FIFA World Cup Tournament Research Articles

Analysis of Crossing Opportunities at the 2018 FIFA World Cup

The purpose of this study was to investigate open-play crosses at the 2018 FIFA World Cup tournament, with spe- cific reference to the mechanism and match status of the crosses. Descriptive statistics (i.e., frequency counts and percentages) and chi-square tests of association were used to analyse the data. The study observed a total of 949 crosses, resulting in 20 goals scored (2.1%). Descriptive statistics highlighted that offensive teams had more goal-scor- ing attempts when they used counter-attacks (18.6%) compared to organized (18.2%) and direct (10.9%) attacks. A greater number of goal-scoring attempts were observed when teams used out-swinging crosses (17.4%) as opposed to in-swinging (15%) and straight (13.5%) crosses. There was a significant (p < 0.05) association between the type of attack and match status. Winning teams preferred to adopt a counter-attacking style of play; losing teams used more direct attacking strategies, and drawing teams utilized more organized attacks. Losing teams took the highest number of crosses from Zones 1 (61.1%) and 2 (56.7%) compared to other zones. These findings provide practical implications for football coaches to tailor match tactics to replicate crossing scenarios at international competitions.

Kicking off: Is the association between the FIFA world cup and domestic abuse an international phenomenon?

This study examines whether increases in incidents of female domestic abuse occur during FIFA world cup tournaments, in countries, other than the UK. Columbian medical records providing national daily counts, relating to Violence Against Women (VAW) and females subject to Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), across two world cup tournaments (2014/2018) were analysed. The number of medical examinations rose by 43% (VAW) and 39% (IPV) during the 2014 Columbia match days, and 26% (VAW) and 27% (IPV) during the 2018 match days, when compared to non-match days (p < .001). The increases were higher on a weekend and when winning, rather than losing.

Goalkeeper Performance: Analysis of Goalkeepers’ Contribution to Their Team’s Build-up under the Opponent’s Pressure in the 2018 World Cup

The purpose of this study was to analyze in FIFA World Cup Tournament 2018 focusing on the technical and tactical offensive actions of the male goalkeepers when being under pressure and to evaluate if their actions correlated with the outcome of the match. The sample consisted of the goalkeepers (n = 41). A descriptive analysis and a hierarchical clusters analysis were performed to identify the goalkeepers’ classes. Furthermore, a factor analysis was conducted to locate the goalkeepers’ style of play and the statistical significance was set at p < 0.05. The results showed that the total percentage of correct passes under pressure was 46.5% and that the goalkeepers preferred using the air and long distance passes with one or two touches. In addition, out of the 4 groups that were formed with cluster analysis, the goalkeepers of group 2 and 3 stood out concerning the quality of their actions. The incorrect actions were correlated with defeat and the correct actions were correlated with a win (p < 0.001, r = 0.663). In conclusion, a male goalkeeper, nowadays, needs to have all the technical actions of his feet at a good level so he can contribute to his team’s build-up, especially those of distributing the ball with his feet.

Is outstanding performance in sport events a driver of tourism?

Can success in sport events be a positive determinant of the number of tourists arriving in a country where successful teams are based? In order to test this hypothesis, this paper focuses on football events linking national teams' outstanding performance in the FIFA World Cup tournaments to tourist inflows at the national level. By applying panel cointegrating regressions, the paper finds that countries whose national teams obtain surprising results (e.g. Costa Rica in 2014) in the World Cup final tournaments benefit from a significant increase in tourist arrivals after two years. In countries whose national teams qualify as football champions, the benefits appear in the first and second years following the event and the result is stronger. This suggests that outstanding performance in sport events can favor tourism and economic development in successful teams’ home countries. Policies aiming to promote national sporting teams can thus have significant effects on other sectors of the economy.

The effect of the 2014 and 2018 FIFA World Cup tournaments on German national pride. A natural experiment

ABSTRACT Recent studies have focused on the influence of major sporting events on different areas (e.g. well-being, life satisfaction, sport-related national pride), but their effect on national pride has been investigated insufficiently. A German cross-sectional dataset (ALLBUS) that was collected during spring and fall in 2014 and 2018 was used as time series data to measure national pride among the German population during the FIFA World Cup. To detect the relevant breaks during the observation period, an interrupted time-series analysis (Linden 2015) was performed. In 2014, when the German national team won the championship, there was a small but significant increase in national pride, and, in 2018, when the German national team was eliminated in the group stage, there was a small but significant decrease in national pride. However, in the case of Germany, these effects are temporary and, thus, are not sustainable.

Trends of Goal Scoring Patterns in Soccer: A Retrospective Analysis of Five Successive FIFA World Cup Tournaments.

This study analysed the 795 goals scored during a total of 320 matches played in five successive FIFA World Cup tournaments (1998–2014). Data were obtained through YouTube videos and analysed by means of Longomatch software. The variables analysed included the number of goals scored per half (45‐min period), per 15‐min period, and per 30‐min period of extra time, goal scoring zones, goals scored by substitutes, types of goals scored, and goals scored according to the playing position. With regard to 15‐min period analysis, most goals were scored between the 76th and 90th minutes (24.7%) of the game in all five World Cup competitions. Chi‐square analyses showed no significant (p > 0.05) differences in the frequency of goal scoring patterns per 45‐min and 15‐min periods in the five World Cup tournaments. Most goals were scored from inside the goal (23.8%) and penalty (14.6%) areas. The greatest number of goals was scored by strikers (54.2%), followed by midfielders (33.3%) and defenders (2.3%). These findings provide practical implications for improving goal‐scoring performance in soccer.

Syndromic surveillance using ambulance transfer data in Tokyo, Japan

Bioterrorism attacks become more probable when important high-profile international or political events are held, such as G7 summit meetings or mass gathering events including Olympic and Paralympic games and FIFA World Cup tournaments. Outbreaks of infectious disease and widespread incidents of food poisoning are also public health concerns at such times. In Japan, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government operates Ambulance Transfer Syndromic Surveillance (ATSS), which can help monitor such incidents. The present study presents and assesses the ATSS framework. During the study period of October 2017 through November 2018, we monitored 33 areas for symptoms of 9 categories: vomiting/nausea, dizziness, palpitation, unconsciousness, breathing disorder, fever, spasm/paralysis, collapse/weakness, and bloody emesis/nasal hemorrhage. Among all symptoms, we found 9929 low-level aberrations, 2537 medium-level aberrations, and 577 high-level aberrations, with respective frequencies of 9.2%, 2.3%, and 0.5%. Of those, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Public Health reported the information to Tokyo Metropolitan Government 28 times during the period. Of the 28 identified clusters, Tokyo Metropolitan Government judged the necessity for investigating 7. All of those were investigated at hospitals by the jurisdictional public health center. Because ATSS covers almost the entire Tokyo metropolitan area, with about 13.8 million residents, it is definitely the largest syndromic surveillance in the world.

О разработке картографо-информационного обеспечения массового спортивного мероприятия

In connection with the arranging and conducting of the FIFA World Cup tournament in Russia, the topic of cartographic and information support of a mass sporting event became a matter of great interest. Cartographic works are always widely used by both spectators and guests of major sports and entertainment events, and employees of organizations involved in their preparation and conduct. The authorsdescribe the experience of developing maps for the 2018 FIFA World Cup. First of all, special attention was paid to the creation of specialized maps containing information about the host cities of the tournament and the transport network of the European part of Russia. In each specific host-city maps were certainly helpful for the participants and guests of the tournament

Dynamics between Member Replacement and Team Performance: The Role of Members’ Relative Attributes

Analysing the 367 member replacement acts in the 2014 FIFA World Cup tournament, we uncover important dynamics between member replacement and team performance. We find that poor team performance leads to substitutions with more competence gains (or with less competence loss), that substituting and substituted members’ functional background dissimilarity improves subsequent content‐related team performance (i.e. scoring more goals), and that their competence superiority is associated with the speed of team performance turnaround (i.e. scoring goals faster). Going beyond contrasts between teams with and without membership change, the paper highlights the importance of substituting and substituted members’ relative task‐related attributes and provides a more nuanced understanding of the complex phenomenon of team membership change. Furthermore, the paper extends the methodological spectrum of dynamic team composition research from predominantly laboratory experiments with short‐lived student groups performing cognitive tasks to field studies with real‐life work teams performing action tasks.

Assessment of Head Collision Events During the 2014 FIFA World Cup Tournament.

This study uses video footage observations of all 64 matches of the 2014 FIFA World Cup to assess the incidence, characteristics, and sideline outcome assessments of player head collisions.

Alcohol marketing in the Americas and Spain during the 2014 FIFA World Cup Tournament.

To identify the nature of visual alcohol references in alcohol advertisements during televised broadcasts of the 2014 FIFA World Cup Tournament matches and to evaluate cross-national differences according to alcohol marketing policy restrictiveness. Content analysis using the Delphi method and identification of in-game sponsorships. Television broadcasts of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Mexico, Spain and the United States. Eighty-seven alcohol advertisements; 20 matches. Quantitative rating scales, combined with the Delphi rating technique, were used to determine compliance of the alcohol advertisements with the International Alliance for Responsible Drinking's (IARD) Guiding Principles. Recordings of five matches from four countries were also used to identify the number of in- and out-of-game alcohol brand appearances. A total of 86.2% of all unique alcohol advertisements contained at least one violation of IARD's Guiding Principles, with violation rates ranging from 72.7% (Mexico) to 100% (Brazil). Countries with the least restrictive marketing policies had a higher prevalence of violations in guidelines designed to protect minors. There were 2.76 in-game alcohol brand appearances and 0.83 out-of-game alcohol brand appearances per minute. Brand appearances did not differ across countries or according to a country's marketing policy restrictiveness. Self-regulation and statutory policies were ineffective at limiting alcohol advertising during the 2014 FIFA World Cup Tournament television broadcasts. Most advertisements contained content that violated the self-regulation codes, and there were high levels of within-broadcast brand appearances.

Sports Tournament Predictions Using Direct Manipulation.

An advanced interface for sports tournament predictions uses direct manipulation to allow users to make nonlinear predictions. Unlike previous interface designs, the interface helps users focus on their prediction tasks by enabling them to first choose a winner and then fill out the rest of the bracket. In real-world tests of the proposed interface (for the 2014 FIFA World Cup tournament and 2015/2016 UEFA Champions League), the authors validated the use of direct manipulation as an alternative to widgets. Using visitor interaction logs, they were able to determine the strategies people use to perform predictions and identify potential areas of improvement for further prediction interfaces.

Zika : Global Concern

Zika : Global Concern

Conflicting traditions: the FIFA World Cup, Australia and football identities

Demonstrable sectarianism and severity towards the sport of soccer in Australia has not prevented the country from reaching the FIFA World Cup tournament on several occasions. The national team, the Socceroos, have made qualification something of a normality. Despite reaching a position of some prestige in the social and cultural landscape, the sport finds itself in an unusual situation in Australia: a global enterprise that continues to struggle against rival and entrenched sporting codes despite its universal message; and an assortment of ethnic and cultural associations saddling it. In this, the game faces various challenges, with its supporters attempting to show its global appeal while trying to avoid suggestions of parochialism. Brazil 2014 provided the ideal platform for that demonstration.

Who really won the FIFA 2014 Golden Ball Award?: What sports can learn from multi-criteria decision analysis

The Golden Ball Award is given to the best soccer player in every FIFA World Cup tournament. Although disagreements will inevitably arise when any award winner is selected, we propose that an analytic hierarchical process (AHP) approach, which is taken from the toolbox of multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA), be used for the purpose of selecting the Golden Ball winner. A review of the use of MCDA approaches within the sports management literature brought us to the conclusion that their use is still incipient in the scholarship within this community. AHP is proposed for the development of award evaluations because it is intuitive, accurate, and provides decision transparency to the public. The method is applied to the 2014 FIFA Golden Ball selection for illustration purposes and potential 2014 World Cup winners are suggested based on attack, defence, and fair play performance. Most importantly, the use of this proposed approach can be extended to the assessment of other sports awards.

Recreational football for disease prevention and treatment in untrained men: a narrative review examining cardiovascular health, lipid profile, body composition, muscle strength and functional capacity

Over the past 10 years, researchers have studied the effects of recreational football training as a health-promoting activity for participants across the lifespan. This has important public health implications as...

A South African Zombie Apocalypse: Lily Herne's Mall Rats Series

In 2011, Lily Herne published Deadlands, the first in her series of Mall Rats zombie novels for young adults. Deadlands was followed by Death of a Saint (2012) and Army of the Left (2013). The novels are set ten years after the zombie apocalypse, referred to as the ‘War’ by the characters, which took place during the 2010 FIFA World Cup Tournament in South Africa. The novels should be read within the context of a resurgence of zombie fiction in the USA and Europe after 2000. Described by Lauren Beukes as ‘teen-fighting-zombie-fun’, Herne's novels have all the makings of zombie fiction in global popular culture. In Herne's depiction of a South African zombie apocalypse, though, the zombies – except for the threat of contagion – are not the real enemy. They are pawns in a power struggle between the human survivors of the apocalypse and the Guardians, mysterious figures who seem to have appeared out of nowhere after the apocalypse. The way in which politics, power and witchcraft are intertwined in Herne's novels can therefore also be linked to the zombie discourse in postcolonial South Africa. Here, I explore whether Herne expresses a specific view in her novels on the role of authority in contemporary society.

Assessing Hospital Preparedness: Comparison of an On-site Survey with a Self-reported, Internet-based, Long-distance Tabletop Drill

Methods of defining hospital disaster preparedness are poorly defined in the literature, leaving wide discrepancies between a hospital's self-reported preparedness and that assessed by an objective reviewer. This study compared self-reported surge capacity data from individual hospitals, obtained from a previously reported long-distance tabletop drill (LDTT) prior to the 2010 FIFA World Cup tournament in Cape Town, South Africa, with surge capacity data assessed by an on-site survey inspection team. In this prospective, observational study, contact persons used in the prior LDTT assessing hospital disaster preparedness in the lead-up to the 2010 FIFA World Cup made surge capacity assessments (licensed bed capacity plus surge capacity beds) for the respiratory intensive care unit (RICU), neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), medical intensive care unit (MICU), and general medical/surgical beds in each hospital. Following the 2010 World Cup, this data was then re-evaluated by an on-site survey team consisting of two of the authors. The contact persons for the individual hospitals from the LDTT underreported their individual hospital's surge capacity in 86% (95% CI, 46%-99%) of RICU beds; 100% (95% CI, 63%-100%) of MICU beds; 75% (95% CI, 40%-94%) of NICU beds; and 71% (95% CI, 35%-92%) of medical/surgical beds compared with the on-site inspection team. The contact persons for the LDTT overwhelmingly underreported surge capacity beds compared with the surge capacity determined by the on-site inspection team.

The FIFA World Cup tournament 2010: Conferring and consolidating identity among international students

This study highlights the importance of international spectator sports in the maintenance of collective identity among international students. No research has been conducted on the international student experience of sport fandom away from home and on the impact of such a following on national identification. Using qualitative findings from interviews with international postgraduate students in England, this paper shows how the FIFA World Cup tournament in 2010 offered the opportunity to celebrate and consolidate national and regional identity, as well as to heal wounds. Far away from the home country, the televised football matches galvanised students into forming temporary conational communities in a bid to recreate some of the atmosphere of celebration taking place at home, and to bond at a distance with the home culture. This paper offers an important contribution to the literature on international education by pointing to the role played by sport in the international student experience.

Is There a Correlation Between World Cups and S&amp;P 500 Performance?

Coinciding with the start of the 2010 edition of the FIFA World Cup it is fitting to explore if historically there has been any significant correlation between this event and stock market performance. Although it has been previously reported that there is a strong correlation between results of individual football matches and corresponding, short-term local stock market trends, there has only been one unpublished study examining the potential relationship between periodic, multi-week, multi-national sporting events and returns of a broad stock market index. Building on the work of Kaplansky and Levy (2008), by using data from 1950 to 2006, it was shown empirically that the S&P 500 Composite Index has an expected return of -2% over the period of a FIFA World Cup tournament. This relationship could be classified as a subset of the calendar effect class of behavioral finance anomalies. ----- UPDATE: The author has been informed that the working paper by Kaplansky and Levy was recently published in the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, vol. 45.