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And the winner is&
just ask the computer |
A SOUTH AMERICAN team will win the World Cup. This was the bold prediction of sports scientists and statisticians at the University of Ulster a few days before the tournament kicked off. We recorded it here for the judgement of posterity and they proved to be correct.
The heart said Argentina, the head says Brazil, according to the scientists who carried out a painstaking statistical analysis of first-round matches, and the likely encounters in the knock-out stages.
The scientists used two main methods of determining which two teams would reach the final in Yokohama, Japan on June 30. In the first, a focus group of five football-mad boffins a kind of university pools panel gave their verdict on every predicted match using information such as the quality of teams, previous results, even the state of David Beckham’s broken metatarsal. Their verdict was Argentina to meet Italy in the final with the South Americans coming out on top.
The second method used a computer to simulate the World Cup ties. The program sifted data including the current Fifa world rankings, the distance teams have had to travel to compete, the effect of switching between South Korea and Japan, and vice versa, for games, and the rest period between matches. The simulation was run 2000 times and the result was: Brazil to beat Italy in the final and lift the trophy for the fifth time.
The scientists gave UK fans a little to cheer about. Both models agreed that England and Ireland would finish runners-up in their opening groups but would lose to France and Spain respectively in the first knock-out stage.
Peter O’Donoghue, a lecturer in sports studies at the University of Ulster, said: “The result of our research is a classic case of head versus heart number crunching against subjective judgement. It will be interesting to see how the tournament pans out and whether the human brain or the computer is the best way of analysing such unpredictable contests as a World Cup.”
How Beckham bends it
Research by engineers at the University of Sheffield into the physics of soccer balls has revealed the secrets of the forces that, harnessed by elite players like David Beckham, Brazil’s Roberto Carlos and Germany’s Michael Ballack, make them bend, swerve and dip to defeat goalkeepers and defenders.
Their findings - using results of wind tunnel experiments, high-speed video analysis, computer trajectory simulations and computer modelling techniques could lead to more spectacular free kicks in future. The research findings can be used to fine-tune the aerodynamics of soccer balls to make them deviate more in response to the pace and spin applied by a skilful player, and to design boots that impart spin to the ball more effectively and help to prevent foot injuries.
Matt Carré, of the University of Sheffield Sports Engineering Research Group, explained: “The wind tunnel technique we’ve developed at the University of Sheffield enabled us to analyse in detail, for example, David Beckham’s sensational goal against Greece in the World Cup qualifiers. We know that the shot left his foot at 80mph from 27 metres out, moved laterally over two metres during its flight due to the amount of spin applied and during the last half of its flight suddenly slowed to 42mph, dipping into the top corner of the goal.
Carré continued: “The sudden deceleration happens at the moment when the airflow pattern around the ball changes (from turbulent to laminar mode), increasing drag by more than a hundred per cent. This crucial airflow transition is affected both by the velocity and spinning rate of the ball and by its surface seam pattern. So, working from instinct and practice, Beckham was instinctively applying some very sophisticated physics calculations in scoring that great goal.”
Penalty points
This year’s players will hope not to share Gareth Southgate’s bad luck to be remembered for a missed penalty. Beyond learning how to shoot straight, it might help if you could persuade the goalkeeper to jump the other way.
Research by Mark Williams of Liverpool John Moores University, reported in Nature Science Update (May 27, 2002), suggests that this handy psychological trick might even be possible. His research has shown that, far from being pure chance, expert goalkeepers are much better than novices at predicting where the ball will go and getting there in time, a knack that seems to rest on reading the clues in the striker’s posture just before he kicks the ball.
Williams’s study compared groups of professional and amateur goalkeepers. The keepers watched videos of players from Dutch team PSV Eindhoven taking penalties. They used a joystick to predict which way the ball would go, and tried to move the stick into position before the ball would have crossed the line. The experts ‘saved’ more than a third of the penalties, novices only about one quarter. Experts were also more likely to pick the right direction, even if they failed to save.
With about half a second to make the save, keepers cannot afford to wait until the ball is struck. A penalty-taker will try to disguise where he is going to kick the ball, but he can betray himself with the angle of the kicking foot, or by how he plants his standing leg. The researchers tracked eye movements of the two groups of goalkeepers, and noticed that the professionals unlike the panicky amateurs whose eyes darted everywhere were fixated on the striker’s legs.
So, all the penalty-taker has to do is to plant his foot cunningly in the wrong angle. And all the keeper has to do is see through this pitiful disguise. |
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