I do not consider myself a fan of football since most of the time I cannot bring myself to watch 90 minutes of action – the only exception to this is when my national team is playing. However, wherever data is involved, then you got my attention.
I worked with the team at Eureka Business Intelligence to develop the dashboard for the World Cup in Qatar, and this has stirred my interest in what insights can be driven from the datasets available. My philosophy (and this aligns with the philosophy at Eureka Business Intelligence), is that, data is useless until it is used to change outcomes or impact decisions or actions to be taken.
One other philosophy at Eureka is that, business understanding or an understanding of the industry within which you are working trumps modelling. To achieve this, it is crucial to have experts on subject matter are roped in whenever you are conducting an analysis.
In line with this, I spoke to Yaw Ampofo, a popular and experienced football journalist, to understand the nuance of the sport. It was during my talk with him that I got a Eureka moment on the Height Advantage. Following our conversation, we decided to see what insights we could glean from the height data of players and how that could influence team tactics and strategies.
An exploratory analysis of the heights revealed an average height of 182.3 cm for all participating players in Qatar 2022. We decided to drill down to the player positions with the Height Advantage and it was clear that Goalkeepers have the highest average heights – 189.9cm. This was followed by Defenders, and then the Forwards with the Midfielders trailing behind. This points to the fact that goalkeepers are likely to be taller than players in other positions. This is not surprising however since goalkeepers are responsible for the safe keep of the goal post which will require a certain Height Advantage. Another deep dive revealed that Belgium had the highest average in Goal keeper height with Courtois Thibaut being the tallest amongst his peers in Belgium.
The tallest average goalkeepers by country is followed by Serbia and Senegal. The bottom three in terms of goalkeeper height in descending order is Saudi Arabia, Ghana and Qatar. Are these goalkeepers likely to suffer due to their height? We will analyse that as the competition progresses.
The next turf is the Defenders with an average height 183.04cm. Serbia tops this chart with an average height of 189.43cm, followed by Germany and Belgium. The bottom three countries in descending order are Qatar, Mexico and Saudi Arabia.
An analysis of Forwards showed an average of 180.93cm. Interestingly Korea and Iran made it into the top three teams with the highest height for Forwards. Denmark however has the highest average for heights for its Forwards. The bottom three was occupied by Mexico, Argentina and Saudi Arabia.
Finally, we studied that average height of Midfielders which stood at an average of 179.83cm. Serbia, Belgium and France tops the list with Ecuador, Mexico and Japan occupying the bottom 3.
In General, Ghana, Saudi Arabia and Mexico occupy the bottom 3 for average heights, whilst Serbia, Denmark and France occupy the top 3.
These height advantages clearly would have impacts on the team strategies and tactics in the field of play. A better analysis can be derived from the starting 11 with further data on the substitutes for the games. This will be modelled taking into consideration the position, in terms of left or right, that these players are playing in order to give a more detailed and precise analysis. In the event of height outliers, one can consider the median height in lieu of the mean, to give a more accurate picture.
It is because of insights like these that do we what we do here at Eureka Business Intelligence, living and breathing data. Our desire to mine the huge resource that is data and understand what that data tells us, is our driving force. Even more important however, is how these insights can be used to impact decision-making.
