Benno Hansen's List: Futbal, fussball, fodbold, football, calcio, soccer

• the distribution of the scoring margin in a high-level international soccer match (relative to the pre-match prediction using Elo ratings and a home-field effect) is approximately normal with a mean of zero and a standard deviation of 1.83 goals.
• Germany’s six-goal margin was 3.6 standard deviations above expected
• a 3.6 standard deviation performance in the NFL would be the equivalent of beating an opponent by nearly 50 more points than expected
• the Germans’ victory would be like an NBA team winning by 43 more points than expected

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• Johan Cruyff (“If you play on possession, you don’t have to defend, because   there’s only one ball”)
• Tim Sherwood ("If you don't lose   the ball, you ain't got to get it back")
• In this season’s Premier League, the team with more possession has won 55.3   per cent of games. In the Champions League, the figure is 66.7 per cent.   That would seem to indicate a strong correlation between keeping the ball   and winning the game.
• But as a means for predicting the winner of a football game, possession is   deeply unreliable. A far better metric in this regard is shots on goal, or   “shot supremacy”: the ratio of shots on goal to shots conceded, which has   been proven to have a strong correlation with points.
• Possession football   requires a certain skill level to carry off well, and yet even then it is   not foolproof
• When inferior   players try to play keep-ball, it often proves counterproductive.

• Jose   Mourinho’s attitude to possession at Real Madrid was summed up thus.  

   

   1. The game is won by the team who commits fewer errors.  

   

   2. Football favours whoever provokes more errors in the opposition.  

   

   3. Away from home, instead of trying to be superior to the opposition, it's   better to encourage their mistakes.  

   

   4. Whoever has the ball is more likely to make a mistake.  

   

   5. Whoever renounces possession reduces the possibility of making a mistake.  

   

   6. Whoever has the ball has fear.  

   

   7. Whoever does not have it is therefore stronger.

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