Visiting Munich’s other team (TSV 1860 Munich – Karlsruher SC 2:1)

While I was visiting my sister in Munich ver the weekend I took the chance to take the trip to the Allianz Arena, the home ground of Bayern Munich and TSV 1860. Since the First Division of the german Bundesliga is still in its summer break we were watching 1860 take on Karlsruher SC. Not your highlight match, but professional football nonetheless.

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Statistics and Football: (IV) Passes attempted/Passes completed

One of the most frequent statistics in football which is being cited quite regularly in recent times is the number of passes attempted and passes completed. I believe it is meant to show the importance a player has for his own team and how well he sets up his teammates. Players like Xavi or Andres Inieasta always have incredibly high numbers in this department.

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Women’s World Cup 2011: Yet another world cup experience

On Sunday the final of this years edition of the FIFA women’s world cup will come to an end at Frankfurt and what an exciting tournament it had been. There have been surprises, upsets, great plays and a lot of wonderful football. Although you always have to take into account that you should not compare this version of the beautiful game with what we are used to seeing in the big european leagues all year long. The rules are the same, yet it is a different sport. If you manage to let go of certain images and expectations, you will have the time of your life.

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Statistics and Football: (III) Ball possession

While to me it’s pretty easy to despise something like “shots on goal” it’s a lot harder to get to the bottom of “ball possession”. This actually can tell you something about the flow of the match and the dominace a team might have over its opponent. Still, with this one as well, there are some things I don’t understand at all.

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Statistics and Football: (II) Shots on Goal

Okay, let’s get this started. In the early 1990s the German TV station Sat.1  started showing the weekend games in a show called “ran”. In that show they introduced the so-called “ran database“, a device not specified, but heavily quoted, when they were trying to press football into a strict measure to explain the game to their viewers. This ended up with strange explanations like “Team A hasn’t lost a home game to Team B in the past 15 years” which was easy, because Team A played in Division 1 and Team B in Division 2 over that timespan, so both teams simply haven’t played each other in the past 15 years. While the content of this statement was true, it didn’t explain anything. I find this extremely annoying.

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New York Day 6 – Walking through different countries

For the last day I was about to spend in New York City I decided to take things slowly and sleep all morning. Felt really refreshing and by noon I was ready to go to the subway again to meet with my host. He had offered to show me through Little Italy and Chinatown since both neighbourhoods are close to where he works.

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MLS: New York Red Bulls vs Kansas City Wizzards 1-0

Before I went on the trip me and my hosts were trying to figure out what to do so we ended up going to a soccer match which to me was especially interesting since I’m always interested in how the game is celebrated in other countries. He bought tickets for the ultras supporter section which were seats, but anyway. We met up with three friends of his and set out for New Jersey which is where the stadium is located.

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New York Day 2 – Rain

The second day of my trip looked rather dull since it had been raining all night and there wasn’t any chance of the rain stopping any time soon. I was on my own for the first time since my host obviously had to work. We were to meet up later during the day, but until then I was out to explore the city.

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Statistics and Football: (I) An introduction

The World Cup ended just a few days ago in thrilling fashion and now order has been restored in my life. No more mid-afternoon matches on TV, no more lazing in front of the screen on the evenings and – most importantly of all – no more honking cars full of Germany supporters on the streets celebrating their team’s victory. Okay, the last one stopped before the World Cup was oficially over. But with the competition over I want to turn my attention to what became apparent during the coverage of the World Cup on German television and that is the use of statistics in football. German TV always pointed their viewers to a website on which yu could follow the statistics to a match. Well, here’s my point: over all statistics are of no use in football. I will try and break this down to a few specific statistics in different blog posts, but I will start with an introduction.

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South Africa 2010 – A first roundup of the tournament

After the first round of matchplay of this year’s football world cup has been finished and the first few matches of the secound round of the group stage already have taken place I’d like to take the opportunity to write a little bit about what was interesting to me. Because it’s such a huge event there are always great expectations and because of that there might be deep disappointment. Some may be justified, some may be not.

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