The African continent’s biggest tournament, the Africa Cup of Nations is upon us once again. It is that time of the year when fans are glued to their television sets, experiencing a rollercoaster of emotions as their teams progress through the tournament. In the beginning, there is the air of hope and anticipation as the whistle is blown for kick off. In the heat of the game, there are the the ‘couch commentators’ who shout instruction to players through their televisions in the midst of fouls, missed shots and free kicks. And of course, there are the tears, the laughter, the jubilant dances or the disappointment of crushed hopes at the end, when that whistle is blown for final time. Football tournaments are always an experience!

It is exciting that amidst the challenges with Covid 19 and the threat of African players not being released by their European clubs for the tournament, someway somehow the 2021/2022 AFCON tournament is still happening.

With football being such a huge part of the lives of many Africans, the Eureka team could not help but to hop onto the train.

What have we been looking at?

Eureka BI AFCON Dashboard

1. Filling a gap on African football data

There is a lot of information on the AFCON floating across several websites and over the years the tournament has generated quite a bit of data. However, most of this data is decentralized, making it rather difficult to easily draw relations between the data or observe patterns. This, we noticed, was a gap that needed to be filled.

In anticipation of the tournament, our goal at Eureka was to create a dashboard that would consolidate all of this data, a dashboard that would provide a great overview of the AFCON tournament without having to endure several clicks through various websites. The dashboard covers data on past tournaments, the different teams that have participated over time and details on this year’s tournament.

2. Analysis for everyone, any day

Our second goal was to ensure that the dashboard we created was easy to use and intuitive. We are bringing sports data analytics, similar to anything you would get from the pros, right to the masses, available every day, all day with just a simple click on your device. Everyone can analyse the tournament, right from its history over the years to its progression towards the finals of 2022. For this reason, we employed data tables, graphs, colour codes and other interactive tools and media, to highlight relationships within the data. Your very own AFCON pundit right in the palm of your hand!

3. Predicting our favourites to win the cup

Throughout the data gathering and analyses process, the Eureka team sought to determine which teams were our favourites for getting to the final stage and perhaps winning the competition. We came up with a list of teams, thanks to the data and our ability to spot what matters. To view our predictions and understand how we came up with our list, do check out our article on the prediction process. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy using the dashboard!