Truck and Barter

Another set of links on the World Cup and Soccer.

Podcast of an interview with Andrew Zimbalist, professor of economics at Smith College; talks about the growth of Major League Soccer in the U.S., corporate interest in World Cup soccer, and the World Cup's financial beneficiaries.

Blast it like Beckham? When taking a penalty kick, a player ought to score (provided the referee applies all the rules). He can fail in two ways: by missing the target altogether, or having a shot on target stopped by the goalkeeper. We can look on taking a penalty as a game, in which both the shooter, S, and the goalkeeper, G, must choose from a finite list of tactics. For each choice made (S might aim low right, G might dive to the left), we can estimate a payoff - the chance a goal will result. The shooter's aim is to maximise his expected payoff, G aims to minimise the same quantity. This is the classical set-up of a zero-sum game.

Modeling Tactical Changes of Formation in Association Football as a Zero-Sum Game; Although tactical decisions made by managers during a match of team sports are very important, there have been few quantitative analyses which include the effect of interaction between both teams’ decisions, because of the complexity of the problem where one team’s decision will affect the other team’s. A game theoretic approach can be useful for tackling this type of problem. See also Formulaic football and Time Has to Be Right to Risk a Red Card.

Mathematics of the Soccer Ball

History of Soccer Ball; Which One Have You Kicked

On the ball; Data collected from professional soccer matches suggest strongly that the times when goals are scored are fairly random, with two minor modifications: more goals are scored, on average, in a given five-minute period late in the game than earlier; and "goals beget goals" in the sense that the more goals that have already been scored up to the present time, the greater the average number of goals in the rest of the match. But these two points are second order factors: by and large, the simple model which assumes that goals come along at random at some average rate, and irrespective of the score, fits the data quite well.

World Cup Stock Exchange; Instead of buying virtual shares in sports stars, you buy shares in World Cup teams.

Get the most recent coverage about the World Cup from the BBC and their Blog, Google, SoccerBlog, WorldCupBlog.

Live Footy- World Cup Edition (To be able to see Live soccer/bastekball matches without pay even 1 cent, declares the website).