Who goes to the World Club? The best players. What do the best players have in common? They play for the best clubs. How can you tell the best clubs? They're the ones that have most players at the World Cup. It's sort of like natural selection. Tautological, but true.
So which countries are likely to do well at the World Cup? The ones whose players play for the clubs with most players there.
You can find squad listings for all the World Cup teams here (Wikipedia World Cup squads). A simple cut-and-paste (not actually that simple - I'm putting a description of the process in the comments) puts the squads into a spreadsheet, from which you can calculate the number of players from each club on the whole list, then the average club count for each squad.
Take France, for instance. The number 1 in their squad, Hugo Lloris, plays for Spurs. Spurs have 6 players at the World Cup, so put a 6 next to him. Do the same for the other 22, add up the total, and divide by 23 for the average club count. France's average is 8.1, which puts them sixth in the list. By these criteria they should go out at the quarter final stage.
And it all lines up in just the way you'd expect. Which country has the most players at the biggest clubs? Spain, with an average club count of 11.9. Of course they do, because a majority of their squad play for Barcelona, Real or Atletico. None of them play for the likes of Swindon, because that kind of Spaniard wouldn't be allowed into the World Cup squad.
And the lowest? Australia, with 1.6. 18 out of their 23 players play for teams who wouldn't have anyone at the World Cup if Australia hadn't qualified, including Luongo at Swindon. Their highest scoring player on this calculation is Mitchell Langerak, who plays for Borussia Dortmund, with 7 players at the World Cup. They're a halfway decent club, Dortmund, which is probably why he's started exactly 10 times for them in the last four years.
According to my algorithm, Australia may not do especially well. You heard it here first, unless you've been reading about them anywhere else.
Germany are second in my system, with 9.7. Amazingly England are third, with 9.2. Well I never said it was perfect.
The full order is as follows:
Spain, Germany, England, Belgium
Brazil, France, Italy, Argentina
Portugal, Switzerland, Netherlands, Uruguay
Russia, Croatia, Mexico, Colombia
Japan, Cote d'Ivoire, Greece, Chile
Cameroon, Nigeria, Ghana, Ecuador
Bosnia, Algeria, USA, Honduras
Costa Rica, Iran, South Korea, Australia
We'll see how this order stacks up against actual results. To be honest, given that it's basically a restatement of the bleeding obvious I'm expecting it to do rather well.
This is how it's done.
ReplyDeleteGo to the Wikipedia website.. Highlight the rows for all 23 players of Brazil. Paste them into the spreadsheet using paste special type values/unformatted text options as far as your spreadsheet package will allow.
Add two columns for country and group, add Brazil and A for the first player, then fill down for the other 23.
Repeat with correct countries and group letters for all the other 31 squads.
Add appropriate column headings, and arrange columns in your preferred order.
Check data. You may find you need to fix some of it. I did.
Add a column with a function that calculates the number of times the club name for any individual player appears for all players. My Excel spreadsheet function for the Brazilian number one says
=COUNTIF(I$2:I$737,I2).
That's the kind of thing you're after. I'm sure my Linux enthusiast readers can add suggestions.
On a separate sheet, list all the countries. Insert a function that adds the club count function for all the players from a particular country, then averages them. Again, I have an Excel function. It is
=SUMIF(players!$A$2:$A$737,A2,players!$K$2:$K$737)/23.
Then sort the countries in order of this function.
Obviously, your precise design will determine your precise formula. You'll have to do some reverse engineering from mine.
Struggling to remember his name, but didn't "we" (Bristol City) have a player in the last World |Cup?
ReplyDeleteAlbert, I think. And Luke Wilkshire the tournament before.
ReplyDelete