Anatomy of a Goal - Numberphile

A numerical look at a World Cup winning goal. With thanks to the stats gurus at Opta - www.optasports.com/ (especially Sam Green).
More links & stuff in full description below ↓↓↓
The goal to win the 2010 World Cup final was scored by Andres Iniesta. Spain beat Netherlands 1-0.
Blog: periodicvideos.blogspot.co.uk/...
Thanks to Anthony from Fabula Studios for the animation!
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[@numberphile]

Variety is the spice of life!

[@numberphile]

Surely football is totally reliant on numbers... the most goals wins... At its absolute simplest, a car race is won by the car that crosses the line before the others... (don't be upset - I am a HUGE F1 fan!)

[@numberphile]

I suspect Fifa are slightly less relaxed than Microsoft in this area.

[@McDoofus78]

4:10 "I know it went low to the keepers left..." It actually went to Iniesta's left, the keeper's right.

[@coosoorlog]

Every time you say "soccer" one prime number somewhere dies.

[@numberphile]

no, it was digital re-creation! that is how good SFX are these days!

[@numberphile]

The grid positions are not meaningless... and some of the ID numbers are sequences in the game, so insome cases event_id:1196 can be the 1196th even recorded by that team in the game. So it carros meaning and information... Others are more arbitrary, like 16 meaning goal.

[@numberphile]

yes, it is an overlay with video editing shortcuts, etc

[@numberphile]

Well I hope you like the next one! :)

[@joh1997dude]

As a Dutch person this is very hard to watch

[@MrYairosh]

lol

[@shugaroony]

Should've tried to play football rather than MMA in the final then. ;)

[@mikasmulders3327]

@@shugaroony Im pretty sure the original commenter didn’t play in the final himself.

[@Krabby_Patty]

As a football fan who uses Twitter, I always wanted to know how OptaJoe comes up with their stats and use them effectively. This video was a perfect window into that world!

[@dauentina]

I know it's not as popular outside of the US, but I'd love to see you do something similar on baseball stats!

[@numberphile]

Hey, I'm Australian and grew up calling it soccer too! Although I live in the UK and now call it football.

[@sachiel66]

Thank you nice video. I never thought of what was behind the sport stats but now I learned somthing and want to see the next one

[@numberphile]

I don't massively like some genres of music, but if you showed me some underlying mathematics I'd probably find that pretty cool! :)

[@DarkMaple68]

great vid Brady! can't wait for the next one :)

[@dominicm1685]

Nice video, I love the application of complex and large amount of statistics in real life

[@Melthornal]

This is the type of thing that I am very much interested in. I would love to see you do some videos on baseball as well, clearly the most statistical game.

[@RufaelSolo]

Now thats what I all need from you guys! Keep on goin!

[@Ldraconian]

Fantastic episode. I'll never watch another match in quite the same way again :)

[@Hunter7467]

Brady, you should do a video on Sabermetrics, and how they boil hundreds of statistics down to one number (whether its WHIP or OBPS etc.)

[@jsdsparky]

That animation at the beginning showing what the goal was like was hilarious.

[@AndreaTani]

I worked for a company like Opta here in Italy, my job was to use the data as cues to the main video stream to edit hilites and replays. It was an exciting job even if I hate football :)

[@feroxcious]

I like the slightly mischievous look on Brady's face around the time he keeps calling it "soccer". Well played, old boy.

[@numberphile]

It's been years!

[@DarkRougeDevil]

Brilliant video! I'm looking forward to the other Opta video

[@MMmk1]

MAN, this is beautiful! When I was watching it, I was thinking "this is what i want to do for living!"! Thanks for this material, mr numberphile! :D

[@DrPSaiko]

To make matters even more complex (and fun).... if I'm not mistaken, Flandres (: dutch speaking part of Belgium) is also part of 'de lage landen', which translates into low lands/low countries, whatever you prefer. So 'the low countries' isn't a synonym for the Netherlands.. Yes, we're weird... and we love it!

[@numberphile]

Yes, I think it s more fun not showing the goal!

[@numberphile]

oh sorry, working on that now! it will be the periodicvideos blogger

[@japanesecigarette]

Interesting video! I love Opta, I follow a bunch of their accounts on twitter. xD Really looking forward to the next one!

[@rosarioKDC]

just the other day i was wondering about how they get all these statistics (like the one about the kilometers a player ran on the filed) :D Great timing and as always nice video! really looking forward for the next one ;) cheers from italy

[@eerbrev]

fascinating stuff, Brady!

[@lasharn07]

I find this just as interesting as the actual sport. I guess that means I'm a nerd for sure. I would like to see the numbers involved for sports like rugby or tennis as well (I'm guessing it wouldn't be too different but fascinating nonetheless). It's also interesting to compare this to video games where I'm guessing similar information is recorded but it's all automated.

[@tombweisner]

Love it! Looking forward to the follow up

[@19JP87]

The full name of football (soccer) is 'Association Football'. Back in the late 1800s / early 1900s it was colloquially called 'Assoc', which over time steadily became 'Soccer'. If my memory serves me correctly, I think the term was originally used in Cambridge, England. Although I have no idea how it became the common term in the US and a few other countries yet reverted back to 'Football' in the UK. I hope this clears it up :)

[@GtaRockt]

I thought it said "anatomy of a goat". I am disappointed.

[@jamesiyer4937]

+Lobster with Mustard and Rice hehe

[@manuel8887]

ikr

[@numberphile]

clicking on the word Holland takes you to Grey's video!

[@CrisX101]

WOW! The amount of data! I am so interested in knowing how they record data! How do you get the accurate position of a player? Thai is insane!

[@ibaram9674]

When he put Holland up on the screen, there was an annotation which led to one of my favorite of CGP Grey's videos, the difference between the provinces of Holland, and the Netherlands.

[@pbezunartea]

as always, interesting video, and great goal! ;)

[@coded93]

excited for the second part of the video. How do they harvest em!!!

[@rockbottom87]

It does, actually, never knew it was short for anything. Thanks!

[@vivavaldez87]

This is awesome, I watch next to no football but this is great, it's like the film Moneyball. I like the parts where he talks about how changing a variable (like player position) can increase/decrease the % chance of a goal. Very useful data...

[@mafino]

I love this video! I would love to work at OPTA one day. but it is difficult to stand out, especially when you don't have the kid of resources and software that OPTA does... I want to try and emulate it on a smaller scale but all the performance analysis software out there is either too expensive or not full enough. Brady, please try and find out how one would go about working for OPTA!

[@jamesiyer4937]

I WATCHED THAT GAME LIVE IN A PUB IN SPAIN AND EVERYONE WENT BANANAS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLL

[@eulerizeit]

Can we see some graphs of the probability distribution functions that he is talking about? That would be really cool.

[@cliveazavedo2461]

Why don't you guys make a video on the anatomy of a run scored in cricket?

[@completelymindfucked]

this is awesome information, it would be nice to see about other sports too

[@GildedWildebeest]

Don't really like football but this is an incredible video. I always wondered how the hell they knew possession percentages and shot numbers and all that. Must be a lot of work

[@ABooleanEarth]

This seriously does sound like the greatest job ever. I wish I could do that.

[@dujma1911]

great video please do more

[@icedandfrozen]

thats cool. always wondered about this. so would you know if any of this information (like that 30% chance for a goal thing) gets to the teams or the athletes? seems like its valuable stuff

[@selbi182]

Talking about analytics, will you ever make more videos of that day you were at KZbin and talked about 301 (you said at the end of that video that you still have some more material to work with)?

[@OurCognitiveSurplus]

This is great! I'd love to know how the make the more subjective judgements, like when does running with the ball become 'a dribble' and when is something an error (forced v unforced?). Can the personal taste of the statistician seep into the data?

[@FilipeSalgueiroo]

Both you and Iscaldor are right, because (at least here in Portugal) we have both ways of calling it, we have Holanda (Netherlands or Holland, whatever you wanna call it) and we have also Países Baixos (low countries) but the most usual is Holanda

[@Gmandancer]

keep up the good work

[@TheTot]

Football and numbers; these are just two of my favourite things.

[@scottwlfc]

Very interesting video as well, OPTA are amazing :)

[@pooiyx]

What does 31 (Picked an orange) mean?

[@christosvoskresye]

+pooiyx It's more often used for matches in Spain than for matches in Germany.

[@Recomification]

finally! I've been wondering how they do for so long!

[@kevdav63]

Love the slow-motion replay; you really can see all that's going on that way. ;)

[@Aureas133]

THANKS for reminding Brady. Was gutted for weeks. Greetings from Holland ;)

[@numberphile]

very soon

[@Jivvi]

***** "Foul throw in" would be the event type used to show that play was stopped because the ball wasn't thrown in correctly, probably not the actual throw itself. I think every method of putting the ball into play would be covered under 32 "Start" or 64 "Resume", with sub event types to show how the play started. For example, 6 "Corner" is probably the awarding of the corner kick, with the actual kick then being 64 "Resume", with additional data to show that play was resumed by a corner kick, who took it, from which corner, and with which foot.

[@numberphile]

That is fair enough!

[@yohuegun]

This is such an interesting topic. so many questions come to mind: how many people are needed to analyze one normal game? how many companies analyze each game?

[@sansalvador1]

Very cool, thanks!

[@HMFons]

Special layout for video editing. The colours make it easy to find keyboard shortcuts.

[@KafshakTashtak]

Hi Brady, I liked this video. in the behind the scene, please explain why these statistics are important? I mean what is the use of them? Do they help coaches to plan the game, or some companies need such statistics.

[@RSoufc]

This is the sort of thing I have always wanted to get into, do you guys know what sort of qualifications these guys have/need?

[@toristans]

This is amazing! I wonder if American football is tracked a similar way? Probably not.

[@numberphile]

I linked to it from the word Holland!!!

[@ItsSansom]

Ok let's tailor this entire channel to whatever you want because your opinion is representative of the entire subscriber base of this channel

[@YouNeedToGetSomeNuts]

When will we see the extra footage from the 301 video?

[@LuukPlasmeyer]

Good video, interesting stuff to see as a Information Specialist, but..... I tried to forget this moment, also there's a CGPGrey video on Holland vs The Netherlands ;)

[@SaltyLemonChops]

Wow, that's an awesome idea!

[@numberphile]

True, but not worth the trouble with a monster like Fifa... And some people take the mickey with fair use (I am often a victim).

[@WiredUp4Fun]

Not sure if you have or not, but I'd like to see a video about how a calculator finds the sine of an angle. It's something I've only just wrapped my head around and is so fundamental in computing and everyday uses.

[@radonez]

If you can get your analyst guy to calculate the possibility on Roberto Carlos' "The impossible goal" that would be awesome :D

[@Cypher315]

Where are the subtitles ? :'( Hope to see the video about how they got statistics soon !

[@superdude939393]

can you do a video on extending the fibbinacci sequence backwards?

[@ericsbuds]

this is great, as an american I know nothing about football and I'm curious since it's such a big part of the rest of the worlds culture. thanks brady

[@Tehree789]

i thought this was really interesting, especially as i love football!!

[@Phear0w]

I'm not an expert and I'm not Brady either, but I think the colouring of the keyboard has something to do with video editing (would make sense, because Brady obiously makes videos for YT). I've seen something like this before in a professional TV production studio, and I think the colours just mark some important keys for editing ;)

[@Mauddibism]

love it, this could never be on tv.

[@BassilBissoSawaya]

At 2:12, number 31 is picked up an orange! VERY useful in football, that's for sure

[@numberphile]

Barca game are tougher, I am told!

[@Obi-WanKannabis]

Amazing, could we come up with a goal situation, if we put random values in these places, and watched a simulation of what goal we did?

[@digitalfootballer9032]

Ok, I'm a big football fan, and have played for a better part of my life...but what the heck is #31 "picked an orange"? Never heard of it.

[@illidanstormrage706]

Steve, maybe a situation where player got a yellow card for a foul that deserved a red, hence picked an orange🤔

[@manuelsanchez3450]

as a spaniard, this was an especially satisfying video to watch

[@terrattenfanger5571]

Hey Im kinda aspie, can you publish the entire list on those numbers related to match events and coordinates? I'd like to memorize it to UEFA Champions League Final.

[@KyosBlog]

I refer to Holland when talking about the actual provinces North and South Holland which include some of the major cities such as Amsterdam, Rotterdam or The Hague. So if I say "I'm going to Holland" that means going to either of the two provinces. If I go to Venlo, Arnhem or Roermond, I say that I'll go to the "Niederlande", since I'm German.

[@AlanKey86]

I genuinely laughed out loud at your comment!

[@ryanstanley7365]

Animation = thumbs up :)

[@DavidChappell]

Crikey I thought the statistics were just a few blokes at a computer with a bit much time on their hands, not like a proper high-tech company! very interesting video!

[@Siaesnetko]

I'm wondering : if we take the amount of action (pass, corner, goal ...) of one player and then look at their id, will it make a Benford curve ?

[@Sammysapphira]

Oh, thanks for the clarification.

[@jamesusespivot]

When is the sequel video coming out

[@MoQambique]

Do they take the goalies position, skills etc. in consideration when calculation the chances of a goal?