Before the World Cup began, I looked at the trends that have changed and taken over the sport from 1966 to the present day. The possession game began to take over in the early 1990s. The teams began sacrificing shot quantity for shot quality. It was a very busy year. It seemed like set piece efficiency was an outlier in the year. It's true.
We have more data to take in with the World Cup almost over. Over the last month or so, what have we learned about the sport? Some of the results seemed strange. It's true.
There will be news and features at the World Cup.
I don't really think so. The existence of this data going back to England 1966 is a blessing. Some years produce better results than others.
Let's look at the correlation between points per game and goals per game for each of the 15 World Cup teams. If you won a knockout match in a penalty shoot out, we will count that as a draw. I apologize to Croatia.
The xG differential becomes very Predictive over a long period of time. It's basically looking at the quality of the shots you produce versus that of your opponent, and while finishing skill obviously matters, it only matters The xG differential will look similar to your points-per-game ranking if you give all these teams 100 games. You'll get funky results if you guarantee teams just three matches. The results in 2022 were quite odd.
The correlation between points per game and xG differential is shown.
1966: 0.500.
70 years ago: 0.770.
It was 0.845 in 1974.
The year 1978
The year 1982.
The year 1986, 0.765.
The year 1990
In 1994 it was 0.476.
There was 0.488 in 1998.
The year 2002
2006 was 0.713.
The year 2010 was 0.446
There was a 0.703 in the year.
In this year's edition, the number is 0.598.
The year 2017: 0.464
The correlations can be found on a scale from 1 to. The closer it is, the stronger the connection will be. When one goes up, the other goes down, the stronger the link. The weaker the link between the two, the closer it is to zero.
We can say that a high correlation between these two measures suggests that a tournament had a lower number of strange players.
The highest correlation was found in the 1974 World Cup. The strongest xG figures in the competition were produced by the Netherlands and West Germany. Scotland produced the third-best differential and failed to advance from the group stage, while a mediocre Brazil team produced the best xG differential and advanced to the semifinals. They were in a tie with Yugoslavia and Brazil, but fell short because of goal differential. The results and statistics were mostly agreed on by the teams.
It has not been the case. The team with the best xG differential in the competition, Germany, finished third in the group after a loss to Japan and a goal difference wrecker. In this case, the stat is actually for the loser.
The second best team in the tournament? Croatia defeated Brazil in a penalty shoot out. The teams were tied over 120 minutes despite the xG margin being much larger.
The tournament's four semifinalists rank in the top four. In xG differential, 19th and 23rd are inrocco and Croatia. Croatia's back-to-back shootout wins over Japan and Brazil and Morocco's back-to-back upsets of Spain and Portugal were incredible Cinderella stories for both Croatia's Luka Modric and virtually everyone associated with the nation. They were not results that were likely to happen a second time.
The data and results did not match up this year. What can we learn from the data about the trends?
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Over time, the extremes have grown more extreme, as the better teams in a given competition can usually be relied on to have some of the heavier possession rates. In 1966 and 1970, no one had a possession rate over 50%, and the first team had a possession rate of less than 50%. Both Spain and Germany achieved 70% in the same year.
The trends remain easy to spot despite the fact that we only had one 70+% team.
Eight of 32 teams ended up with at least 45% of the ball. After the semifinals, it was nine teams.
In the past few tournaments, the correlation between dominating the ball and actually winning has gone down.
There is correlation between possession rate and points.
The year 2006 was 0.706.
In 2010 it was 0.429, a 39% decrease from the previous year.
There was a decrease in the year of 0.275.
0.202 was down 27% from the previous year.
11 teams made the knockout rounds in 2006 and five made the quarterfinals. There was a link between having the ball and doing good things with it, even though France and Italy were both in the 49% range.
Only nine of the fifteen teams that had a possession rate of more than 50% made the knockout rounds. Both Germany andDenmark were eliminated from the group stage. Four of the six teams with possession rates under 38% made the knockout rounds, plus Japan, Poland and Australia, and one almost did, Iran, on the final match day. Points per game for teams with a high possession rate. Those below 50% will get 1.2.
I don't want to make a big deal out of it, because there were some wild and confusing results in this group. Not every low-possession team win is a good one. Spain created 13 shots worth only 1.0 xG while only 24% of the ball was used in the game against Morocco.
After the loss, Rodri said that "Morocco offered absolutely nothing." They made sure Spain didn't offer anything. In the game against Portugal, Morocco had 27% of the possession but created nine shots that were worth more than one xG. Portugal's best chance was worth just 0.18 xG, while they attempted two shots and scored on one of them. They were the more dangerous team even though they attempted more passes than Portugal.
This competition was a continuation of the trend. Without the ball, teams are more comfortable. At the club level, where most of the richest and most talented teams will continue to dominate the ball, the correlation between possession and winning will not change.
In a more democratic sample, where the richest teams cannot paper over weaknesses by purchasing the rights to talented players and squad tend to have a few more holes, we see that the famous "There is only one ball, so you need to have it".
The ball leaves the middle of the pitch in favor of one wing or the other a bit more each year. When a team has the ball in the attacking third, teams used to enjoy as many touches in the middle of the pitch as they did on either wing. Since that time, that has changed a lot.
The ball has spent less time in central attacking areas and more time on either wing. The percentage of center-third touches went down from there.
Spain has served as the sport's progenitor for the past 15 years or so, and they have a connection to this trend and the anti-possession trend above.
Spain won the 2010 World Cup with a 65% possession rate and 31% of its touches coming in the middle of the pitch. They enjoyed almost all of the touches generated by the two teams in the defender's box.
Only 23% of their attacking third touches came in the middle. As opponents adjusted, they were getting steered more to the outside. They only had 70% of the touches in the box.
Spain's possession rate was up this year, with their percentage of touches in the box decreasing. Spain, England and Portugal combined to give up 25% of their attacking third touches in the middle. Attacks have had to come from the outside as defenses placed more bodies near the center to account for Spain and FC Barcelona.
There is a line between the use of xG and a change in shot quality and quantity. Part of being a possession-heavy team means being more patient when it comes to waiting for high-quality shots to appear, as teams are less likely to attempt long-distance "hero" shots.
Part of the trend began long before xG became a thing.
Between 1966 and 2010 the average xG per shot remained the same, but shots began to decline from 1974 on. The shot quality has gone up in the last few weeks. It started with velocity and has gone up even more in the last four years.
Nigeria averaged 0.085 xG per shot in the World Cup. That would have ranked 23rd out of 32 teams, and the Danes would have ranked 29th. In 2010, 3.3% of shots were worth at least 0.2 xG.
This is a huge change.
Is this due to fines? It's not really. In the 2010 World Cup, there were 15 attempts at penalty kicks, and there have been 20 so far in the Middle East. Transition goals and set piece goals went up in the same year. Despite set piece goals dropping significantly, shot quality has continued to rise.
A picture can be painted here. Ball-dominant teams are controlling possession more than ever before, but they're getting steered to less dangerous areas of the pitch, and they're waiting for high-quality shots to present themselves. Defensively organized teams are more capable than ever of preventing those shots from materializing, teams such as Morocco are finding defense-plus-transition combinations good enough to outplay creative and ball-dominant teams such as Portugal.
Is this photo correct? When we add more data to the sample, we will find out.
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