Women's World Cup Semifinal: Japan vs. Sweden

Frau A and I got to see a lot of the Women's World Cup in person.  Some group-stage games were held in Augsburg, so we attended North Korea vs. Sweden and then Australia vs. Sweden.

We bought semifinal tickets early on a gamble -- before knowing the matchup.  We though the U.S. would with their group, then win their first elimination-stage game to reach the semifinal.  We thought Germany would do the same.  Germany vs. the U.S. would have been awesome...

But as it turned out, the U.S. did NOT win Group C, (but did make the other semifinal game) and Germany lost to Japan in the quarterfinals!

So, even though the dream matchup would not happen, we took the train to Frankfurt to see Sweden (who we'd seen twice already!) take on Japan.

 

We arrived to see the opening ceremony and hear the national anthems in progress.  Notice the empty seats in the best section -- we think it's the result of German fans (who made the same gamble we did) not showing up because the German team wasn't here.

Sweden was attacking right-to-left in the first half and probably generated the most (and most dangerous) opportunities.

Frau A tool some GREAT photos of the first goal.  Sweden 1, Japan 0.  Only 10 minutes into the game.

On the other end, Japan was not getting much other than ineffective corner kicks.  There was a feeling in the stadium that it would be an easy Swedish victory...

But the Japanese team started to control ball possession more, and their attacks were getting sharper.  They got the equalizer at 19 minutes and took the tie into halftime.  Their attackes continued into the second half.

For one save, the Swedish goalie punched the ball away and hit her teammate in the process! 

In fact, Japan ended up with 60% ball possession and scored two unanswered goals within 5 minutes to open a 3-1 lead on Sweden.  On the defensive end, Japan were tight and for the remainder of the game.  Sweden created no real chances to speak of.

Japan were a pleasant surprise (and of course, would be an even bigger surprise in the Final...).  We saw three games, and are so happy that we had this opportunity.  It was a great experience and hope many of you can see games in Canada in 2015!

Women's World Cup - Sweden vs. Australia

Frau A and I had already seen a game of the Women's World Cup (group stage).  But when friends from Dallas came to visit, we got tickets for the next weekend too.  Again in Augsburg, again Sweden, but this time against Australia.

It was easy to reach the stadium on trams that ran every few minutes from the city center -- and clearly marked!

It was another hot, sunny day with blue skies (our seats were in the shade, otherwise we might have roasted).

A lot of German fans supported Sweden, but the awesome Australian fans definitely made themselves known!  (They're all smiles with the headgear and blow-up kangaroo.)

We also noticed a lot of girls' soccer teams that came in a group.  Great to see the sport building a large base.

With these teams, we suspected the game would be physical, and it was.  At least three yellow cards were handed out, and every ball was strongly contested. 

Sweden built a quick 2-0 lead, but Frau A caught the incredible Aussie score in a series of fast photographs.
It was a precision shot at distance (both the goal and the photos, actually).  Fantastic stuff!

In the last photo above, the black splotch is the person in front of us standing to cheer.

However, after that, the Swedish keeper constantly went airborne to protect the net.  She had to, because Australia had nine corner kicks vs. Sweden's three.

The Australian goalie made a tight save here, to the disappointment of the Swedish attacker.

The Australian defense made an error passing back to the goalie and Sweden capitalized.  3-1.

After this mistake, Australia never really threatened anything, and the Swedes won handily.  This is their victory dance that became popular as the went undefeated in the group stage.

We really lucked out -- two beautiful days with two fun games.  But we had tickets to one more...

Soccer and Technology

Frau A and I went to our second Women's World Cup game in Augsburg, this one a quarterfinal matchup between Sweden and Australia (Sweden won, 3-1).  On the train back to Munich, mobile phones kept us up-to-date on the first half of USA vs Brazil.  We rushed home to catch the second half on television (and extra time, and penalty shots...).

What a game.

Of course, I was starved for ways to re-live the experience, and found some interesting web sites with more than just video replays.

ESPN.com has "Gamecast", which provides real-time (and archived) commentary, statistics, and neat graphical depictions of what happened.  For example...

Their timeline shows key events in the game, such as goals, yellow/red cards, and substitutions:

 USA vs Brazil (First Half)

USA vs Brazil (Second Half)

USA vs Brazil (extra time)

It was a real fight -- three yellow cards in the last 8 minutes of extra time.  And I love seeing that US goal at the very end...

Gamecast also has a running feed of information throughout the game.  If you're stuck at work without a live video stream, this is the next best thing (you end up waiting impatiently for each refresh, not knowing what to expect):

Statistics for the team and individual players are also updated in real time:

USA vs Brazil - team statistics

It's interesting that even being down to 10 players for the last 56 minutes of the game, the US still managed 51% possession.  Other than the US advantage in corner kicks, things look pretty even.

Here are the player stats...

USA vs Brazil - individual statistics

Wow - Carli Lloyd is a magnet for fouls, with 5 drawn and 5 committed!  Wambach gets hammered (5 fouls against vs 1 committed) whereas Boxx must be our 'enforcer' (just the opposite).

Gamecast gets even better when you click on "Shots" and it shows a map of the location of every shot from the two teams.  The US clearly favored the right side (or just had more success getting open there) while Brazil mapped more strongly to their left:

USA vs Brazil - Gamecast shot map

Then, if you click on a shot (for example, the solid blue Abby Wambach goal on the left of course!) it will show you an animation of how that play develped!  This one goes from Ali Krieger taking the ball from the Brazillian attacker, pass to Carli Lloyd at midfield, pass to Megan Rapinoe on the left wing, then her cross to Abby Wambach, and the shot:

USA vs Brazil - development of game tying goal at 122'

In contrast, Marta's goal early in additional time was set up by 5 forward passes, 4 backward passes, and a cross, many in tight quarters:

USA vs Brazil - development of Marta goal at 92'

In addition to raw statistics, you can see the "average" position of the players for each team.  In this case, look how spread out the US defenders had to play (#6, #3, #19, and #11), whereas the Brazilian defenders stayed much more in the middle of the backfield (#3, #4, #5, and #13):

USA vs Brazil - average position USA

USA vs Brazil - average position Brazil

Gamecast also provides even more "where-they-were-most-active" detail info for individual players, called a "Heat Map".  We can compare Abby Wombach with Marta because they both play the Center Forward - Left position.  Wombach spends little time in the defensive end, whereas Marta ventures deeper (and obviously more often) into her own end.  And look at how disciplined/consistent Abby seems to be lining up above the box - definitely not the organic Brazilian style!

 USA vs Brazil - Heat Map for Abby Wombach

USA vs Brazil - Heat Map for MartaRapinoe spent her time almost exclusively on the left side, and because she took most of the corner kicks gets mapping there too: 

 USA vs Brazil - Heat Map for Megan Rapinoe

Even more interesting is the comparison of the goalies.  Clearly Hope Solo has a much more aggressive style, coming further out and mirrors the left-weighted shot map of Brazil.  (Obviously, the effectiveness of the Brazilian attack has a role in her positioning too):

USA vs Brazil - Heat Map for Hope Solo

USA vs Brazil - Heat Map for Andreia

Of course there are many other web sites with similar features.  Adidas Match Tracker looks very in-depth, probably designed for the hard-core fan:

VisualSport keeps and displays data over an entire season and league, so performance changes over time might be trackable but it looks a little cartoon-ish: 

Finally, of course, there are iPad and iPhone apps too!  TotalFootball looks sharp:

An iPad option is the World Cup Visualizer.  The engineer in me likes these things, because it allows you to look at the sport in a different way.  I think statistics will continue to get more use by soccer clubs themselves and perhaps have the same impact that sabremetrics has had on baseball in the U.S..