In a previous blog post we have presented a new Castrol football application, the World Cup Predictor. Using performance data from every international match played by the World Cup 2010 participating teams in the last ten years and simulating the tournament more than 100 000 times, to minimize the error rate as much as possible, the Castrol team of performance analysts calculated each team’s chances of progression through the competition.
As it proves, the application has its validity,  Brazil the team identified by the Castrol Predictor as the most likely winners still running in the competition, while England the team that was predicted to win the world cup competition by the JP Morgan analysts is already out being eliminated by Germany.

To find out more about what are your favorite team chances to win the next match from the knock out rounds use the Castrol Match Predictor application by clicking on the image below.

Source: Castrol Football, 2010

Additionally, for the knock out stages Castrol Football just launched a new application that proves to be of great interest among fans, but also among players and goalkeepers still involved in the knockout stages of the World Cup competition.

As Peter Schmeichel, one of the official Castrol ambassadors acknowledge, the Penalty Analysis application gives complete historic information about the way and style a field player takes a penalty, but also about the strategy each goalkeeper use when defending a penalty. To view more details you can listen the complete interview with the ex goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel in the podcast below.

Castrol EDGE Penalty Analysis Podcast by Castrol Football

For developing the new application, the Castrol team of performance analysts has studied every penalty taken in the last 4 seasons of the top five European Leagues and UEFA Champions Leagues, as well as a number of international matches and they compiled the results in an application that can be accessed by clicking the image below.

Source: Castrol Football, 2010

More than that, especially for the World Cup 2010 tournament, the Castrol team of performance analysts analyzed each penalty taken in the last 5 World Cups both during matches and penalty shootouts by all teams who qualified for the South African competition to better understand the psychological impact the penalty shootouts pressure have on field players and goalkeepers. The results are truly surprising:

• 81% of the penalties taken during the matches are converted while only 66% during the penalty shoot outs

• Players who go first in penalty shootouts are 7 times more likely to score than those executing the penalties last

• The older a player is the less likely he will score – only 71% of those above 28 years scored

• Right foot players have a 69% penalty conversion rate, while left foot players only 50%

• Goalkeepers wearing green jerseys let through 62 % of the penalties, those wearing black 65%, blue 69%, while goalkeepers wearing red jersey couldn’t save any penalty

• Strikers with a penalty conversion result of 74% are most likely to score, followed by defenders with a 69% success rate, while midfielder are the most unlikely to score with a 58%  success figure attached.

• Finally, only 40% of penalties are converted by players if the team final survival depends on that penalty, while 92% of penalties are converted in the opposite situation, when the penalty is to decide the winner.

To view a full video presentation of the Castrol performance analysts research you can follow the Castrol Football official site here.

References:

• Castrol Football 2010, available at http://www.castrolfootball.com/index/, (accessed 18 June 2010)

Additional resources:

• smartkpis.com 2010, Investment bankers views on the 2010 World Cup South Africa – England likely to win the World Cup, available at http://www.smartkpis.com/blog/2010/06/17/investment-bankers-views-on-the-2010-world-cup-south-africa-england-likely-to-win-the-world-cup/ (accessed 18 June 2010)
• smartkpis.com 2010, Football KPIs examples, available at http://www.smartkpis.com/kpi/industries/sports/football-soccer/, (accessed 18 June, 2010)