How to improve a team's position in the FIFA ranking? A simulation study

In this paper, we study the efficacy of the official ranking for international football teams compiled by FIFA, the body governing football competition around the globe. We present strategies for improving a team's position in the ranking. By combining several statistical techniques, we derive an objective function in a decision problem of optimal scheduling of future matches. The presented results display how a team's position can be improved. Along the way, we compare the official procedure to the famous Elo rating system. Although it originates from chess, it has been successfully tailored to ranking football teams as well.     

第19届男足世界杯决赛阶段比赛制胜特征研究

采用文献资料调研、数理统计法、逻辑分析法,对第19届男子足球世界杯决赛阶段48场分出胜负的比赛中胜、负双方的43项技术指标进行分析,并对四强球队的技术指标进行对比分析,其目的是探索足球比赛中的制胜因素以及四强球队较其他球队的优势和劣势。研究结果袁明：1）足球比赛中对胜负影响的关键性因素有：传球类技术指标共计7项,包括传球总数、成功传球次数、向前传球数、斜传转移次数、向后传球次数、短传次数、争顶成功次数;进攻类技术指标4项,包括进球数、射门总数、射正次数、助攻;门将技术为失球、扑救2项。2）西班牙队的控、传球优势非常明显,且防守能力强,门将的压力相对较小。荷兰队则以长传球为主要的进攻手段,在防守上也非常严密。德国队失球数也明显低于平均数,但防守不够严密,门将压力相对较大。乌拉圭在控球时长和平均控球时间上均明显低于平均数,是以防守反击为主的球队。3）对于足球胜负规律的认识不应局限于固定的模式,每支球队应当针对自己球队的特点制定战术打法。     

The global footballer and the local war‐zone: George Weah and transnational networks in Liberia,West Africa

Abstract Elite sport is the vehicle for global interactions via both its shared practices and the relations engendered by its governing bodies and its global tournaments. This capability has attracted the attentions of those seeking both nation‐building and reconciliation in war‐damaged nations. The narrative that follows has global implications, telling as it does the story of George Weah, a Liberian‐born footballer who became a humanitarian ambassador, and later aspired to become his country's president. Weah's story informs debates on globalization, illustrating the transnational career of a man who developed a keen understanding of institutional politics and patronage and who allowed himself to be courted by various global figures. These scenarios took place in Liberia, a war‐devastated African nation. This tale thus provides for reflection on how sport can encourage and undermine practises of nationhood. As a former World Footballer of the Year, Weah was a Liberian success story and well aware of his populist appeal. However, the issue of who a people are and who is to be their national political representative has proven to be a very fraught issue in the Liberian context. Whether global sporting networks have made the world smaller and the people more knowing in the Liberian context is an issue this article raises in considering its most famous citizen.     

(T)races of terrorism beyond ports of entry: a retrospective assessment of the limits of profiling in the regulation of airport passenger traffic during the 2010 FIFA World Cup

A critical function of post‐9/11 surveillance worldwide was to manage the ‘terrorist’ spectacle in public spaces such as airports and stadia. With the prospect of the 2010 World Cup looming large, aviation security in South Africa had accordingly gained significance in proportion to the expansion of airports and construction of stadium infrastructure countrywide. Private sector and government intentions to defend and consolidate the developmental spinoffs of expansion and infrastructure construction were expected and, with this, real and perceived threats from both ‘terrorists’ and banned football hooligans from Europe seem to demand surveillance based on racial profiling. The resultant profile picture of surveillance, this paper argues, is in monochrome: black terrorists and white yobs. Mobilising Deleuze and Guattari's theoretical work on deterritorialisation – based on the destabilisation of traditional concepts of territory – aviation ports of entry are seen to transmogrify into points of entry into the public discourse of the Arabic‐African militant, on the one hand, and the English‐European yob menace, on the other. In the final analysis, surveillance discourse moves beyond the confines of the airport and enters the public domain as it conflates the political (militant) and the social (menace) in a single, profiled, ossified narrative of ‘race’.