper does exactly what it says in the tin.

The International Journal of the History of Sport, yesterday

We apply swarm theory together with a framework of sports products to analyze the marketing and entrepreneurial 'products' associated with two financially successful FIFA World Cups in the second half of the 20th Century.

The 1966 edition of the tournament was famously hosted and won by England and spawned the trend for World Cup mascots, with 'World Cup Willie'. The 1994 tournament hosted by the USA took the commercialization of soccer to a new level. Both tournaments notably made use of existing stadia rather than the sorts of extensive new-build construction projects so often associated with sporting mega-events, and both also left observable legacies from a social and cultural perspective, as well as for sport.

We hope that you enjoy the paper, which is online now and will be part of a future Special Issue of the journal.