About Goal Differences

A complaint that has surfaced a number of times on the forum, is that usually teams defeat others teams with only a difference of 1 goal. It rarely happens that we see a 2-0 or 4-1 score when teams are roughly the same strength.
And even when the difference on the pitch is clear, often the winner only wins by 1 goal.

Most soccer-lovers know, that when two teams are pretty much equal, this is not always reflected in the final score. Some teams that are behind, will try to force the equalizer, and then get a counter-goal against them to make things worse. And sometimes it’s just not your day, and you lose by more than you deserve.
There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s all part of the game and part of what makes it so exciting.

So, after doing some statistic work on the red and yellow cards last week, I wanted to take a deeper look into this as well.

I compared the Premier league, the Dutch Eredivisie and the Belgian Jupiler League with our favorite competition: SoccerProject.
I used the first 4 days from the current season, taking all games from all A-, B- and C-divisions. This totals at 416 games.
From the three real-life leagues, I used the data of 2006/2007.
This means 380 games from England, and 306 games from both other leagues.
Lots of games to make the analysis more accurate.

The games were divided by the difference in the number of goals scored by both teams:
0 goals (obviously, this means a draw), 1 goal difference, 2 goals, 3, 4 and finally “5 or more”.

The result can be seen in the following table:

Table: Goaldifference in percentages

And here a nice graphic representation, that is more informative:

Graphic: SoccerProject clearly stands out

First of all a positive note:
The percentage of draws in the real leagues lies between 23 and 27. In SoccerProject this is 21 percent. This is a very small difference, which we can consider a good thing!

But as you can also see, SP is way up there when it comes to games that were won by a 1-goal difference. In the Netherlands this number is about 30%, in both England and Belgium this is about 40%, but in SoccerProject this is a stunning 60%!
The difference is huge!

As a logical result, there are less games won with a 2- or 3-goal difference.
Another thing that stands out is the big number of games that are won with a difference of 5 or more goals. However, I think we can ignore this, since the reason for this is pretty clear.

But one thing seems clear now: the naggers were right!

SoccerProject Music Top-50 (BEL/NL)

Forummers/music-lovers Sex Pistols and Sjoerd have made a list of the most popular songs by forum-members.
All Dutch and Belgian readers could send a Top-15 list to them, from which they compiled a nice Top-50 that was released during the days before Christmas.

I would like to highlight the top-15 from this list in the newsletter:

#15 Sex Pistols – God Save the Queen
#14 Foo Fighters – The Pretender
#13 3 Doors Down – Kryptonite
#12 Radiohead – Paranoid Android
#11 Marco Borsato – Rood
#10 Gorki – Mia
#09 Deep Purple – Child in Time
#08 Coldplay – Clocks
#07 U2 – One
#06 Oasis – Wonderwall
#05 Red Hot Chili Peppers – Under the Bridge
#04 Nirvana – Smells like Teen Spirit

Then we get to the top-3, that deserves some more attention:

On third place we find AC/DC with the song “Thunderstruck”.
Nice guitar-play and the typical voice of singer Brian Johnson make this song a true rock-classic.
The story goes that Angus Young was flying in a plane that was struck by lightening and nearly crashed. He came up with the riff and based the song on this experience.

#02 Metallica – One
I took two facts from www.songfacts.com that I just have to share with you:

*) This song is about a soldier fighting in a war and a mortar blows off in his face. He can’t hear, see, smell, talk, taste and he doesn’t have arms or legs. He comes out of a coma in a hospital. During the time he is in the hospital he reflects on his life and things his father told him. Eventually the doctors get worried because he’s having spasms all the time, but he doesn’t seem to be dying. They call in the general and he can’t figure it out either but the soldier with the general recognizes it. “Its Morse code,” he says. The general asks what he is saying and the soldier looks for a minute and then says, “He is saying K-I-L-L- M-E over and over again.”

*) The lyrics are based on the novel Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, which is about World War I. A specific passage that inspired the song is: “How could a man lose as much of himself as I have and still live? When a man buys a lottery ticket you never expect him to win because it’s a million to one shot. But if he does win, you’ll believe it because one in a million still leaves one. If I’d read about a guy like me in the paper I wouldn’t believe it, cos it’s a million to
one. But a million to ONE always leaves one. I’d never expect it to happen to me because the odds of it happening are a million to one. But a million to one always leaves one. One.”

Text, story and music complement eachother perfectly in the brilliant video:

And the number One:
Metallica – Nothing Else Matters
A very slow and nice song of this band.
Originally the song was about a girlfriend of one of the band-members, but it has lost it’s meaning, and i now more of an ode to their fans.

Many thanks to Sex Pistols and Sjoerd for organising this contest, and of course the people who contributed by sending their favorite songs.

Of course this is based on the voice of the Belgian and Dutch forum-people. If any other SP-forum has succesfully done a similar thing, please let me know, so I can look into that as well and possibly show it in the newsletter.

For the complete list and links to all the videos, click here: SoccerProject Top-50

Time Bomb

This week we’ll have a look at cards. Not poker or blackjack, but the kind of cards that we don’t like: Yellow and red ones. For as long as I remember, the referees in SoccerProject have been throwing around cards as if it’s confetti. So let’s count how bad it really is.

We’ll get some data from the web, and see how referees behave in different competitions.

First we look in England. The Premier League, season 2006/2007. 380 games were played, and the spectators saw a total of 1521 yellow cards and 64 red ones. That is an average of 4 yellow cards and 0,17 red ones, or 1 red card per 6 games!

We move on to our German sportfriends. In the current Bundesliga, 14 rounds have been played at the writing of this article. We are at an average of 3,7 yellow cards and 0,15 red ones.

Now we go international. The Champions League. After 4 rounds, there were 64 games played. In those games the referees pulled 232 yellow cards and 7 red ones. An average of 3,6 yellow per game and 0,11 reds.

And, to conclude, the European Championship of 2004. 31 games total. In this Championship, either the play was harder or the referees were stricter. If I remember well, it was mainly the latter. Feel free to comment. An average of 4,90 yellow and 0,19 red.

So much for now. I think these numbers form a decent representation of what is ‘normal’ in modern soccer. So ‘Normal’ would be around 4 yellow cards per game and 0,16 red.

Now we will look at the A-division of SoccerProject. After 24 games in Season 20, we see the following numbers:
192 games have been played. The referees pulled 1635 yellow cards and 130 red ones.
This averages 8,5 yellow and 0,68 red cards per game. The last number means roughly 2 red cards per 3 games!

Let’s put the results in a little overview:

The shocking conclusion:
Compared to other tournaments and competitions, SoccerProject players collect more than double the amount of yellow cards and more then 4 times as many red ones!
Of course, this is not a good thing.

But what is the cause of all this? Are the referees that strict or are the games just too hard in SoccerProject? Looking at the squads, I tend to think it’s not the players who are to blame. The pussy-content in the A-division is almost unbeatable. The best teams, like X-tenzo and the Skunks, are fighting to contract the biggest pussies, and most other teams also avoid buying aggressive players.

So it seems like it is the referees fault?
In my opinion, yes, the referees are too strict. But, there is another factor that is equally important: the managers!

In the never-ending urge to win, players are being sent on the pitch not to play great soccer, but to butcher their opponents. Players have to play on the line of what is allowed, and when the referee isn’t looking, possibly over it.

It is almost a miracle that the aggression of the teams didn’t spark over to the supporter stands. When I look around, I see a lot of clubs that try hard to keep the atmosphere relaxed and nice, and at the moment there are barely any incidents of SP-fans. Families still come to the games together and it is one big party. Still, this cannot go on like this.
It’s just a matter of time.
A ticking time-bomb.

Managers, in the interest of the SoccerProject footbal-fans and families, please stop being so aggressive!

Thank you,

Granny Sliv

The Future is in the Past

We can learn a lot from the past.

Usually that makes you think of errors in the past, because as they say, “you must learn from your mistakes”. But maybe it’s also interesting to look at things that were GOOD in the old days.
Let’s look at an old footballgame. Most of us will remember the earlier days of computers, where games looked horrible, but yet they were so gripping and enjoyable they could hook you up for hours at a time. I’m sure most of you can think of a game like that.

The first game that got me hooked, was Bundesliga Manager. It must have been around 1989. Only the richer people in our little town had colour screens, so we played in green and black. But the game, that had a maximum size of 1.44 Mb, had about everything a manager-game needed; Buy and sell players, go for training, set up your teams, and play games.

The match was presented in a very simple but efficient way. A small pitch viewed from the side,  and a little white dot that would jump from left to right, a little further, back a bit, ahead again, back and bang! In the opponent’s goal. YESSS!
It looked so simple, the little white dot jumping back and forward, but the clock was ticking and it brought a great tension to the game. 

                      Picture 1: Bruno Labbadia scores the 2-0 for HSV

And, for some reason I felt like I could influence the game with my team setup.

That was thanks to the concept: Players could be placed on a pitch of 6 by 5.
Within that, there was the freedom of how to set up your team. It was great!

When playing against a far superior team, I would put 5 defenders on the last line, and 5 defenders/midfielders right in front of them. Of course I didn’t stand a chance, without midfield and forwards you just get wave after wave coming in, and sooner or later the other team will score. But you COULD try, and you COULD believe in it.

The 5 positions from left to right also gave some more serious options.
Attackers could be set up more central or more on the wing, and the same goes for midfielders and defenders.
You could place a midfielder right behind your attacker, or right in front of your defence. Players could be put in a line, triangle or square, whatever you liked.
Only 30 positions on the field, but the possibilities seemed endless!
The next picture shows two team setups from Bundesliga Manager:

                        Picture 2: Both squads play 4-3-3, but look at the difference!

Imagine something like this on SoccerProject, that would be fantastic!

Of course I would suggest to expand the grid to 11 x 11, since it would create way more possibilities
It seems like a great addition for SoccerProject, if it could come in a Windows-style drag & drop. Drag your player from the overview, to his position on the field, let go and the player snaps to one of the invisible points on the grid. Ooh, no, not there! Lift him up and drop him a bit closer to the side-line. Perfect!

As an example I took a 11×11 grid. This means 121 positions to put your 10 fieldplayers on!

Also, it opens up a whole lot of other possibilities to dream of. Each one of the 121 positions can emphasize certain skills or make them less important. For example, a Right Forward with a good Heading Skill will perform worse when he’s playing along the line, and better when he plays closer to the opponent’s goal. A midfielder with good shooting skills will perform better in a more offensive position, while a midfielder with good tackling-skills will perform better on a more defensive position.

It will force good managers to pay more attention to the skills of his players, and based on the skills he can decide where best to use his players. More wide, more central, more offensive, more defensive, etcetera etcetera. Lots of options!

When you only have midfielders with good defensive skills, and you put them all in a more defensive position, they will perform better individually, but overall the team will lack offensive power. The system could take these things into account.

This means a good manager will have to keep a good eye on the balance in his team, while setting up the team, but also while looking for new players.

Illogical elements can easily be punished. A manager who puts 2 players in the Left Forward part of the pitch, will notice a performance-drop on both players since they are running in eachothers space. This performance-drop won’t happen for the second central striker, but WILL happen for the third central striker.
This allows two strikers in a 4-4-2 to perform just fine.
Also it allows a manager to play with 5 forwards, but then he will notice the three CF’s lose performance. Besides that, the midfield and/or the defence will be undermanned and, if facing decent resistance, overrun. But that goes without saying!

Of course this is not an easy idea to implement, and surely not on a short term. But it is nice to daydream a little once in a while.

Besides that, it does not need to be as difficult as it sounds.
For starters, the engine does not have to be changed right away. It can be started as a pure graphical extra without changing the game.
For example, there could be certain limits, like dragging a maximum of 1 player in the Left or Right Forward part of the pitch. In addition, it should be impossible to drag 2 players into the Centre-forward part IF one of the wing-parts has a player in it. This is to prevent 4-2-4 while keeping formations with 2 strikers possible, like 4-4-2, 5-3-2, 3-5-2.
After that, SP can simply count the number of players per line (attack, midfield, defence), as a result it would get 4-4-2, 3-4-3 etcetera, and calculate the game exactly like it is done now.

After this works, improvements and enhancements can be made little by little.

A fairly important part still missing is the tactics of the opponent. In a truly strong manager-game, the playing styles of two teams battling eachother would be taken into account. The idea above does not have to limit this for the future.
On the contrary! It could be a good base to start from.
But that’s a different story.

To finish it up, I found Bundesliga Manager, I got it to work and played it for a little while. It was just as I remembered, but I quickly noticed how limited the game was compared to – for example – SoccerProject.
I won’t get addicted to this old game again, that role has been completely overtaken by SoccerProject. Still it is nice sometimes to look back to the old days. Not everything was worse back then.

To the future!

A story: Soccer in the future

It’s 7 o’clock and the alarm goes off. Time to get up.

Iris opens her eyes in the pitch black room. She mumbles “Window open”, and the glass slowly changes shade, until it is clear and she can see her beautiful town.

She washes, dresses herself, has a simple breakfast and steps in her Hoover.

It’s the newest model, and she’s very pleased with it. She tells it her destination and lets the Hoover do its thing.

Smoothly she slides to the training centre, where she gets out, walks in and looks up her own private dressing room.

She dons her training gear, and walks into an empty hall. She starts to warm up, and after that she starts to sprint. Every day the same routine. Walk, run, sprint, sprint, walk, run and sprint again.

After half an hour she starts practicing her shot on goal.

After that she takes a 5 minute break, and walks to the big hall, where her teammates are waiting. They play together for half an hour and train on certain situations.

After the training, she sticks around a bit and has a drink with her buddies Chris and Fiona. That evening she’s off to bed early, tomorrow is the big Cup-match. But first, she has to set up her SoccerProject-team for the day. She’s ranked third in the F-division, a great achievement.

The next day, the ritual repeats. Wake up, shower, eat and get into the Hoover.

She walks to her dressing space and places her outfit on the cabinet. Her shoes, socks, pants, shirt, her elbow- and knee-protectors, and finally her head-pad, which gives her more precision when heading, and also protects her in collisions.

She walks to the gathering-room, where most of her teammates are already waiting.

When Tom arrives, he’s last as usual, the coach gives them a short briefing and the troupe walks through the catacombs to the field. The stadium is big, huge, and it’s filled to the rim with loud fans. The noise is mindblowing and addictive at once.

The Semi-finals of the Cup, this is what it’s all about!

Tweeet! The game begins.

The opponent attacks and damn, their first attempt gets them the lead.

In the old days… In the old days the goals were a lot smaller, so it was much easier for the goalkeeper to keep a clean sheet. But bigger goals provide more spectacle, and that’s what the people want.

Iris and Chris score about 50 goals per season, Fiona, their absolute star, scores about 80.

Our turn. Chris kicks off and plays the ball to Fiona, who starts to run forward. Despite her speed the ball sticks to her feet, which such control there’s no stopping her. She swirls past two defenders, and plays the ball to her side, where Tom comes running. Tom hits the ball as hard as he can, but unfortunately it goes wide.

Time to re-group. The 3 attackers are not allowed to go back on their own half, a chip in their shoes makes sure this won’t happen. So if the game is on the other half, all they can do is wait and be ready for the next attack.

The opponent has guts, and only keeps 5 men on their own half. So they use 2 Runners, who steam up and down the pitch all game long. These are usually the players that need to be replaced first.

Iris’ team only uses one Runner, Tom, and with good results. Tom can only do 2 things: run and shoot. But he’s extremely good in both. When he’s done defending, he storms forward like crazy, and if possible he gets the ball from one of the forwards. His numbers are phenomenal, every third ball he shoots is a goal.

Unfortunately they don’t succeed to get him in position too often, and he makes a lot of pointless meters, but with about 40 goals per season he’s still very efficient.

Iris once suggested they should play 5-2-3 instead of 6-1-3, because an extra Runner offers lots of variation to their offence, but the coach didn’t want to hear about it.

The game is rough. Both teams are equal and the game flows up and down the pitch. After 45 minutes of playing and 3 breaks of ten minutes each, the score is 7-7. Iris scored two, a great shot from 15 meters and a simple one from up close. The last 15 minutes are about to start, and Iris is physically broken. But she will never ask to be substituted, she’s too proud for that.

They make the 8-7 pretty quick, but the opponent throws in an extra attacker and succeeds in keeping the ball for a long time. The defense gets nervous, but the advantage is that Iris has some time to catch her breath.

Three minutes before the end the equalizer is scored, 8-8.

It’s rough and mean now, too rough. Luckily her clothing absorbs most of the energy from the kicks she gets.

The ball comes her way. Iris has to out-run the defender, and above expectation, she can. She does a short dribble and passes the ball to her side, where Chris moves past his defender and shoots the ball hard. It bounces off for a corner.

The three forwards get to their position around the box. Michael joins them in the middle, he is by far their best header. Wingback Frank comes up to take the corner.

There comes the ball, about 10 meters away from the goal. Michael heads it and the ball swooshes towards the goal, but the keeper makes a miraculous save. Another corner.

Again, everybody gets in position, making sure they don’t enter the 5-meter-box, which is forbidden for everybody except the keeper. The buzzers are merciless, one foot in and it’s a freekick.

The corner is a beauty, as usual with Frank.

Michael doesn’t let the defenders push him away and heads the ball to Fiona, who keeps the ball between three defenders. Iris is free 5 meters in front of her. Fiona passes the ball and Iris puts all of her last forces into the shot. Just as the ball flies off her foot, a defender crashes into her, and she bangs onto the ground.

Beeeep—- beeeep—- beeeep—- beeeep

It’s 7 o’clock and the alarm goes off. Time to get up.

by mother Sliv

Domination: SoccerProject

Everybody knows that a group of people working together can achieve more then an individual. Of course there are exceptions, but these are scarce.

The same goes for SoccerProject. Having several teams offers great advantages. The most important one is that though the current transfersystem, players can be sold before the deadline and far under their market-value. This is a form of manipulating the system, and therefore managers can not have more than 1 team, or they will be banned.

However, selling players under their market-value is not a crime itself, which creates some possibilities for cheating without actually breaking the rules.

Imagine a guy who leads a clan on the internet. He plays Quake 5 and as clanleader, he has 30 loyal followers. Now this guy discovers SoccerProject. He loves the game, but his limit seems to be the D-division.

To make the move to the higher SP-level, he needs to think of different ways.

To move up, he will need better players.

To buy better players, he needs more money.

What to do, what to do?

The plan is simple. He asks his clan-members to join as managers, so together they can push their #1 clan-team to great heights. Ten of them join and keep playing for the higher good. The financial injection they can give to the mother-team is enornous.

Imagine, 10 teams who only play to make you better. With a bit of clever management, every team must be able to easily generate 5 million for the mother-team. 50 Million a season, at some point even the best and richest managers will not be able to fight against this power.

The more daughter-teams, the more money.

The first one to do this will become a major top-team and will without a doubt become one of the best teams in the A-division. After that, more of these clans will form, until the highest SoccerProject divisions are all dominated by clans and other sorts of groups.

That’s why I would very much like to be the first.

 

Those interested in the Domination-clan can contact me through mother-sliv@soccerproject.com

Strength in numbers.

Thank you!

Mother Sliv