Quarter-finals at World Cup 2022
The quarter finals at World Cup are about to start, we have 8 strongest teams. We are going to make analysis of their efficiency in attack and compare the teams of upcoming matches trying to understand who is more likely to go to semi-finals.
The main factor of efficient play in attack is goals, it has a direct influence on the final result. Let's take two related values and build a chart out of it. On the X-axis we take average number of expected Goals (xG) of the teams and on the Y-axis the real number of goal scored. The difference will be one of the variables of efficient play.
We have 2 teams that have a negative value in conversion of xG to real goals, Brazil and Argentina. Brazil is far from everyone, they missed out more than 3 goals up to this moment. France and Croatia have value around 0, scoring as much as it is expected. We are another 4 who can be considered efficient in attack. Portugal and England are ahead with 1,4 and 1,2 goals over expected on average per match.
Now having some knowledge how efficient are the teams converting their scoring episodes we will take a bigger scope, how often the teams enter the penalty box and how many of those entries ends up with shot.
Moroccan team has the best result, converting every entry to penalty box into a shot, it's very impressive, but as we know their xG is around 0,7 xG per match only. It tells us that most of the shots are not that dangerous which correlates with the value of xG per shot taken, it is the lowest among quarter-finalists - 0,09. The rest of the teams are pretty much at the same level apart from England and Croatia who are struggling in this component.
Obtaining information of how the teams are efficient entering the penalty box we take in account the number of accurate key passes, which creates us scoring opportunities we need, second variable will be included - conversion of chances into goals. This way will show how many chances are created per match and what is the expected possibility it will turn into a goal.
The graph we can divide into the two main quadrants. Green - high number of key passes and high percentage on conversion; Red - small number of key passes and small percentage of conversion. We can divide all team into two group, who create a lot and a little chances. Taking in account all the participants, we see that the averages are inside the green quadrant, the teams were quite balanced with the chances and their realisation. England is the only team in green area, who creates more than 5 chances per game from open play and converts 1 into goal. Argentina, Brazil and France again are those, who are not efficient enough in finishing. Croatia and Morocco don't create a lot and efficiency is also below the average.
Let's move to the upcoming matches and compare the attacking values of the teams. First day starts with Brazil - Croatia and Argentina - Netherlands. In the first match we can say that Brazil looks much stronger in all components, they create more, shoot more and efficiency is also higher.
Match of Argentina - Netherlands doesn't look that obvious. Argentina looks better as they create more chances, shoot more and more possess the ball, but Netherlands are better in converting their chances and as result they also score more, coming back to graph #1 we can see that Argentina has the negative value of goals over xG and Netherlands not. This match can turn out different ways if Argentina doesn't take their chances.
The second day bring us similar pairs, in one we have a strong dominant team and the second pair it is not that obvious. The match of England and France we see two teams with great values in attack. England takes their chances seriously and creates also sufficient number of them rather than France is not very efficient in converting chances but create enough to take goals they need, England might look a little more better team.
In the other pair, Portugal has a big advantage over Morocco in all attacking values. Still this game can end different.
Portugal, England, Brazil and Netherlands are our predicted semi-finalists, let's see how many of them we match!