Why Data Science won’t predict the next Fifa World Cup winner?

Before attracting the anger of both data scientist and soccer manager, let me say I truly believe in the use of statistics in sport. The aim of this article is to show the difference between the short run and the long run.

It’s not about classify the efficiency of data science according to the sport discipline.

I took part few days ago at Vivatech, meeting between big (Tech) companies and start –up and I could attend several presentations dealing with sports and analytics (How to improve fan experience and player performance thanks to digital) and once again I think data with sport have good days ahead.

After describing what is “the money ball” and showing the rise of this concept thanks to new technology, I will try to explain why the method is not applicable for such a competition like world cup soccer game.

I will not shall mention of technical aspect, but feel free to use your knowledge to nuance my point of view.

The emergence of statistics: science behind performance

In this part we will see how a famous baseball leader, Billy Bean, managed his team and succeed to do more with less in a very competitive baseball championship.

His executives asked him to gather a strong team with very limited financial resources.

Not an easy task but to meet the challenge, Billy “the money ball” Bean decided to adopt a specific recruitment strategy: select undervalued players but with strong potential from…High School and with statistics.

As results were very convincing, other teams used the same technic, it was a real change of mindset.

And very soon, “money ball” methodology was used by other sport managers.

For instance, two years ago Leicester won the most difficult league in the world (the English premier league) with unknown players coming from lower division but with interesting statistics.

Rise of technology: sport analytics

Today multinational corporations and startups want to use massive data in order to improve their business.

Sport had the same goal for decades, but unfortunately probability was also used for a specific purpose (online) bet.

Data can help to predict a victory and consequently also establish the odds for online gambling.

Sport is a business before all, but last digital innovation especially IoT with wearable devices could help reverse the current trend.

Indeed, wearable devices enable collecting huge amount of data. And those data bring to an accurate analysis for the player, for the coach and after for other actors like journalist and bookmakers.

But even if all data scientist are working together together to find out a winner, no one could predict the unknown.

Emotional intelligence versus predictions

When it comes to lifting a trophy or winning a competition, players performance is not enough. Coach need to deal with psychological aspect too.

13th February of this year, the well-known coach of Manchester City Pep Guardiola talked about “the emotional management of weak beats or bad moment during a game” especially for the most prestigious competition between top European team: the champion’s league.

This is what I was talking about at the beginning, the difference between a championship competition and a cup is the number of the games.

For a competitor: only one month of competition is not like one year, particularly for a such expected event: the Fifa World Cup. Being cool under pressure is more difficult in this kind of situation where passion is ten-fold increased. Ask any soccer player what is the ultimate dream and you will have the same answer : win the world cup.

If we take a look of what happened in the last editions (Fifa world cup take place each 4 years)

In 2002, french soccer team was the favorite with the three best strikers from french, italian and english championship. How many goals they scored ? … Zero ! Why ? perhaps a loss of confidence because their midfielder creator (best player of the year) was not in optimum conditions.

Who could guess in 2006, Zidane get a red card and missed the cup after he lose his temper

Who could guess, the strike of French player in 2010 in South Africa…?

Who could guess the injury of Neymar in 2014?

We can find other situations (the cheating of players, settlement between two teams, refereeing errors)

And even if this year the competition will take place in Russia, country of the best mathematician and data scientist, I am sure the favorite team will note win the game due to emotional intelligence of one of the actors (coach, player, fans, and referee).