World Cup, Messi and Big Data

The first football World Cup I saw was the one in 1990. I sat up late for the midnight matches, argued over who would win or who played better. During the 2002 World Cup, I even went home from office to watch the Brazil v/s England quarter-final, the final before the final (every tournament has one such match).

But the current World Cup barely has me interested. I don’t even sit through a match that starts at 9:30! Signs of old age? Or has the Internet changed everything? I always feel “Why watch a match that may be goal-less anyway? Why not just see the goals on YouTube the next day?”

And yet, I watch Argentina’s matches (ok, I just watch more of their matches than the others’). But only to see Lionel Messi. I come away feeling that while the guy is awesome, he just produces 3 or 4 instances of magic in the entire match (it’s a different matter that those instances are sufficient to win the match). So is he over-hyped, I wondered? Or over-marked? Or is Barcelona a better team than Argentina, one that can use and feed Messi’s brilliance?

Before I get to the answer, some background: when the 1994 World Cup happened in the US, I mocked the American obsession with sports stats: who cared which team had what percentage of possession, I smirked. But those stats just kept increasing over the years after that: passes completed, interceptions made, shots attempted…all irrelevant data, I thought. Even after seeing the Brad Pitt starrer, Moneyball, I didn’t change my view on stats and sports.

Boy, have I changed my mind since reading this article on FiveThirtyEight. The article draws chart after chart, quotes stat after stat, and compares Messi against every player in the world on every parameter. Benjamin Morris’ summary?
“It’s not possible to shoot more efficiently from outside the penalty area than many players shoot inside it. It’s not possible to lead the world in weak-kick goals and long-range goals. It’s not possible to score on unassisted plays as well as the best players in the world score on assisted ones. It’s not possible to lead the world’s forwards both in taking on defenders and in dishing the ball to others. And it’s certainly not possible to do most of these things by insanely wide margins.

But Messi does all of this and more.”
There, even the maths “proves” that Messi is way ahead of everyone else! Also, the article showed that Messi’s 3 or 4 moments of greatness per match are way more than anybody else’s: I guess the problem isn’t with Messi, it’s with my expectations…

Calvin once told Hobbes:
“You know how people are. They only recognize greatness when some authority confirms it.”
Today, many only recognize greatness when Big Data confirms it!

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