Day Twelve: 22/6/2010

France fail as Argentina shine

Here's some goalscorer age stats:
The youngest goalscorer is unchanged from last time: Germany's Mueller, aged only 20. The oldest goalscorer is Mexico's Blanco, who scored a penalty against France aged 37. The mean age of a scorer is 27.2, and the median is 27.5, with a lower quartile of 25 and an upper quartile of 29, suggesting most goalscorers are in their late 20s. Indeed, the age with the most goalscorers is 29.

A fantastic game for South Africa, but disappointingly they failed to get through to the next round of the World Cup as Uruguay only won 1-0 against Mexico - goal difference was the deciding factor. France have shown themselves to be a terrible team – they went through more than 338 minutes of World Cup matches without scoring a single goal – which is two-and-a-half matches from this year's cup, and one-and-a-half matches from last year's cup. So Mexico go through on goal difference (+1) as second in their group.

The referee of the France-South Africa game did not do a fantastic job – the first goal was off the shoulder of South African KHUMALO, and the red card against GOURCUFF that brought France down to 10 men was probably undeserved. There has been a lot of bad refereeing in this tournament so far, but let's hope we have a few good refs to choose from to take the Final.

France head home to face a government enquiry into the mess they've ended up in. The only two previous times they have failed to get into the knockout stages – 1966 and 2002 – they were in Uruguay's group each time, and failed to get more than a single point. South Africa are already at home, so there's no long distance to travel for their players, but they put on a great final performance.

Argentina played Greece as South Korea took on Nigeria in the second pair of games today. There was fantastic play in the South Korea/Nigeria game that kept the other two teams guessing as to who would go through. After missing an easy goal in the second half, Yukubu then scored a penalty his team earned to get them on level terms again with the Asian side. All the players were flagging by the end, and struggling to keep going.

Despite a terrible lack of possession for Greece, they held Argentina off their first goal for 77 minutes before DEMICHELIS finally scored to bring the South American side in the lead. They eventually won 2-0 with some fantastic play. To nobody's surprise, Argentina successfully qualified winners of group B to play against Mexico. South Korea go on to face Uruguay.

Predictions for tomorrow: England and USA to qualify from group C, Germany and Serbia to qualify from group D. I would say Germany and Ghana if they weren't playing each other, and I expect Germany to win this game, and Serbia to beat Australia.

We have two South American, one mid-American and one Asian side through to the next round of the World Cup so far. If my predictions prove correct, then three European and one North American side will join them.

Goals per game: Mean – 2.14, Median – 2, Mode – 2, Range – 7
Cards per game: Mean – 3.92, Median – 4, Mode – 2,3, Range – 9

It seems goals are increasing, and the roughness of the games is decreasing.

Day Seven: 17/6/2010

Lots of numbers and surprises!

There are loads of different exciting statistics about today that I've picked up from Fifa and listening to the BBC and ITV. Here are today's top stats:

• Hernandez scores the 2,100th goal in World Cup history! There have only been 18 World Cups, so that's an average (mean) of 117 goals per tournament.
  
• Higuain scores the first hat-trick in a World Cup since 2002, and becomes the top scorer in the 2010 World Cup. Uruguay's Diego Forlan only held onto that title for one day, when he scored twice yesterday.
  
• Greece wins their first ever World Cup finals game, and it's the first time they've scored in a finals too! According to Fifa, they took 404 minutes of World Cup gameplay to score their first goal.
  
• Less happily, South Korean PARK Chu Young scores the second own goal of the tournament.
  
• Sani KAITA of Nigeria receives the third straight red card of the tournament after a stupid kick at a Greek player. Nigeria had been ahead, but went on to lose 2-1.
  
• Mexican BLANCO scores the third penalty goal of the tournament, and helps to damage France's chances of qualifying. France now have to defeat South Africa - and Mexico's game against Uruguay cannot end in a draw - for them to qualify.
  
• The total distance run so far in the World Cup by all players is 4,144,261 metres, or 207,213 metres on average per game. In total that is 103.4 times around the Equator!
  
• Nigeria is the only team in the World Cup to take all its members from leagues outside the country. In other words, no Nigerian team members usually play in Nigeria.

It's the end of the first week of the world cup. In total, 20 games have been played. 38 goals have been scored in those games, and a shocking 75 cards shown to players, with six sendings-off.

The English league had provided the most scorers (8, if you include Mexican Javier HERNANDEZ who is transferring to Manchester United), but only players from La Liga in Spain – Uruguay's Diego FORLAN and Argentina's Gonzalo HIGUAIN, have scored more than one goal so far.

Tomorrow, Algeria's Nadir BELHADJ will be 28 years old, and playing against England. Well, I don't want to wish him an unhappy birthday, but I am English...

The scariest thing about this World Cup is that for the first time, several players are younger than me. That's a statistic that makes you realise you're growing up. Here are some less-scary stats:

Goals per game: Mean – 1.9, Median – 2, Mode – 2, Range – 5
Cards per game: Mean – 3.75, Median – 3.5, Mode – 3, Range – 6

Day Two: 12/6/2010

South Korea does well as America goes soccer-crazy

Yes, the Americans have gone crazy. Why? They drew with England. So, they're treating it like a win. Well, they don't know much about football, do they? Okay, so England goalie Robert GREEN slipped up, and I bet he feels terrible. Number of Google hits for “Robert Green goalkeeper”: 1,110,000 (17/6/2010). Number of YouTube videos: 173. Most are from Americans making fun, but a few are older from West Ham fans. Rob Green is a GOOD goalkeeper most of the time. Unfortunately, he also has the horrendous statistic of being the first England goalkeeper to get sent off: in a World Cup qualifier against Ukraine that England lost 1-0. However, he also played in the match England won 5-1 against Croatia that saw them succeed in their qualification attempt. So he has a mixed record.

Let's look at the other matches. The first game was between South Korea and Greece. Both sides have done surprisingly well in previous football tournaments – South Korea got to the semi-finals of the 2002 World Cup (in South Korea and Japan) and Greece won Euro 2004 in Portugal, shocking the world by defeating the host nation in the final.
The South Korean goalscorers were 29-year-old Manchester United player PARK Ji-Sung, whose nickname is ‘double-hearted oxygen tank’ (source: Fifa.com) and 30-year old LEE Jung-Soo, who plays in Japan. It was a clean game, with only the Greek Vasileios TOROSIDIS getting a yellow.

Second: Argentina versus Nigeria. This match ended up a disappointing 1-0 to Argentina. You'd expect this team to do much better. Of course, England fans aren't upset that they're in bad form, especially with Diego MARADONA coaching the team. Boo! Maradona is known for his 'hand of God' goal that halted a previous World Cup attempt by England.
Gabriel HEINZE is Argentina's 32-year-old goalscorer. Sadly, he has nothing to do with Tomato Ketchup or Baked Beans. Internationally, he's done well, and is the second defender to score in the tournament (along with Mexico's Marquez). In fact, the Marseille player has scored three international goals in his career.
There were only two yellow cards in this game – one to each side.

The final game of the day, as you should know, was England versus USA. Stephen GERRARD scored a fantastic goal after only four minutes: the fastest so far of the tournament. Just before half time, American Clint DEMPSEY got lucky with the goalkeeper to level the scores. There were six yellow cards – three for each team – in this game.

Goals per game: Mean – 1.4, Median – 2, Mode – 2, Range – 2
Cards per game: Mean – 4, Median – 4, Mode – 1,2,4,6,7, Range – 6