WORLD CUP GRAPH THEORY

Discoveries: Dr López Peña  and Dr Touchette’s application of Graph Theory to the World Cup 2010.

Dr Javier López Peña & Dr Hugo Touchette in the School of Mathematical Sciences at QMUL have used the data that FIFA made available on its website about the number of passes between players of all teams present at the World Cup 2010, accumulated over all of the games played. They applied Graph Theory to the data.

They used the data to create a directed graph with the nodes of the graph representing the players and the arrows representing the passes. This is the diagram created after the Germany and England match that ended England’s dreams of winning. Some of the points they were able to make were:

•  Germany is more balanced than England. In general players have a much higher number of passes, suggesting a more fluid circulation of the ball.
• The work at the midfield, however, doesn't transfer very well to the forwards. The English attack is heavily loaded on Rooney (10), who receives on average three times more passes than Defoe (19). This makes the English attack very predictable and easily stoppable by blocking Rooney (10), who is usually forced to give the ball back to Gerrard (4).

 They used the data to create graphs for Spain and Netherlands prior to the final, and correctly predicted that Spain would win.