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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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Well technology didn't quite cut it for the Australians today. Brazil took the game 2-0.
On the other hand, the Socceroos played very well. They had at least two open goal chances. It came down to old-fashioned skills. Australians were excellent in creating chances, but just couldn't finish off. Brazilians had two great goals in the second half. But their super-star Ronaldo put out another so-so performance. According to one commentator:
"Ronaldo's performance was better than against Croatia - but not by much. He played the pass for Adriano to score but cuts a dejected figure as he trudges off to consoling pats from the dug-out."
Technology is of course changing the games, but probably online games more than soccer!
Placing 5000$ (AUS) on Brasil to win would be a good start.
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
The Aussies seemed to do quite well in the first half... They were certainly stopping Brazil do many of their normal technical flourishes. Whenever one of them got the ball they would be jumped by at least two Aussies.
Strategy:
"Sorry lads, a few more bugs to work out! Lads? Nooooooo..."
Technology Quarterly
Sounds good?
Jun 8th 2006
From The Economist print edition
Software: “Music intelligence” systems that can distinguish hits from misses could change the way pop music is made and marketed
IMAGE
THE versificator, a machine described in George Orwell’s novel “1984”, automatically generated music for the hapless masses. The idea of removing humans from the creative process of making music, an art form so able to stir the soul, made for a good joke when the book was published in 1949. But today, computer programmers working in a new field called “music intelligence” are developing software capable of predicting which songs will become hits. This surprisingly accurate technology could profoundly change the way pop music is created.
The software uses a process called “spectral deconvolution” to isolate and analyse around 30 parameters that define a piece of music, including such things as sonic brilliance, octave, cadence, frequency range, fullness of sound, chord progression, timbre and “bend” (variations in pitch at the beginning and end of the same note). “Songs conform to a limited number of mathematical equations,” says Mike McCready of Platinum Blue, a music-intelligence company based in New York, that he founded last December. Platinum Blue has compiled a database of more than 3m successful musical arrangements, including data on their popularity in different markets.
To the human ear, music has changed a lot over the years. Music-intelligence software, however, can reveal striking similarities in the underlying parameters of two songs from different eras that, even to a trained ear, seem unrelated. According to Platinum Blue’s software, called Music Science, for example, a number of hit songs by U2 have a close kinship to some of Beethoven’ s compositions. If a song written today has parameters similar to those of a number of past hits, it could well be a hit too.
Carlos Quintero, a producer and remixer at Orixa Producciones in Madrid, recently tried out another music-intelligence system, called Hit Song Science (HSS). “It practically left me in shock, it’s stunning,” he says. Mr Quintero’s production company now has the most promising demo songs it receives from aspiring musicians evaluated by Polyphonic HMI, the Barcelona-based developer of HSS and Platinum Blue’s only serious competitor. (Both companies perform analyses in-house, rather than selling software.) The results—consisting of a graph, numerical scores, computer-generated comments and suggested changes—help Orixa’s managers decide which songs to produce. Then, during the recording and post-production phases, Orixa uses HSS to reanalyse successive versions of each track for fine-tuning.
Belief in music intelligence is spreading, as Polyphonic HMI and Platinum Blue rack up bull’s-eye predictions of success, including “Candy Shop” by 50 Cent, “Be the Girl” by Aslyn, “Unwritten” by Natasha Bedingfield, “She Says” by Howie Day, and “You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt. Still, labels that use music intelligence generally prefer to keep quiet about it, so non-disclosure agreements are common. “No one wants people to think their decisions are coming from a box,” says Ric Wake, an American producer of two Grammy-winning acts who routinely employs Music Science. Even so, the names of many customers have leaked out. They include Capitol Records, Universal Music Group, Sony Music, EMI and Casablanca Records. Labels sometimes don’t tell even their established artists when they use music intelligence to help decide which singles to promote.
Revenues at Polyphonic HMI will exce
The extreme centre is the paper's historical position. --Geoffrey Crowther
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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Meanwhile, we who live in the real world can see a country that's an underdog of the football world trying a new idea to help tip the balance back their way a bit.
Stay in your little fantasy world isolated from reality and keep believing you are superior to everyone else.
What a shame, the socceroos played better football but lost anyway...
Funny, this article was posted after the game was over, 2-0 for Brazil. So there's the result of your "test".
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Australia, ranked 88th in the world of football, played Brazil, ranked 1st in the world of football, almost to a standstill in the first half.
They had two clear chances to equalize Brazil's first goal, but couldn't quite get there.
Then, late in the game, Brazil helped themselves to a freakish goal off a goalpost rebound, which made the score 2:0.
Australia losing to Brazil ONLY 2:0 is a testament to the Aussie's coach, Gus Hiddink, fearless play, and, very probably, the software that you're saying "didn't do it".
Look, I know you don't really understand "soccer" but this is as if, off the back of a crushing Superbowl victory, the best team in the NFL played the wooden-spooners, and ONLY won by one touchdown...
I'm sure there are quite a few football clubs (and even countries) who are employing software analysis for their games preperations. I once saw this video about Rafael Benitez (manager of Liverpool FC) employing this software and spoke highly of it. UEFA Champions League and the European Supercup in 2005 and the FA Cup in 2006 speaks for itself.
The fundamental flaw with "intelligent" software like this is the fact that it only has a chance of working if no one else uses it. The instant a second team starts exploiting this it will throw off everything, as those teams will be playing in a way contradictory to their usual tactics, and thus all the statistics and probability it outputs are meaningless.
Haven't you realised that you call the game soccer because you suck at it? Really, nobody else in the world plays american football. For better, you call it "football" despite you almost don't kick the ball. I would call the game "American Rugby" instead of football, but you believe you are the belly-button of the earth, where everybody looks at. Keep your imperial system, your boring sports (specially baseball). Meanwhile the entire world is watching a beatiful game. Cheers from Argentina.
I have pictures o' your momma and sista naked
Yeah, the human component of it.
I have pictures o' your momma and sista naked
We're about 12 hrs behind Australia time, the game hasn't even been aired here yet!
THANKS A HEAP
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
In time for next years Ashes, their cricket team is going to have a computer that advises their skipper not to take suicidal runs to substitute fielders.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
It appears to me that American Football is basically a start-stop game, and could probably view it in a similar way to chess openings.
Football is a more flowing game. There are a few set plays that get played out, they make up an extremely small part of the game due to the dynamic nature.
Therefore I would suggest that Football it is far more difficult problem domain than NFL for analysis to an arbitrary level of confidence.
First off, the Aussies aren't ranked 88th, they're 42nd. Quite a bit of difference between the two.
Secondly, there aren't any wooden spoons here. (That would be American Samoa at 205th.) Every team in the World Cup is good, or else they wouldn't be here. Yes, there not all at the level of Brazil, but every team here can play.
[My prediction: Argentina.]
So they are using software to search for patterns
big deal i think that the biggest strenght of that team lies in
the enormous barrel of talent and experience that their coach, the dutch Guus hiddinck has(NL)
He's the one that made Korea win against my all-time favorite Italia in the previous worldcup
He also coached a lot of big teams: Barcelona, Real madrid,
anyway it's nice to see them using software but don't ever think
that's the main reason they are performing so well for a relative rookie team
Anyway that's just my opinion as a belgian footballfan
Not so. This software, and many more like it used by professional sports teams around the worls -- particularly in the US NFL football clubs -- analyzes patterns in video footage. It calculates STATISTICS based on how often certain formations are used, what attacks, defenses are constructed, and analyzes weakneses based on previous performances. It is not a real-time process. Even if it was a real-time process, it only allows you to see what the current pattern is -- it's up to the coach to decide how to exploit it.
Think of it more as an analysis program that looks at past events. There is no guarantee such events will transpire the same in the future.
If you are familiar with baseball they have used a similar analysis system on pitchers (and batters now) for YEARS. Just counting pitches, what's been thrown and where you can get a VERY good idea of what a particular pitcher will throw at any time based on previous patterns. It works VERY well, and EVERYBODY uses it. The trick is to not operate in predicatable patterns -- a trick that can be very difficult for highly trained athletes with well formed muscle memory to achieve.
Australia's loss to Brasil today proves nothing. Only the coach and players (of the Aussie team) may realize the full effectiveness of the information. Seems to me they did OK (although a loss is a loss).
First goal was scored by a player who can only hit the ball with his left foot, the defender didn't force him onto his right, didn't close down and Brazil scored. Everyone in the world knows Adriano is only left footed, you would have thought the technology would have stressed this a little more.
And yesterday the US (by any reasonable ranking system about the same level as Australia) played Italy to a standstill and a draw with one less player on the park.
Technology helps in coaching, but what really helped the Australians and the US was guts and effort from the players.
As one commentator said today
"Imagine the talent of Brazil with Australia's work ethic"
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
...but Australia (newcastle university) just beat Australia (university of new south wales) in the finals of the 4-legged league of the robotic world cup for the first ever all-australian final match.
0 06 ] but its a lot.
I don't know how many different countries competed [ http://www.tzi.de/4legged/bin/view/Website/Teams2
The challenge is to program sony AIBO dogs. Every year the finalists' code is publically released so the bar rises every year. (since everyone can use the winners' ideas in their own submissions).
'No publisher will ever pay you enough to successfully sue them' - Dave Sim
Oh yeah, well the US team is gonna use technology also. We will use Predator drones to shoot the enemy team, and then turtore the survivors with electricity while blindfolded in a black hood. Our Soccer team won't ever be booed again on the world domin.....uh...stage again!
-1 Offtopic, -1 Flamebait
Table-ized A.I.
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.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
It would seem to me that evaluating the effectiveness of this software vs Brazil would be a rather pointless exercise. Brazil is known for having a extraordinarily creative approach to the game, and marvelous individual talent, almost beyond what could be expected from human performance. The result of their approach is extreme unpredictability. When it works it is astonishing in its results, and it generates acutally beauty and grace, when it doesn't work it results in surprisingly uninspired play. It is almost chaotic.
Nobody would normally expect the "Socceroos", a team of mediocre skills to be able to compete with Brazil. They are totally outmanned respect in every respect, talent, culture, skill and tradition. The evaluation of this softwware needs to be done at a different level, looking at its predictions and result. And more likely the predictions should be made examining a different data set than what a match against Brazil would provide.
And finally, thanks to your comment, I have an opportunity to rant on my disbelief in statistics. Because, as seen today, Brazil won not because it was better on the field as the statistics and patterns might show. Brazil won due to their incredible luck. Not their technique, not their tactics. Australia had a more convincing game attitude throughout the entire match, effectively neutralized Brazil's attack and midfielders. Ronaldo had another crappy game, along with Adriano, and the entire team has a very hard time trying to play as an ensemble instead of sparse players forced to wear the same team colors.
Statistics won't capture the immense disbelief in the Brazilian coach, Parreira. He's an exceedingly stubborn man and will likely refuse to change the initial lineup for the next match against Japan. Statistics make it look like Brazil is a favorite for the cup, but my money right now is on Argentina (did someone watch their amazing 6-0?).
Therefore, I my point is that soccer is a sport of outliers. Averages and frequencies actually mean little given all the variables around the game (referees that do not have a clear view of a controversial play, players who use malice to fool all referees, etc.) The possibility of outliers is at the heart of soccer, that's why FIFA refuses to give a, say, US football treatment on the game of soccer. Perhaps a better treatment of soccer will make use of Bayesian statistics or some Montecarlo thingie. We'll see.
DISCLAIMER: I live on Brazil and followed through all classifying matches and am afraid that Brazil won't make to the end due to the immense hubris Parreira might bring on us.
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 official name of Rugby is actually "Rugby Football Union." So that's exactly where American football got its name. We started playing "Rugby Football," shortened the name to just "Football," and started changing the rules. As an aside, why do Spanish-speaking countries call it "futbol?" "Fut" doesn't mean "foot" in Spanish, to the best of my knowledge. Just accept that people call games by particular names for historical reasons, and stop worrying about it.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
> ...and you need to read it again and realize that if there are two alternatively theories presented (hence the words "rival explanation" in your quote), then arbitrarily picking one of them and presenting it as fact, makes you look like an idiot.
I agree partly. My intention was to mention both theories and strongly stating the one I think is right, for the reasons stated in the external link and all the information we have at hand. I don't think that makes me look like an idiot. I didn't hide any information, by quoting some sentences and linking you to both articles. The grandparent went on a rant with inaccurate information and still got modded "Insightful". Our discussion thread is already there, so you can get the picture and see what (s?)he is about.
"The Philosophers' Football Match was a comedy sketch on Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus and later a part of Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl.
i onal-philosophy.htm for a transcript.
The sketch depicted a football match between philosophers representing Greece and Germany, including Plato, Socrates and Aristotle on the Greek team, and Heidegger, Marx and Nietzsche on the German team. Instead of playing, the philosophers competed by thinking while walking on the pitch in circles. This left Franz Beckenbauer, the sole genuine footballer on the pitch (and a "surprise inclusion" in the German team, according to the commentary), more than a little confused. Confucius was the referee and Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine were the linesmen."
I forget who finally "gets it" and does a goal rush. Very funny sketch, what with the announcer enthusiastically describing what is basically nothing happening.
See also http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~ebarnes/python/internat
really great, but did not work today against Brasil. 8-) BRASIL!!!
"Yeah? They just lost to Brazil, 2 - 0. The software must be faulty somewhere..."
Not really, but Australia were using version 1.4, whereas Brazil had managed to get access to an early beta of 2.0.
Sounds like someone simulated a FIFA 2006 game on PS2, CPU vs CPU.
World cup players are bought and sold around the world
No they aren't. Good players are bought and sold around the world, yes, but for club teams. The top teams in the Champions League this past season were as good as some of the best national teams, as Chelsea, Man U, Arsenal, Barcelona etc. all have starting lineups comprised almost exclusively of players that play for their respective national teams. But that doesn't change the country they play for.
An individual player can choose the country they play for based on fairly tenuous family connections (many of the German team players, for example, were born in Poland), and thus a particularly good player may choose to play for a national team more likely to win the World Cup. But this requires something like a grandparent to have been born in that country (I'm not sure of the exact rules.)
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I find it astounding that you can watch todays game (assuming you have) and come away with that opinion (though I'm also unclear on what you mean by "more traditional methods", I think knowing your opponent is a fairly traditional approach to most competition).
Tactically Australia were supreme today, Brazil's game was shut out almost entirely which is exactly what you'd expect if this software (combined with an excellent coach) was doing it's job. Brazil were permitted very few real opportunities to do what they wanted. Unfortunately for Australia they made good on them.
Australia lost because their final touch was marginally off and that is something that is very difficult to coach for and improve, when it comes down to it strikers either have the touch when needed or not.
Of course ability, flair and other "human" factors will always be an important factor. But if you are tactically unprepared then it is hardly worth turning up and you won't get away with it unless you have a massive skill superiority.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Exactly. The most effective way to beat the huge amount of programming, data entry and analysis of computers is to simply change behviour. Socceroos did well to keep up with the Brazilians, but Too-Fat Ronaldo was more assistance to them. When Brazil finally bench The Fat One and start Robinho in his place, it's all smooth sailing.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
A) Pick the ball up and run with it.
B) Change the shape of the ball to oval.
C) Start a fight.
I guess "all three of the above" is an option too. Do you think it would catch on?
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
Despite the other replies, Italy is one of the few that has Italian players.../ 0,,1785937,00.html4 4.html0 02-roster-breakdowns.htmlx .html
http://football.guardian.co.uk/theknowledge/story
Playing with foreign players can cause some distrust when they do not perform at away games...
http://worldcup.reuters.com/spain/news/usnL277297
An interesting blogg about the last World Cup's national mix...
http://usasoccer.blogspot.com/2006/05/world-cup-2
A Time article about the French team for the 2002 World Cup noted that they only had one French player...
http://www.time.com/time/worldcup2002/020128/inde
I could go on but I think you should get my point by now.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
You don't get it. Players often don't play in their home countries, that's all. They still all have to have the nationality of the country they play for. And once they played for one country, they can't change their minds. So your argument is void.
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?