World Cup: Do European team struggle outside Europe?

I’m starting to look ahead to the World Cup now and one stat this is likely to be brought out again and again is that European teams have struggled when the World Cup is outside of Europe. Now this is true and when Spain won the World Cup in South Africa it was the first time that a European team have won the tournament away from their home continent.

However, I don’t think this tells the full story as European teams have made the final a number of times and provided the majority of the semi finalists. I looked at the finals going back to 1970 and checked out how the European teams have done. I didn’t go back further than that because I think then you are getting into a whole different world of football and it’s not even in colour!

I prefer a chart to show anything like this and you can see the live version here or just check out the copied image below.

WC1

As you can see they may have struggled to win (17%) but they have provided more finalists (58%) than South America and when we get to semi finals then it’s up to 63%. It looks like the European teams have been a little unlucky in those finals?

Argentina in 1978 was the last time that there was more than one South American team in the semi finals and South Korea and Japan in 2002 was the only time since 1978 that Europe did not have three semi-finalists and that was down to some dubious refereeing that allowed South Korea to progress.

On the flipside it can be said that the World Cup has not been in South America since 1978 and that will make all the difference but I think modern players are different. They are used to travelling, staying in hotels and playing in hot weather. All those pre-season tours clocking up miles in the Far East have to have some use.

With Argentina and Brazil at the head of the market at 5/1 and 3/1 respectively surely the value has to be with the European teams in the outrights.

 

 

Corner Bets 07.04.2013 ROUNDUP

Tottenham v Sunderland: Most First Half Corners – Sunderland @ 4.5 with Paddy Power (1pt) LOST-1

Levante v Athletic Bilbao: Race to 3 – Levante @ 2.25 with Bet365 (1pt) LOST -1

A very bad weekend for the corner bets. Those 2 losers bring the figures to

29 bets – 11 winners -7.54

It’s not pretty and I’m going to take a break from these and it could be all for the season. I won’t have the time for the next 2 weekends and as it gets later in the season the games get more random. Any spare time I have will be spent preparing for the world cup.

Not pleased with how these ave turned out as it has undone the good work I did with the Champions League (8 winners from 13 bets and a +7.12) earlier in the season. The only other selections I posted were for top goalscorer earlier in the season and these are likely to be losers unless Lukaku or Giroud score about 4 or 5 goals in their remaining matches.

New look website

Over the last few weeks a lot of work has gone into the new look website. Sometimes with changes like this there can be the odd glitch but I am hopeful there will not be many.

Some of the old pages have changed the url slightly but there is automatic redirection in place that should bring you to the new version of the page. If you see a page where this does not work or any other issues please do get in contact with me so I can fix them.

If anything goes disastrously wrong the old website is available here http://old.simplesoccerstats.com/ but the data in the old console section will be out of date for it.

Now the re-design is out of the way I can look at preparing data for the World Cup 2014.

Corner Bets 07.04.2013

Tottenham v Sunderland

Most First Half Corners – Sunderland @ 4.5 with Paddy Power (1pt)

Spurs have lost this in 8/16 home matches and Sunderland have won this in 8/16 away matches which indicates evens looks about right. Sunderland have to attack and as long as they don’t score an early goal this looks a decent bet.

Levante v Athletic Bilbao

Race to 3 – Levante @ 2.25 with Bet365 (1pt)

Levente have won this in 9/15 at home and Bilbao have lost this in 9/16 away so 1.67 would be the right price based on that and 2.25 looks value.

 

7 Apr, 14 | Posted in: Corners, Tips | Comments Closed

Corner Bets 05.04.2014 ROUNDUP

In betting one of the key ingredients is a bit of luck and it was lacking this weekend. Bologna were level with Inter at 2-2 on corners but Inter got the 5th and Bologna the 6th.  Cagliari had 4 of the first 5 corners against Roma but unfortunately not the first and Valladolid had 9 corners to Valencia’s 4 but not the first. Always a pain to have weekends like that but all the bets look to have been good and there are more chances to make this back.

Inter Milan v Bologna: Race to 3 – Bologna @ 4 with Bet365 (1pt) Lost -1

Cardiff v Crystal Palace: Most Corners 1st Half – Cardiff @ 1.83 with WH, Bwin or PP (1.8) (1pt) WON +0.83

Cagliari v Roma: First Corner – Cagliari @ 2.1 with Bet365 and PP or 2.2 with Bwin Lost -1

Valladolid v Valencia: First Corner Valladolid @ 1.83 with Stan James and Bwin or 1.8 with Bet365 (1pt) Lost -1

27 bets – 11 winners -5.54