The Evolution of the World Cup

STA/ISS 313 - Spring 2023 - Project 1

Team Messi

Introduction: FIFA World Cup

  • Three datasets:

    • wcmatches contains every match in FIFA World Cup history

    • worldcups contains summary statistics on every world cup played

    • penalties contains penalty data on each world cup

  • Our goal is to explore a couple of areas on how the world cup has changed over its history

Q1: The Effect of New Rules on Goals Scored

  • The rules in the World Cup have changed a lot over time (# of teams, VAR, penalties, etc.)

  • How has this affected the goal scoring in World Cup games throughout time?

  • How have penalties been affected by changes to rules and new technology?

    Plot 1

    • scatterplot with goals per game each tournament
    • annotate years with new rules and events

    Plot 2

    • line graph showing how the number of penalties per game and the proportion of goals that are penalties has changed over time
    • Used world cup aggregated tournament data
    • Includes 2022 world cup data to better see the effect of VAR on penalties

Goals per game across World Cups

Penalty Kick Frequency Across World Cups


Question 2: Representation of continents in the World Cup

  • Despite the ‘world’ name, the world cup appears to be consistently dominated by European and South American teams

  • How has the representation of the world cup changed over time?

  • Have rule changes and qualification changes allowed for more countries outside Europe and South Ameica to be included?

  • Has this increase in diversity been consistent across rounds?

    • Other stories like Morocco this year!

    Plot 1:

    • time series plot

    • proportion of all continents represented in each world cup over time

    Plot 2:

    • segmented relative frequency barplot

    • representation from non-European and South American teams change across rounds and over every two decades (facet)

Representation Across World Cups

Representation Across Rounds

Conclusion

  • Goals have become less frequent over time

  • Penalties have become a more important part of the game

  • Europe’s Dominant Representation Decreases Over Time

  • The World Cup has improved over time in terms of diversity

  • European & South American Teams Dominate Later Rounds

Thank you!