World Cup Wrap Up

Have some final thoughts to share after a few days to reflect on the World Cup.

What a month! Creating and uploading heat maps plus in-game probability charts for every World Cup game turned out to be WAY more work than I bargained for. I had to teach my wife to update graphs while I was at work, I made updates while riding in the car, from Starbucks, from bars, from the Oregon Coast, from the San Diego Airport, and from Pacific Beach! I gathered some numbers on Posting frequency and ridiculousness:

• Greece vs. Costa Rica was that crazy first knockout game that featured a halftime goal, a red card, a 91st minute equalizer and a penalty shootout. 
• England were featured in two games (vs. Italy and vs. Costa Rica) where I only made one post. I'm not sure what that says about English football. 
• That last week of group play I was making and posting win probability graphs AND advancement probability graphs for every pair of games.
• I have no specific knowledge Nate Silver was imitating my Heat Maps when he made this post. But his work looks really really similar to mine.

I also managed way more traffic writing about the World Cup than ever before. I've written about three major topics so far: The 2012 Presidential Election, the 2013 College Football season, and the 2014 World Cup. I summed up my total page-views for each of the 3:

What a huge difference! Thanks for reading! The 3 most viewed posts were:

1. USA USA USA!!! vs. Germany and Ghana vs. Portugal
2. World Cup SEMIFINAL: Germany vs. Brazil
3. World Cup: Portugal vs. UNITED STATES AND AMBER WAVES OF GRAIN

So extra thanks to USA#1 and of course ze Germans.

I also watched way more World Cup than ever before. For the first time I could see the difference in level of play between the World Cup level and the MLS level (Go Sounders!). Mostly I noticed it in passing accuracy, first touch quality, and off-ball movement/coordination. Soccer played at this level (and even MLS level) is really fun to watch.

I'm ready for a nice break. I'd also like to start posting more soon about MLS, of course 2014 college football (Go Huskies!) and who knows what else! Stay tuned!