Effective playing time at the 2014 FIFA World Cup

The entrails from the 2014 FIFA World Cup have cooled, and the thoughts of football fans have turned to domestic competitions and the Champions League, but I finally got myself out from maintaining and updating the Soccermetrics API to analyze data from the World Cup.  I start with an assessment of effective playing time from the tournament.

I wrote in my previous post about the challenge of calculating effective playing time with a data set that does not record the time and field location where the ball leaves the playing area.  The major implication is that effective time can only be estimated instead of calculated, and I created a regression model between the number of time a ball leaves the field and the estimated time to be lost, which I then use to adjust the effective time.  The resulting algorithm (a finite state machine) is more complicated because it must have memory of previous events — the throw-in, corner kick, or goal kick event and the event that occurs immediately before it.  Finite state machines are hard enough to debug, but more so with memory.

So, word to the data suppliers: record ball-out events, and ensure that all of the spatiotemporal data is included in every technical/tactical event.

At any rate, nominal effective times are calculated using the finite state machine model and the values are then adjusted by the offset between expected time lost due to ball-out events and the time lost as calculated by the model.  The uncertainty range in the regression coefficients are used to create upper and lower ranges of the estimated playing time.

Here are a couple of charts to present effective playing time on a match and team level.  The first chart is the estimated effective playing time for every match of the World Cup over the first 90 minutes, with nominal playing time in descending order.  Eight matches in the knockout stage were decided in extra time, but I only consider effective time over the regulation period.

Group/KO Round Home Team Away Team Lower Range Nominal Upper Range
A 3 Croatia Mexico 57:25 62:10 65:47
A 1 Brazil Croatia 52:54 58:54 63:25
A 3 Cameroon Brazil 51:15 55:49 59:18
A 2 Brazil Mexico 64:32 67:40 70:06
A 2 Cameroon Croatia 58:55 62:42 65:38
A 1 Mexico Cameroon 58:42 63:45 67:34
B 3 Netherlands Chile 56:48 61:04 64:20
B 2 Australia Netherlands 53:54 58:28 61:57
B 1 Spain Netherlands 55:14 59:07 62:07
B 2 Spain Chile 57:38 63:27 67:49
B 1 Chile Australia 62:41 66:52 70:04
B 3 Australia Spain 63:33 67:44 70:56
C 1 Colombia Greece 60:21 64:49 68:14
C 1 Côte d’Ivoire Japan 64:52 69:14 72:34
C 3 Japan Colombia 56:30 60:58 64:23
C 3 Greece Côte d’Ivoire 59:37 63:48 67:00
C 2 Colombia Côte d’Ivoire 55:46 60:14 63:39
C 2 Japan Greece 60:23 63:07 65:17
D 3 Italy Uruguay 59:40 64:25 68:02
D 2 Uruguay England 57:36 63:19 67:38
D 3 Costa Rica England 60:24 64:40 67:56
D 1 Uruguay Costa Rica 51:54 57:08 61:05
D 2 Italy Costa Rica 68:04 71:05 73:27
D 1 England Italy 67:09 70:04 72:22
E 1 Switzerland Ecuador 58:52 64:06 68:03
E 3 Ecuador France 61:20 66:00 69:32
E 2 Honduras Ecuador 57:51 62:19 65:44
E 2 Switzerland France 59:40 62:58 65:32
E 1 France Honduras 61:55 65:19 67:58
E 3 Honduras Switzerland 62:29 66:05 68:52
F 2 Nigeria Bosnia and Herzegovina 69:31 72:26 74:44
F 1 Argentina Bosnia and Herzegovina 63:33 67:32 70:36
F 2 Argentina Iran 63:50 68:35 72:12
F 3 Nigeria Argentina 59:09 63:20 66:32
F 3 Bosnia and Herzegovina Iran 58:05 62:39 66:08
F 1 Iran Nigeria 62:35 66:51 70:07
G 1 Germany Portugal 63:19 67:01 69:52
G 1 Ghana USA 62:26 67:40 71:37
G 3 Portugal Ghana 57:18 62:21 66:10
G 3 USA Germany 66:19 70:24 73:32
G 2 Germany Ghana 60:42 65:04 68:24
G 2 USA Portugal 67:14 70:38 73:17
H 1 Belgium Algeria 58:47 62:58 66:10
H 2 Belgium Russia 58:48 64:25 68:39
H 1 Russia Korea Republic 62:56 67:07 70:19
H 3 Korea Republic Belgium 60:33 65:24 69:05
H 3 Algeria Russia 58:50 63:41 67:22
H 2 Korea Republic Algeria 54:14 59:28 63:25
KO 3rd/4th Brazil Netherlands 61:37 64:50 67:20
KO Final Germany Argentina 59:48 64:51 68:40
KO SF Netherlands Argentina 64:51 68:21 71:04
KO QF Argentina Belgium 61:54 67:14 71:16
KO R16 Argentina Switzerland 55:12 60:26 64:23
KO QF Netherlands Costa Rica 60:41 63:59 66:33
KO QF France Germany 59:10 64:36 68:42
KO R16 Costa Rica Greece 58:23 61:59 64:46
KO R16 Netherlands Mexico 63:32 67:25 70:25
KO R16 Brazil Chile 57:23 62:08 65:45
KO R16 Belgium USA 63:23 69:23 73:54
KO R16 France Nigeria 59:36 64:27 68:08
KO R16 Colombia Uruguay 60:18 63:48 66:31
KO R16 Germany Algeria 61:47 66:50 70:39
KO SF Brazil Germany 57:56 62:01 65:09
KO QF Brazil Colombia 49:21 52:39 55:13

Effective playing time in 2014 FIFA World Cup matches, with nominal, upper and lower range of estimated time shown. Data sourced from Press Association MatchStory feed and served from the Soccermetrics Connect API.

The second table is the average effective playing time for matches involving the 32 finalists.The amount of effective playing time is higher than one sees for domestic competitions, and I would imagine that it’s higher than previous World Cups.  The average effective time comes out to exactly sixty minutes, which is about five to six minutes more than what I’ve seen for other competitions.  Because it’s not possible to know exactly how much time has been lost due to ball-outs, I calculate upper and lower bounds, which puts most of the matches in ranges that appear to make sense to me.  I don’t know what other people have calculated with respect to effective time, but I recall seeing a tweet from Opta that USA v Germany had close to 73 minutes effective time, which seems to correspond well with my estimate.  All of the USA’s matches were in the top 12 in terms of effective playing time, which says something about the frenetic pace of play in their matches but not much about their possession characteristics.  I am not surprised to see that Brazil vs Colombia had the least amount of effective time, but it’s when you dive into the match stoppage data that you realize how discontinuous and unpleasant that match was.   Most of Brazil’s games were in the lower tier in terms of effective time, with the telling exceptions of the super-intense Brazil vs Chile Round of 16 match and the incomprehensible Brazil vs Germany semifinal.  I was surprised that most of Colombia’s matches were in the bottom tier as well, with the exception of the matches against Uruguay and Greece (!!).

Team Avg EPT
USA 69:31
Italy 68:31
Bosnia and Herzegovina 67:32
Nigeria 66:46
Portugal 66:40
Iran 66:02
England 66:01
Belgium 65:53
Germany 65:49
Argentina 65:45
Mexico 65:15
Russia 65:04
Ghana 65:01
France 64:40
Honduras 64:34
Japan 64:26
Côte d’Ivoire 64:25
Australia 64:21
Ecuador 64:08
Korea Republic 63:59
Costa Rica 63:46
Spain 63:26
Greece 63:26
Switzerland 63:24
Chile 63:23
Netherlands 63:19
Algeria 63:14
Uruguay 62:10
Croatia 61:16
Cameroon 60:45
Brazil 60:34
Colombia 60:30

Now, average effective time is a bit misleading in my opinion, and especially so in isolation, but I think it’s possible to gain some insight from the results.  I am struck that three of the bottom four teams in the table are Group A sides, with the notable exception of Mexico.  But Colombia being involved in matches with the least amount of effective time is very surprising to me.   It’s a result that makes we want to learn more.  And USA involved in matches with the most effective time?  Well, this tournament forced a lot of observers to revise their conceptions of the US national team, maybe this is one example.

There’s a lot more analysis that one can do with effective playing time, but this is a good place to stop and pick it up later.  In a future post I’ll create the same type of regression model that I created for Premier League and J-League matches to assess which team might have had greatest impact on effective time, as well as referee impacts, if any.

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