Anatomy of a Goal - Numberphile

hey everyone this is a video I've been wanting to make since number file started really because when you watch football or soccer if that's what you want to call up on the TV I'm always amazed by the number of statistics and numbers they're able to throw at you during the game how do they do that who's recording it so what I've done is spent a couple of days at a company called opter who collects statistics from various Sports including soccer now in this film I want to give you some idea just how much information they collect for every kick every header every Mis kick everything that happens on the field during a game of soccer to do this I've chosen just one kick as an example and I thought seeing we're choosing one we should make it a special one so the one we're doing is a kick by a guy called Andre Zesta in the 2010 World Cup final and it was the kick that won the game it was the scoring of the winning goal in a 1- nil Victory against Holland now unfortunately due to copyright law I can't show you the goal but it kind of looks something like this just like being there wasn't it but to a statistics expert especially one from opta the goal looks more like this so enough from me here's Sam talking you through the anatomy from a numbers perspective of the goal that won the last World Cup final for me I obviously see it as well and I enjoy it but we when we collect the data I also see it as a not just numbers but a set of um data basically and this is the details of every shot in that World Cup final so that was all the shots in the game and we're going to look at just in detail about andr cestas about the winning goal or the only goal the key St the key number for for us in this case is number 16 it's completely random but for us that's what a goal is that's if it's an event 16 and we know it's a goal so for you 16's a big deal 16 is the magic number in football for in Ops of football 16's very important when you're walking around the street and you see like number 16 on a house do you think goal do I think goal yeah and then you've got um number one is is pass for me so that's the one I see all the time so but yeah there's uh you do come to think about when you're watching a game you'll think about it in the way that the guys collect it and the way that it looks in the database which is a mixed blessing 13 is a miss so if you get it off Target um what else is there off the top of my head three is a dribble so it's quite quite fun one of the more exciting things that can happen so we know it's a a go know it's number 16 we can see when it happened in the fourth period so that's the the second period of extra time the fourth sort of overall period of the game when it happened towards the end we know this is his ID so I know this is Andre cesta 12237 and the team that took the shot obviously was Spain so outcome one in some things that we collected there's obviously whether it was a good thing completed or not obviously with a goal we know it was completed so it's outcome one most crucial bit of information besides the fact that it was a goal was where it happened so these are our coordinates for where it happened on the pitch I can kind of show you what a 9623 looks like let see your draw yeah really terrible this is why I do maths oh dear it's already gone wrong and the six yard box the goal is probably about about here it's going to go about here about nine goes down to about there 62.3 tells me it's over here this is 50 in the middle so I know 62.3 is somewhere out here there's an authentic Recreation of inesta I'll do them with one little strand of hair yeah cuz that's about all he's got so we've got that tells us something about it but there's obviously a lot more that happened as to why it was a goal so well what if you C up now so so here we've got sort of the sub aspect of the the shot so on my data I can see the goal where it went on the goal the Y and Zed coordinates so these are the goals so he stuck it about here he stuck at the other side of the goal and he went it went not very high off the ground so he probably stuck it around about here we had before he took the shot there there we now know it went pretty much in the bottom corner not quite not quite tucked in but certainly to the side of the keeper I know it was assisted and that it was an intentional assist I know it went low to the Keeper's left which is makes sense given that he shot it from over here and we know it ended up over here it went with one bounce he hit it with his right foot hit it on the volley uh and it came from a Counterattack and I also know that the the keeper touched the ball I think as memory serves it was a a t a small touch for Kellenberg so that's the anatomy of the goal this is kind of that's all the information we collect about it there are different different shots different goals will have different bits of information but that's what we know about this shot so we can then use that we can put all that information in see you know how likely was it that Iniesta would have scored that goal a goal that ended up winning the World Cup now at this point I guess a lot of you would like to see a bit more about how the numbers are collected how they harvest the statistics during the game and I actually spent an entire a match day at opta I was able to watch them during the games how they do it how they interact with the commentators on TV that's going to be an an upcoming video but for now I thought I'd hear a bit more from Sam about what he does with the statistics after the game and maybe a bit more about that Andre's anesta go to take you know an example we go back to the anesta one the model that we've developed says okay we that chance was actually a really good chance for it as as they go was about a 30% chance of being a before we know anything about where he even put it just to get the ball in that good a position off a Counterattack is is a you know very good chance to scoring 30% obviously might not sound like that much but an average shots probably around 8 to 10% so this is this is a really good chance but if we changed a few things you if we moved him if we took the shot back to here you know to the edge of the 18 yard box and the shot was here it goes from maybe 30% here down to about I don't know 12% or so it drops to about there equally if we if we brought the shot inside so he's got the full range of the goal to choose from goes from 30% but now goes might go up to about as high as 50% I've developed a model which takes into account all these kinds of factors about what we know about the shots because we've got such a huge backlog of of shots and details of them can you still enjoy watching a game of football absolutely um more so I think you look at things in a different way you think about what what play doing and and where they're doing it and how they're doing it and what what does that lead to and you still enjoy it and you still watch the game and and it's still exciting you when there's a great goal or great save you still kind of have the same reflex reactions to everything of of excitement but uh you just think about the game in a slightly different way but I think for me it's more fun I think it's better but you know Personal Taste I guess I think the Holy Grail with with kind of football analytics and and you know what I'm doing and what a lot of other people is I think you want to get to one number that broadly encapsulates that player um and that player's value or at least on Pitch value there going to be other things you age and contract which obviously affect their value to an opposing team but purely on what they do um kind of value like you know baseball has wins above replacement and and I think that's kind of uh where I'm trying to take it I think probably other people are trying to do the same thing this must be like the best job in the world yeah pretty much I I mean I I do didn't want to say in the interview but I if they just gave me access to the DA base I'd have been pretty happy with that they didn't need to pay me but they they seem to want to do that so that works for me so thanks to the guys from opta and a reminder we'll have another video soon where we go behind the scenes on Match day which is far more exciting but for now thank you for watching and some more of the details about the statistics can be found on the blog