2011 FIFA Women's Soccer Media Analysis & Reporting Deficiencies

The quality of the reporting and analysis of the Women's World Cup, I found (I did not watch or read that much about it) to be astonishingly simple-minded.

The commentators I encountered, all ignored crucial points such as: how many paces of the feet and yards separated the initial contact with the ball from the shot point?; what was the angle of the dribble-movement relative to the angle of the pass that first gave the goal-scorer possession of the ball? when shot on the first touch, what was the angle of the shot relative to the angle of the incoming pass?; when shot off a dribble, what was the angle of the shot relative to the dribble direction?; what was the distance between shot-point and goal-line?.

Americans habitually ignore such key points, and simply assume, that soccer excellence is a matter of being gifted with some kind of talent or spirit.

I am experiencing limits on my time and energy, a lack of video equipment, and a lack of staff--hence my ability to report on the US Japan Women's World Cup Final is limited; yet I can still improve on the professional reporting and analysis produced by the well-funded well-equipped companies:

Note: 12:00 means straight in front, the direction my body is pointed at; 3:00 means directly to my right (90 degree angle to right); 6:00 means directly behind; 9:00 means directly to my left (90 degree angle to left); and then there are points between.

48' US near-miss
As the US player Alex Morgan ran at the ball crossed in to her from her right, she was about 4 yards in front of the Japan left goal-post, with the ball coming in to her from about 1:30 O'Clock; she attempted to one-touch the ankle-high ball off a low bounce into the goal @ 9:00 O'Clock with the inside of her left-foot, and hit the goal post. Ball-incoming to ball-outgoing angle was approx 135 degrees.

69' US Goal
After the US player Alex Morgan ran behind the (originally bouncing) but now rolling long pass the defender had sent straight up to her, she was about 16 yards in front of the Japan goal; she placed her body between the defender and the ball, and shot the rolling ball with the inside of her left foot, at a 45 degree angle to the right into the left side of the Japan goal.

81' Japan Goal
Japan player Miyama, used her right thigh to intercept US defender clearance ball before it bounced, which was coming in to her from 9:30 O'Clock; Miyama was 8 yds in front of middle of US goal; on the first touch she deflected the ball forwards with her right thigh, took a step with her left foot, and a step with her right foot, two steps as the ball bounced, and kicked the ball at about a 75 degree angle to her left with her left foot, across the goal line 5 yards away from the point of the shot.

104' US Goal
Alex Morgan (US), dribbled to the right goal-line slash penalty-box-line corner intersection, and with her left foot, sent a 22 yard volley pass to Wambach (US) who was standing near the middle of the front goalie-box line. 6 yards from the middle of the Japan goal-line. Wambach, headed the ball (which never bounced) at a 90 degree angle to her right, across the goal-line; the point of shot to goal-line distance was approx 6 yds.

117' Japan Goal
Some say that the Sawa goal, which forced the US into overtime, was accomplished by way of Sawa kicking the ball into the goal with her heel ("an amazing flying heel shot"). Inspection of the videos shows that this was not actually the case. Sawa had her right leg stretched almost straight and her right foot thigh high when she contacted the ball she was jogging at; Sawa deflected the ball (which never bounced) to her right at a 120 degree angle, with her right foot, not her right heel. One can see from the follow-through that the ball was not heeled into the goal. The ball richoted hard--a 120 degree deflection allows the ball to retain plenty of velocity. The ball crossed the left side of the goal-line 12 yards from where Sawa contacted the ball. The US player who touched the ball after Sawa did not effect the outcome-- the shot would have been a goal anyway, with the ball passing the goal point at a point near where it did after the deflection, even if there had been no deflection.

Note that in the five examples of above, the ball's direction after it departed the shooter's body, relative to the ball's direction before it was shot away, was (135 + 45 + 75 + 90 + 120) /5 = 93 degrees.

See: http://www.sportsknowhow.com/soccer/dimensions/soccer-dimensions.html

World Cup 2010 Final Match Spain vs Netherlands Notes

Version 1, 6:28 AM 7/12/2010

I still have not watched the first half of the 2010 final between Spain and Netherlands, and I have watched the second half and the overtime only once. When I do some more watching of the game I will revise this blog-post and report the revision in this post.

Spain and the Netherlands both failed when the attacker was near the goal and had only the goalie to beat, or only the goalie and one defender to beat. The mistakes consisted of: shooting instead of cutting to the left or right with the ball (NED); dribbling straight ahead instead of cutting left or right (ESP); cutting to the right into a goalie or the defender when the proper course of action would have been to dribble straight ahead or shoot (ESP, NED, ESP).

In my previous blog-post I discussed how in the semifinal, Spain had an advantage over Germany derived from the Spanish dribbler moving towards the German defender, which gave the dribble the choice of cutting either to the left or to the right. Seems that my advice re this advantage was taken too literally. Repeatedly players dribbling the ball, unaccountably and strangely, dribbled the ball towards the goalie or defender when they should have shot the ball or cut away from the goalie or defender and then shot the ball.

Although advantage can be derived by dribbling the ball towards the defender before making cutting left or right with the ball, such is not always the wise thing to do.
Generally, dribbling towards the defender before cutting this way or that, is a good choice for a dribbler when the dribbler is too far away from the goal to shoot, and the defender is in front of the dribbler. When the dribbler is close enough to the goal to shoot, and the defender it to the side of the dribbler as opposed to in front of the defender, dribbling towards the defender is less often the wise choice.

Repeatedly, shots were taken close to the goal, and were stopped by the goalie's feet with the goalie's body lying on the ground. This should not happen as it is not that difficult to loft the ball over the goalie's feet when the goalie is lying on the ground.

Three times Spaniards had the ball in a position where the smart thing to do would have been to cut to the left, fake a shot, and cut back to the right, or, cut to the right, fake a shot, and cut back to the left. This they did not do, result shot blocked, shot missed, ball lost etc. This dribbling on a slant faking a shot and cutting back is something even us Americans could do in high school.

Villa missed an easy shot near the Dutch goal, and Ramos missed a relatively easy header off a cross near the Dutch goal. Villa also tried to volley a long cross into the Dutch goal and missed badly.

Seems Villa like the rest of us has seen too many videos featuring the '100 greatest goals of all time' etc. One of these video clips featured an English player volleying a long cross into the goal, Villa apparently attempted to imitate the incredible shot.

When watching such videos, we should stop and realize that just as in music in America there have been these musical artists known as 'one hit wonders', who produced one great song and nothing else of note, so also, many of these 'greatest goals of all time', were freaks involving players doing something that they were able to do only once in their entire careers. I don't see it as wise to imitate such freak events. It would be smarter to imitate 'great goals', of the type that players have been able to accomplish repeatedly.

We've often read of how persons have been just once in their lives filled with superhuman strength and done things like lift a car off of an accident victim beneath the car--we should not forget that these heroic persons were able to achieve superhuman strength only once in their entire lives.

Simply from timing the speed of my shots with a stopwatch, I've noticed that about one in a hundred shots accidentally features very high speed with little effort, due to that rare combination accidentally coming together featuring the ball the body the foot all in exactly the right positions.

Apparently again watching the FIFA 2010 Finals, we witnessed the phenomenon wherein due to concentration on more difficult skills, the basic easy skills acquired early in youth become rusty, decline in terms of competence-level. Again we saw how the basic underemphasized strategic wisdom, is to in practice spend neither too much or too little time working on a given skill.

Twice I saw Spaniards making a mistake which I had noted in a previous blog-post re the 2010 World Cup: failing to anticipate defensive movements that were predictable. As a result, their passes were intercepted.

Both Spanish and Dutch players manifested a certain level of a lack of competence with bouncing balls. In one instance, a Dutchman got a bouncer near the goal, with time and without a Spaniard near him, but he was too clumsy and slow controlling the bouncer. A bouncer came to a Spaniard after the ball bounced off the Dutch goalie after the Dutch goalie fisted the ball away; the Spaniard had plenty of time and space to start something tricky like an aerial dribble towards the Dutch goal, but he just shot the bouncer and the shot did not even come close to scoring.


I napped through the entire game, not watching it, until about five minutes before the winning goal in the 116th minute, which occurred about five minutes after I started watching the game, which was after the Red Card evicted Heitinga of the Netherlands.

I wonder, was it coincidence that the one goal of the game was not scored until five minutes after I started watching the game about 110 minutes after the game started? Was is it coincidence, that the winning goal was similar to the first shot I took in front of the scoffer the Spanish/Guatemalan gentleman named 'Biro' (in front of Biro, I shot a bouncer into the right side of the goal from the left of the goal with my left from about 20 yards out, see June 30 entry of my soccer log).

Was it a coincidence that the referee of the match was Howard Webb, who looked almost like a twin of my uncle when my uncle was a young man? Was it a coincidence, that while I was sleeping prior to starting to watch the match after the match was already in overtime, I dreamt that the day of the match was my father's birthday even though actually it was not my father's birthday?

@2010 David Virgil Hobbs

Soccer long range shooting tactical lessons of 2010 World Cup

The outstanding events of the Netherlands vs Uruguay contest, were the goals by Bronckhorst for the Netherlands, and Forlan for Uruguay. These goals resembled each other they were almost like twins.

That the soccer world is in a state of confusion is evinced by: the conflicting reports re the distance of the shots, how far they traveled from shot-point to target; the lack of attention to detail in terms of exactly how the shot distance is measured (shot-point to middle goal-line or shot-point to goalie?); and, the lack of attention to whether the kmh reports for the speed of the shots reflected the average speed in flight or the max speed during flight.

Best I can determine looking at the conflicting reports and the low quality (given the equipment I am using) video clips on the internet, the distance from shot-point to goalie on the Bronckhorst shot was 33 meters, and the distance from shot-point to goalie on the Forlan shot was 21 meters.

There are several reports that the Bronckhorst shot was 68 mph, and a couple of reports state that the Forlan shot was at 45 mph. I believe these speeds refer (for a change) to average speed of ball in flight not max speed of ball in flight; if these figures were for max speed of ball in flight, one would never expect the shots to have managed to result in goals.

I estimate the Forlan shot at 45 mph average speed and 64 mph top speed in flight, traveling in the air for 1.11 seconds during flight.

I estimate the Bronckhorst shot as at 68 mph average speed, and as at 109 mph in terms of max speed during flight, traveling in the air for 1.12 seconds during flight.

The Bronckhorst shot then seems to have been right on the borderline in the sense that if it had been faster it would have been impossible for the goalie to stop. Seems the goalie hesitated for an unusually long amount of time before leaping towards the ball, which makes the goalie's achievement in getting as close as he did to the ball with his hand, notable.

The Bronckhorst shot was spinning in a motion somewhere between a backspin and a spin to the left. Bronkhorst shot the ball at about a 20 degrees right angle relative to the ball movement before the shot, with the front inside of his left foot.

Judging from the spin on Bronckhorst's shot, I estimate that from the goalie's point of view, the ball swerved to the goalie's right as it came at that goalie, and swerved upwards compared to a ball without swerve. The ball ended up above the goalie's hand and from the goalie's perspective to the left of the goalie's hand. seems the goalie was fooled by the backspin on the ball sending the ball upwards, and that the goalie from a horizontal perspective overcompensated for the swerve on the ball which sent the ball on a curve towards the goalie.

The Bronckhorst shot appears to have been a case of a team and a player being aware of exactly how much range their shooting had given the power of their shots and the peculiar characteristics of the Jabulani ball (lighter and with less seems than previous World Cup ball); it was shot from the maximum of this range. The Bronckhorst shot appears to have been a very skillful achievement combining tactical wisdom, power of shot, and good aim. It reminds me of the earlier long shot by Oscar Perez of Argentina, which similarly appears to have been shot from maximum range and placed accurately.


In the Forlan case, from the goalie's perspective the ball passed slightly to the left of the goalie's outstretched hand and so was not stopped from entering the net. In this case it appears the goalie undercompensated for the (from the goalie's perspective) swerve of the ball to the goalie's left , which was caused in part by the ball spinning to the right (from the shooter's perspective). The goalie positioned himself initially directly in the path of where the ball would have gone had it not swerved to the goalie's left; the goalie was then caught off guard to the point of being able to get only one hand in the direction of the swerving ball. Forlan's shot would not have been a goal absent the swerve on the ball which confused the goalie, given the speed of the shot, the distance between the shot-point and the goal, and the distance between the goalie's position at shot-time and the position of the ball as it crossed the goal-line.

All this reminds me that the computer program I wrote which estimates whether a practice shot would have been stoppable by a goalie, does not take into account confusion caused by swerve and has so far been used only with a replica of the 2006 World Cup ball, not with the replica of the 2010 Jabulani ball.

There is alot of talk about the 2010 Jabulani moving in ways that deviate from the straight line; I've found that my shots with the replica of the 2006 World Cup ball from about 20 meters produce swerves of up to four feet left or right.

A tactical lesson here appears to be: a player's maximum range is the distance from which a well-placed shot of his would be unstoppable by a goalie; players should figure out what their maximum range in terms of shooting is; players should fire shots from this maximum range; an advantage of long range shots is that the longer the shot, the greater the swerve on the ball.

@2010 David Virgil Hobbs