Africa's Day not to be


Nigeria and Algeria were the last African teams standing today.  Both were knocked out to end another World Cup where the African teams have underachieved.  It was somewhat of a topsy turvy tournament for the African nations.  On 21st June Nigeria beat Bosnia-Herzegovina and two days later Algeria beat Korea.  The bookmakers sat up and paid attention and the odds of an African team to lift the trophy began to take a steep uphill trajectory.  However the elimination of Ivory Coast on the 25th was the beginning of the end of the African dream.  The chart shows the estimated probability of an African team winning the World Cup.  Estimated probabilities are based on the bookmakers odds (eg evens => 50%, 2 to 1 => 33%).  So ends another World Cup riddled with disappointment for the African Continent.



Egypt was the first African team to take part in the World Cup in 1934 but fell at the first hurdle.  There was no African teams present at the finals again until 1970.  By 1977 a sense of optimism about African football was being felt and Pele famously made his prediction that an African team would win the World Cup before 2000.  Indeed 1978 was the most successful year in terms of percentage of games won.  However it would be a long time before African teams would progress past the Round of 16.



Cameroon became the first team to make the Quarter Finals in 1990.  Then Senegal equalled that achievement in 2002.  In 2010 Ghana came so close to going one better and only lost out on a Semi Final berth by penalty kicks to Uruguay.  Sadly this time no African team will be in the Quarters.
# teamsGPW% games won per teamDLFARound of 16 ParticipantsQuarter Final Participant
World Cup 19341100.00%012410
World Cup 19701300.00%122600
World Cup 19741300.00%0301400
World Cup 197813133.33%113200
World Cup 198226216.66%316600
World Cup 19862717.14%334710
World Cup 199028318.75%2381111
World Cup 199431026.67%17122010
World Cup 199851633.75%67172910
World Cup 200251744.71%67162211
World Cup 200651633.75%310142610
World Cup 201062043.33%610172411
World Cup 201451733.53%311193220


African performances seem to have stagnated since 1998, averaging just 3-5% win rate per team participating.  Even home advantage in 2010 could not have bucked that trend.  This time round they have scored more goals than ever before but this is more likely to do with the general openness of this tournament rather than any marked improvement on Africans attacking.  The goals scored will be taken as a positive and also never before have two African teams made it out of the groups.  However it does feel like it is a very long way to go before an African team will be a serious contender.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Deconstructing WDL and O/U 2.5 goals odds.

Input odds below (in decimal): Home Odds: Draw Odds: Away odds: Over 2.5 Odds: Calculate Params See also Elo Reverse Calculator . Dixon Coles Dixon Coles is a method of generating probabilities on football matches.  It is related to Poisson but adds a correlation for low scores.  It seems to be one of the most accurate public methods.  It requires three parameters lambda, mu and rho.  rho describes how related low scores are.  lambda and mu represent the average goals the home and away team are expected to score. In this calculator I have fixed rho = -0.13 (more info here  and here ) and I simply do a brute force search varying lambda and mu to find the values that has the lowest error from the Win Draw Lose and Over 2.5 odds entered.  I use the WDL odds and Over/Under odds as they are the most liquid betting markets and you can usually read a very accurate estimate for these off oddschecker or the exchange.   The soluti...
Read more

Chrome Extension 1000

Image
Donations now accepted If you have enjoyed using this extension and want to show your appreciation then click "Buy me a coffee" below, otherwise continue further down to read about our features! This started off as just a personal project.  I got full value from the effort that I put in already.   The effort included a few days coding initially and a day or two here or there to fix and add features, perhaps a full working week but fragmented all over the place.  In total it is now about 150 lines of code.   The reward was learning some javascript, learning about chrome extensions, earning some cred on twitter, and getting to connect with different people.  And of course I am actively using it and can identify potential betting opportunities myself. However surprisingly many have found it useful and some have asked for a way to say thanks.  So here it is. Feature Request (01 February 2024) - only available to manually install due to gambling exetn...
Read more

Elo Reverse Calculator

Image
Input odds below (in decimal): Home Odds: Draw Odds: Away odds: Calculate Params Elo Elo is simply a way of rating teams.  The ratings can be used to compare teams and generate probabilities for head to heads.  The probability one team will beat another is just a function of the difference in their rating. p = 1/(1+10^(-diff/400))  The tweet further below from ClubElo introduces another parameter r to take account of draws. Elo: The Hard Way The process is better described on eloratings.net  and clubelo.com .  If you visit these sites you can see it is quite complex.  Basically you initialise all teams to 1000 points for example.  Then you need a history of results and update each teams ratings depending if they win, lose or draw.  There are nuances to worry about, home field advantage, big wins, inter-league adjustments, k-factor weightings, etc. Elo: The Easy Way Say someone has already rated the teams, and also they have tak...
Read more