World Cup: Who beat North Korea more, Brazil or Portugal?
by Hawerchuk on Jun 22, 2010 8:01 AM EDT
in Zzz...Soccer
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It has to be Portugal, right? After all, how does a 7-0 win compare to a 2-1 win? Well, as we've seen before, gameplay tends to change quite significantly depending on the score. But we can compare how Portugal and Brazil did when the game was tied - 28 minutes for Portugal and 54 minutes for Brazil:
| /5400 | Passes | % of Passes | Shots |
| Portugal | 424 | 71.5 | 25.5 |
| Brazil | 652 | 86.3 | 18.6 |
The table above shows both passes and shots on a per-90-minutes basis. We can see that Brazil had more ball possession, but they weren't as successful at getting into scoring position. It's not clear that Portugal actually dominated North Korea more than Brazil did, regardless of the outcome.
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“It’s not clear that Portugal actually dominated North Korea more than Brazil did, regardless of the outcome.”
Seriously? That’s got to be one of the most ridiculous statements I think I’ve read on here in a long time. If you want to be scientific about it, do the same comparison AFTER both Brazil and Portugal scored a goal, and then see who dominated North Korea more. You’re right, gameplay changes based on the score, but they were both up by 1 at some point…Portugal was just more dominant than Brazil against N. Korea after that.
How so? Portugal let North Korea have the ball a lot more than Brazil. Even up one goal, Brazil had 92% of the successful passes to Portugal’s 80%.
The North Koreans fell apart after the 2nd goal, but there’s nothing to indicate that Portugal actually controlled the play when the game was close more than Brazil did.
Soccer is just like hockey, even more so: goals are luck-driven, and shot rates and shot percentages go haywire when one team has a big lead.
I agree with your last comment…shot rates and shot percentages go haywire when one team has a big lead…but by your same logic, one team has to be able to BUILD the big lead. Brazil could not, and Portugal did. Whether they had more possession or not is indifferent, they weren’t able to do anything with that possession (which is actually something more typical of a Portuguese National team and not a Brazilian one). By the same reasoning, the team that was able to build the bigger lead and make those percentages go haywire dominated the more than the one that could not.
I think this is confirmation bias. There are only tiny differences between the top teams in the world and scoring seven goals or two against a weak opponent is a question of how the ball bounces on that day. Once you’re up two, you basically can’t lose, so anything that happens with that lead doesn’t really relate to the game as we know it.
Not sure if that’s completely accurate, but I understand your position. But by that same reasoning, wasn’t Brazil up by 2 goals? And instead of scoring again, they let up a goal. We’ll never get a clear answer or come to an agreement on this..but that said, I think it’s probably a little unreasonable to say that Portugal did not dominate N. Korea more than Brazil. 7 goals is 7 goals, no matter how you dice it. True, it can happen to anybody on any given day, but on this day it happened by a team that according to FIFA’s ridiculous rankings is ranked 3rd in the World…meanwhile, the #1 ranked team in the world did control the game, but couldn’t get as many chances as Portugal did against the same opponent, and under similar circumstances (less the time remaining in the game)
I’ll have to look through the chances. Before the game fell apart, I can see that Portugal might have produced 50% more chances than Brazil. But seven goals is a complete distortion of the game play.
True…7 goals is unheard of…I watched the second half twice, and still, you can’t deny that Portugal played VERY well in producing the chances for those goals. In actuality, even not counting the Carvalho or Ronaldo posts, Portugal probably should have scored a total of 9 goals (there was the chance that Fabio missed from the left side on a pass from Ronaldo inside the box, and I believe it was Mereiles who should have buried his second goal on a cross from Ronaldo from the right side). Portugal dominated play.
BTW…why is this in a hockey blog? LOL
You’ve got some really good analysis here…do you have a soccer blog you write on as well?
It does seem a little funny, doesn’t it? This blog is supposed to be called Behind the Net, so it could be about Hockey, Soccer or Basketball, I suppose…But we couldn’t afford behindthenet.com ($5k, not worth it.) I just decided to start analyzing soccer two weeks ago, so I haven’t really gotten organized…If there’s enough interest, I might put together a new site…
There was a large difference in tactics by N. Korea after they went down in each game though. The whole Brazil game, NK played a very deep defensive line, allowing very little space behind them.
In the Portugal game, NK played a high defensive line and their full-backs were basically playing as wing-backs. After Portugal switched Ronaldo and Simao to receive the ball inside rather than on the wings as in the first half, Portugal’s fullbacks were able to exploit the open space left by Ronaldo and Simao drawing the defense inside.
This all produced tons of space behind the NK’s defensive line and all the seemingly easy goals for Portugal.
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