USA vs. Belgium Pre-game Thoughts

The USA takes on Belgium this afternoon at 3:00 Central. The winner advances to the quarterfinals. The U.S. has only advanced past the Round of 16 once since FIFA went to a 32-team field. In Belgium, the USA faces a strong, young team that some have labeled a dark horse to win it all. Can the U.S. beat Belgium and move on? For a couple of reasons, I think they can.
Using the latest Elo rankings (from before the World Cup), the USA is ranked one spot ahead of Belgium (#13 vs. #14). So based on ranking alone, this game looks like an even game.
On top of that, most of the teams that have won their round of 16 game have been the higher-ranked team. The big exception is Costa Rica, which entered the tournament ranked #32. Since then, however, Costa Rica advanced first out of its group (arguably the hardest in the tournament) and yesterday beat a Greek side that advanced out of one of the easiest groups. So, being higher ranked does suggest the U.S. has a chance.
In addition to the rankings, the USA has another advantage: they've earned their position. Belgium advanced out of what was by far the easiest group in the group in the tournament. They have not had to play terribly well in order to advance. Thus, they're not in great form. From watching the second half of their match against South Korea, Belgium looked weak. Granted, they were down to 10 men, but they didn't look terribly impressive against the #42-ranked South Korea. In other words, Belgium is not the powerhouse that the U.S. might have faced coming out of a different group.
Therefore, the U.S. has a really good chance at advancing past Belgium. The match-up is equal or slightly in favor for the U.S. on paper.
For that slight advantage to come to fruition, the U.S. needs one to play well and get a couple of breaks. Given that the U.S. has a history of getting bad breaks in World Cup games, playing well will be critical to American success.
If Josie Altidore is healthy enough to start, then the U.S. has a target forward that can help hold possession and both create and finish chances.
Even if Altidore is healthy, he is probably not going to go the full 90, so at some point the U.S. will probably be playing with Dempsey up top, supported by two wing midfielder/forward players.
In either scenario, for the offense to work, the three central midfielders have to do their job. In particular, Michael Bradley needs to play like he did against Portugal instead of like he did against Ghana and Germany. Some of Bradley's success in Portugal resulted from the lack of pressing demonstrated by the Portuguese. Give a talented player like Bradley time to lift his head up, and he can beat you every time. Close down his space and make him play the first thing he sees, and he struggles. Since Belgium is a young team, I expect them to press high up the pitch, so Bradley is going to have find a way to play well with constant pressure. If he struggles, the U.S. will have difficulty scoring and even maintaining possession.
If Bradley struggles, his center-midfield teammates need to pick him up. One of them needs to do an equal job of making good passes and being a "pivot point" for the offense. Part of having three center midfielders is the advantage of having two distributors, making it harder for an opponent to shut down the offense.

In the end, this game projects to be a tight one. Two teams that on paper are equally matched, each with its own weaknesses and strengths. As with any World Cup elimination game, it comes down to who can make the most of the available chances, coupled with perhaps one or two random "lucky breaks." Whether the U.S. wins or loses, it should be a great game.

US-Germany Pre-Game Thoughts

The United States takes on Germany at 11 a.m. CDT today. This game matches up the teams who currently occupy the top two stops in Group G, both with 4 points. Germany is on top with a +4 goal differential, while the U.S. has a +1 differential.
*Neither team is guaranteed to go through because Portugal and Ghana each have 1 point, so there are scenarios that would have either Portugal or Ghana advancing. Those scenarios require some creativity, however, as Ghana has a -1 goal differential and Portugal is buried with a -4 differential.

*For the U.S. to advance, all they need is a win or a draw. The U.S. can advance even if they lose if their goal differential is greater than the winner of Ghana-Portugal. If the U.S. has the same goal differential as the winner of Ghana-Portugal, they will advance if their total number of goals scored is greater than Portugal's or equal to Ghana's (whichever wins). (For a full, interactive table, see this excellent work by a couple of soccer fans at the NY Times.)

 *Germany, likewise, advances with a win or a draw. A loss does not eliminate Germany, and as long as they do not lose big, they are into the round of 16.

 *As a result, I expect the U.S. & Germany to come out and play conservative. In order to win, a team must advance with numbers, making it vulnerable to counter-attacks and goals. Playing aggressively, in other words, increases the probability of winning but also the risk of losing. If both teams are conservative, however, they likely will get fewer scoring chances, but they will also make themselves less vulnerable to counter-attacks and goals. Playing conservatively increases the probability of a draw. Since a draw sends both teams through, and since playing aggressively results in a risk of losing and losing is highly undesirable, I expect both teams to play conservative and this game to be a 0-0 draw. Neither needs to win, so there's no need to try to score much. As a result, this game could be a slow-motion, grinder, interesting only to fans of the U.S. and Germany. We'll see how it plays out. One team could make the most of its opportunities, but it probably won't be a wide-open game.

How to Avoid the "Group of Death"

Yesterday, we saw that the U.S. was in a difficult group, but that it was not the "group of death" (i.e. hardest). Rather, the U.S. was in the 3rd-hardest group. (As we'll see later, one could still define it as one of a few "groups of death" in this tournament.) We also saw that some groups were really weak and others were really strong. To understand why the groups wind up so imbalanced so often, we'll look at the selection process FIFA uses to decide the groups. Then, we'll consider a possible way to select the groups to avoid such large variations in difficulty.

The FIFA selection process puts the host country and the 7 highest-ranked teams in one pot. Then, the remaining teams are placed in the three other pots based on geographical affiliation. FIFA does this to ensure that no group has more than two teams in it from the same region. The result, however, is the unbalanced groups, as we've seen. Three groups each have three teams in top 16 (the ones who should advance to the round of 16 based on their ranking), while two groups have only 1 team in the top 16, giving an easy path for the highest-rated team in the group and giving the other three teams a (perhaps undeserved) shot at advancing. For example, in group C, a team no higher-ranked than 20 will advance to the round of 16, while in group F, a team ranked no higher than 25 will advance to the round of 16. Meanwhile, in group G (the USA's group), a team ranked either 3, 7, or 13 will go home, while in group B, a team ranked 2, 5, or 9 will not make it through.

This inherent unfairness in the current draw system suggests that a better system should be developed to allow the higher-ranked teams to have no artificial barriers to the group of 16. This fairer system would place the teams into four pots, like the current system, but with one difference: the teams would be assigned to pots based not on geography but on ranking. The host and the top 7 highest teams are in pot A, then the next 8 highest-ranked in B, etc. Then, a team is selected at random from each of the pots to make up each group. The "no more than two teams in a group from the same region" rule is eliminated because there are numerous teams from Europe (9 in this World Cup), so preventing 3 European sides from being in the same group is next to impossible, particularly since the goal is not protecting continents but giving the best teams the best chance to advance. It is highly unlikely that more than two teams from another region (Africa or North/Central America, e.g.) will be in the same group.

To see how this process might work, I took the current World Cup teams and put them into pots based on the October 2013 FIFA ranking (this will allow for a comparison to the current draw process). Then, I randomly drew one team from each pot and put them into a group. I then calculated the average ranking for each group. I repeated this process four times to see if there was significant variation in the results. I found that under the revised selection process, each group is a bit easier than the current system with an average rank of 21 for the revised system compared to an average rank of 20 for the FIFA system. (Remember that lower numbers indicate higher rankings and thus harder competition.) That is not a terribly large difference in average difficulty. The variation in difficulty, however, was significant. In the revised system, the standard deviation was 3.4, the minimum (hardest) group was 15.25, and the maximum (easiest) group was 28.25. Under the FIFA process, the standard deviation was 5.8, the minimum 12.25, and the maximum 31. In other words, the revised selection process produced a tournament of comparable difficulty to the current one, but it made each group more "balanced" in favor of the higher-seed teams.

 Moreover, this revised process did a far better job preventing a "group of death." (Note that when a tournament is composed of 32 of the best teams in the world, some groups will invariably be more difficult than others.) For the purposes of this analysis, I will define a "group of death" to be one in which the average ranking of the teams involved is below 16. In the four different draws I did, only 1 group (out of 32) had an average ranking of below 16. That group consisted of Germany (2), England (10), Ivory Coast (17), and Algeria (32). A challenging group, certainly, but not horrible. Compared to the current process, which created 3 groups with an average ranking below 16, the new process is better at preventing a "group of death," thus ensuring a fairer tournament.

Of course, this whole analysis assumes that FIFA wishes to have a group stage that is "fair." They may be satisfied with the current set-up, which tends to favor elite, European soccer nations. If, however, I were a national association whose team was in the top 16 but not the top 8, I would be lobbying hard for FIFA to go a group draw system such as the one I have outlined. Certainly as an American soccer fan, I would love to see FIFA adopt a revised system. The USA will probably never make the top 8 in soccer, so unless the system is revised, America's path out of the group stage will often be more difficult than it will be the soccer superpowers. Such is life, and it is this greater difficulty that makes the USA's ability to get out of the group stage as often as it does a more impressive feat.

The Group of Death

When the World Cup draw was announced back in December, fans of the four teams in group G (the group that includes the U.S.) were all justifiably upset. Group G was called the "group of death" due to its apparent difficulty. This sort of group seems to occur in every World Cup. In this post, we'll examine whether the U.S. is truly in the hardest group as well as which team has the hardest and easiest paths to the round of 16. Then, in the post tomorrow, we'll look at why the groups wind up so imbalanced so often and consider a possible reform that would balance the groups out.

First, is the U.S. truly in the hardest group? To answer that question, let's look at the quality of each group. To do that, I will use the Elo ratings as of Monday, June 2, 2014. I chose the Elo ratings because I think they are a more accurate measure of a team's strength than the FIFA ratings and because Brazil's ranking by FIFA is artificially low because they didn't have to play any qualifiers, earning them fewer points in the FIFA rankings. For each group, I put in the Elo ranking for each team and then made two calculations for the group: average rank and the standard deviation of the rank. Both measure how hard the group is, but in different ways. The average rank value tells how well-ranked the teams in the group are overall: the lower the number, the harder the group is in general. The standard deviation of rank value tells how spread apart the teams within the group are. A lower value indicates the teams are all ranked around the same value, making the group harder as well, since teams of similar strength are grouped together, making winning more difficult. Below are the results.
Group A (Brazil, Mexico, Croatia, Cameroon) -- Avg: 23.5, SD: 20.2
Group B (Netherlands, Chile, Spain, Australia) -- Avg: 12.25, SD: 12.2
Group C (Colombia, Cote d'Ivoire, Japan, Greece) -- Avg: 18.5, SD: 6.2
Group D (Costa Rica, Italy, Uruguay, England) -- Avg: 14.5, SD: 10.3
Group E (France, Ecuador, Switzerland, Honduras) -- Avg: 23, SD: 12.9
Group F (Argentina, Nigeria, Iran, Bosnia-Herzegovina) -- Avg: 23.25, SD: 11.56
Group G (Germany, USA, Ghana, Portugal) -- Avg: 15.25, SD: 13.6
Group H (Belgium, Algeria, Russia, South Korea) -- Avg: 31, SD: 17.0

So, is the USA in the hardest group? The answer is no. Group G, which includes the USA, is indeed a hard group, but it is not the hardest group by average ranking. That honor belongs to group B, with three teams in the top 10 in the current Elo rankings. Moreover, it is not the hardest by similarity in rank. That group is C, with Colombia at #8 and then 3 teams in the 20s. The USA's group is the 3rd hardest by average and the 6th (of 8) hardest by similarity in rank. So, the U.S. is not in the "group of death." Group B is probably the group of death because of its three really strong teams. True, the USA is in a difficult position, but so are the teams in groups B, C, & G. In other words, half of the groups are "groups of death" for the teams in them, except for maybe Colombia, which has an apparently easy path through to the round of 16.

The easiest groups are quite a contrast to the strong groups. Group H is the weakest by average rank. It has an average rank of 31, with 0 teams in top 10, and two teams that are ranked 42 & 53. The easiest group by similarity is group A, with a standard deviation of 20.2. Although group A does have the #1-ranked Brazil, it also has #56-ranked Cameroon. Group E is almost as easy as group A, also having 0 top-10 teams.

 Leaving groups aside a second, let's look at which teams have the easiest and hardest paths to the round of 16 based solely on the draw. To calculate this, I subtracted each team's rank and the rank of each of its fellow group members. Then, I averaged the differences. I also calculated the standard deviation of the differences. A team with a large negative number is highly likely to advance, as it is far better-ranked than its opponents. This is doubly true if the standard deviation is small, meaning that all of a given team's opponents' ranks are all near the average. The team with the hardest path out of the group stage is, unsurprisingly, Cameroon, with an average ranking difference of 43.3, that is, they are ranked 43.3 points lower on average than their opponents. Their standard deviation of 8.5 also suggests that most of their opponents are ranked about 43 points above them. The USA has the 14th hardest route to the round of 16 based on the draw, with an average of -3. The USA's standard deviation is 15.6, though, so the rankings of their group opponents are a bit scattered. The team with the easiest path the round of 16 could be one of three different teams: Brazil, with an average of -30 and standard deviation of 17.8, Colombia, with an average of -14 and a standard deviation of only 1.6, or Argentina with an average of -26 and a standard deviation of 3.7. Based on the overall data, I'd say it's Colombia, then Argentina, with Brazil having the 3rd easiest time.

So, what we've seen is that, despite the hype, the USA is not the "group of death," the hardest group in the World Cup. They are in a difficult group, but it is not the hardest. The U.S. can make the round of 16, provided they win at least one game and don't lose any by large margins. We've also seen that some groups are far more difficult than others. The reason for that will have to wait until tomorrow, when we will look at the group selection process.

Thoughts from the US-Portugal Game

The US-Portugal game had an exciting (and for us Americans, heart-breaking) finish. Here are some of my random thoughts after watching the game. *The United States struggled with passing against Ghana. Such was not the case against Portugal. I was impressed with the quality of the passing. Yes, there were some bad passes, but there are always going to be bad passes. The overall passing, though, was much improved, as was clearly demonstrated by the second U.S. goal, the result of four or five excellent passes strung together. *With better passing, of course, comes better possession. The United States also did a much better job possessing the ball against Portugal than they did against Ghana. The better possession not only led to two U.S. goals, but it also helped keep Portugal from creating much in the way of offense. *Speaking of Portugal and offense, for the supposed #4 team (according to the FIFA rankings), Portugal did not look that good. Ronaldo looked lost, their attack was not terribly creative, and the only legitimate goal they scored was the last-second goal to get the tie. If ever a team deserves to fall in the rankings, I say it's Portgual. *Speaking of falling, Portugal flopped around like a bunch of freshly-caught fish. Granted, pretty much every team flops to some degree, choosing to go down instead of struggling along to maintain their balance after a strong challenge. Portugal, however, exaggerated--and at times, completely faked--the contact that occurred 11 times. They earned 0 yellow cards for it, however. FIFA needs to crack down on diving. The Laws of the Game already say that any simulation must be yellow-carded (no option), but most referees prefer to ignore the contact rather than issue a doubtful yellow. That needs to change. FIFA needs to instruct the World Cup referees to book any simulation, no matter how doubtful. It will result in quite a few stoppages and some questionable yellows, but it will crack down on the diving. As it is, I'm surprised that all 22 players don't just fall over and grab their ankles the minute the referee whistles for kickoff.