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Australia's Technological World Cup Advantage
hotsauce writes "The BBC has a piece about how Australia is using software to gain an advantage in the World Cup. The Socceroos are running software that looks for patterns in attacks of the opposing team. It also shows the effectiveness of different response strategies by recording where attacks fail when countered. This is the first time Australia has reached the World Cup in 30 years, but a real test of the technology will come today when Australia must take on five-time and current world champions Brasil. The Socceroos talk about specific strategies for that game, also."
This piece reminds me of the software that the music industry invented, or possibly it was clear channel here in the usa that would listen to new songs and be able to pick out 'hits'. I agree that software in the world cup *might* help strategy, But I think many times it becomes a crutch that makes people lazy.
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I am amazed to see Australia playing this well. The previous Australia i saw was eliminated by Uruguay 4 years ago. This year they got even, and eliminated them.
They came from behind in their first game, and played "mano a mano" against Brasil today, and i would say they even played better. They had bad luck with the score.
I think they will win their next game against croacia and go to the next round.
So maybe this software is actually helping them
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Funny, this article was posted after the game was over, 2-0 for Brazil. So there's the result of your "test".
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By the way, FIFA rankings are absolute nonsense.
4 8,All-Feb-2006,00.html)
You are correct... How can we believe the USA soccer is ranked #6, ahead of Germany, Spain (as of the date of this post, from http://www.fifa.com/en/mens/statistics/index/0,25
Rankings are not a good index at all. Australia just lost it.
Thankfully there's still a sporting tournament which can't be bought by money/technology (see: Olympics, NFL, MLB etc).
You can have all the computers and scientists in the world working out strategies etc, but in this game it can all be destroyed by a single moment of genius from someone who grew up in a shanty town without ever seeing a computer.
A fellow happens to be sitting next to a priest at a boxing match. Before the first bell, he notices one of the boxers crossing himself. So he asks the priest, "Will that help him win the fight?" The priest says, "Not if he can't box."
So, yeah, computer analysis has been around for ages in many sports. Take the mega-infield shift teams put on for Big Papi, for example. Still doesn't help if the team doesn't have sufficient skill to use the information.
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Well, based on that one match as that's what we're using, the US should be ranked around 12th if they were so evenly matched against Italy...
It's official. Most of you are morons.
A goal in soccer is much harder to obtain than a touchdown in American football. A 2-0 game is more like a 35-14 game in American football. Also in the NFL the 32 teams are pretty close in talent level, this is because of the salary cap. A 32nd ranked team can always beat the 1st ranked team. It just doesn't happen very often.
Now in World Cup soccer/football the talent level is very uneven. In reality out of the 32 teams in the World Cup only maybe 6 are serious contenders. Of course in the NFL only 12 of the 32 make the playoffs. Yet all 12 have a serious chance of winning, the Steelers who won Super Bowl XL, were ranked 6th out of 6 in the AFL playoffs.
I understand that the World Cup is on a national talent level and that perhaps makes it an uneven field of play. Yet it has to be said that only a very few teams have a chance of winning in the World Cup. And the chance of a lower tier team winning the World Cup is almost impossible. Out of 17 World Cup championships only 7 teams have won with 5 of those teams having won twice or more.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
I'm not American, and i like football(soccer), but i have to disagree with you here. If "soccer" was as ingrained in the American psyche as it is in most other countries, the rest of the world would really be in trouble. There are a lot of phenomenal athletes in America, and even more importantly, a *lot* of money that goes into them. Americans aren't somehow inferior athletes, and if from the time he could walk, every boy over there learned to kick the ball, i really do think they would dominate the sport.
:)
Look at the olympics, the americans dominate them almost every time. Imagine if some larger percentage of those athletes played soccer instead?
Lucky for us, that's not the case, and we get to enjoy the world cup without having to be annoyed at the americans dominating yet another precious thing in the world
The Brazilian's dominance of football is not genetic nor unearned. It's created through a culture of football. As soon as they can walk, they are playing the game, kicking balls made of cloth on street corners and dirt fields.
They don't have the American/Australian soulless attitude that sport is about mechanically working out in the gym, or following strict, dull instructions from the coach. In Brazil, sport is about expression, about creativity, about style and panache.
That is something that the dominant Olympic countries will never understand. No matter how much money they throw at it, no matter how many 'Institutes of Sport' they make, no matter how much they can 'bench', no matter how fast then can run a 40, they will never have the passion, the creativity, the joy for the game necessary to win the World Cup.
And thank fuck for that.
,br. Actually I would suspect that its the opposite. Because of the start-stop nature, American Football has *ALWAYS* been more strategic, knowing the opponent is going to run vs short pass vs long pass on the next down is an obvious advantage, and so the opposition takes pains to avoid patterns. In soccer/football, the player is the one making the strategic decisions, constantly while under immediate pressure; my guess is he makes those decisions instictively. Instictive decision mean patterns, even if they aren't immediately obvious. This is what computers do, they data mine looking for patterns. This isn't "Player A passes right 75% of the time", this is "Player A, in a 1 on 1 situation with no other players in a 20 foot radius will attempt fake X when approached from the left front 80% of the time". Or maybe which side is the goalie strongest at defending? These are people who are making a living and dedicating their lives to this game, 80 hours a week minimum would not be unusual. The only thing that would be more difficult would be analyizing the data, and not being a soccer fan I'm not even sure about that.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
You were right in the first paragraph (using slightly misleading terms), and went wrong then after. The Brazilian's dominance of soccer is not genetic nor unearned. It's created through a culture of soccer. All three nations you mentioned of course have a strong culture of football, it's just that in Brazil, the major code is soccer; in America, it's gridiron, in Australia, it's split between Aussie rules and rugby based on region. Drive through the backstreets of Melbourne or down to the local parks and you'll see dozens of children playing football. Football obsession is not limited to Brazil and not limited to soccer.
Not surprisingly, the very best Aussie rules footballers come from Australia, and the very best gridiron footballers come from America.
Probably you're right that Australia and America will never win the World Cup. But that's because our very best athletes are playing the codes that they want to play, because of the culture they have behind them.
Look out!