Flamenco v. Fado

Following up on our previous posts related to expected goals and final squad analysis, in this post we share some pregame exploratory analysis powered by BigQuery as well as predictions (scroll to end) for our featured match.

Welcome to match day two of the 2018 World Cup, also known as the day after Robbie Williams had a digit malfunction. Apparently, he brexited his finger. Today we turn our attention to the battle of flamenco v. fado — Spain v. Portugal.

Note: This isn’t a technical post, rather it’s a post on what you can do with a bit of predictive technology once you get your workflow in order. Although we are still fiddling with features, dealing with some data issues, and model tweaking — we wanted to get out of the gate with a solid pick. Launch and iterate.

In their last four meetings, including their Euro matches and 2010 World Cup meet up, Spain and Portugal yielded a blazing 4 goals in total. If successful this year Portugal could be the fourth team to win back to back Euro and World Cups. That’s a lot of 4s…

Spain is among the most technically skilled squads in the tournament — drawing a versatile and talented midfield from both Madrid and Barcelona. Many players on their roster have either won a World Cup or Euro Cup. Experience matters — at least if you look at the top four winners of the previous World Cups.

Before moving onto Portugal, it’s important to note that Spain sacked their coach (Julen Lopetegui) just two days ago after it was revealed he was set to take a deal with Real Madrid after the World Cup. This is a challenging one on the prediction front as we don’t have a feature for managerial style this close to a coaching change. Move along nothing to see here.

Portugal is the reigning Euro Champion and will return 9 players from its 2016 Euro Cup final team. They do not necessarily have the firepower Spain possesses and are a bit more regimented — as they will rely on execution and mistake-free play as opposed to outright speed, skill and striking force.

Portugal starts and ends with Cristiano Ronaldo — who single handedly enabled them to qualify for World Cup 2018 (which maybe his last). Ronaldo scored an impressive 15 goals on 70 shots (50 on target, 18 wide, and 2 post knockers) and assisted on 3 more during just 10 European qualifying matches. He was involved in more scoring than any other player.

While both teams boast impressive recent records; both are at least a +1 in goals per game and xG per game over their opponent in the last three, five and ten games. Our feature set projects xG for Portugal at 1.37 and Spain at 1.70. It’s worth noting that 1.37 is right at the 30th percentile and 1.70 is just at the 87th in our 8,500 match dataset.

Spain is the clear favorite in our model and their recent sheets back up it up. In their last three competitive fixtures they have averaged 3.6 more goals per game than their opponent and 2.52 more xG. This is part of what leads to their favoring in our game prediction models.

Spain has a 48.6% chance of winning, while Portugal has a 28.6% chance and the draw comes in at 22.8%.

It will be interesting to see if the firing of Lopetegui, under whom the Spanish were undefeated, will have any impact on this match. Betting wise Spain opened a heavy favorite at -112 and have since moved to +105. Portugal opened at +361 and have moved to +300.

Portugal is the statistical underdog, but they are also a fierce competitor that my TensorGut (GitHub repo forthcoming) can’t shake. If Ronaldo brings his ‘A’ game and Spain’s backline falters we could be in for a wild ride. Interestingly Portugal is less than a 1/4th the population size of Spain. Last checks of various oddsmakers show Portugal with 4% more of the money . There’s that number 4 again. Enjoy the match.

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