Home Field Advantage on the WCQ

[NoSix]

Here's a trivia question for all of you reading and not posting. :)

Of the 12 remaining teams in CONCACAF world cup qualifying, which team has the largest home field advantage? Which team has the smallest home field advantage?

[tomwilhelm]

Here's a trivia question for all of you reading and not posting. :)

Of the 12 remaining teams in CONCACAF world cup qualifying, which team has the largest home field advantage? Which team has the smallest home field advantage?

Shot in the dark...

Largest HFA: Someone weird like Cuba

Smallest HFA: Canada

[NoSix]

Shot in the dark...

Largest HFA: Someone weird like Cuba


Excellent guess: CUB is tied for 2nd

Smallest HFA: Canada

Actually, CAN's home field advantage is 5th best

[MoRado]

which team has the largest home field advantage?
Costa rica / Mexico

Which team has the smallest home field advantage?
Surinam / Canada

[NoSix]

which team has the largest home field advantage?
Costa rica / Mexico

Which team has the smallest home field advantage?
Surinam / Canada

Two guesses for each? Talk about sitting on the fence! :D

Unfortunately, none of them are correct. I would have guessed that the #1 team in the power rankings, Mexico, would have the largest home field advantage, and that the #12 team, Surinam, would have the smallest. In fact, Mexico's HFA ranks 4th, while Surinam ranks 8th.

Anyone else have a guess?!

[ThreeApples]

You haven't defined how you quantify "home field advantage."

#1 USA
#12 Honduras

[MountainHawk]

Mexico (large) and Haiti (small)

[NoSix]

You haven't defined how you quantify "home field advantage."


Well, this thread was split off from its original context in the "statistical power rankings" thread. As described in the first post of that thread, the results of all international matches over the last five years are fed into a poisson model, which is used to calculate an expected goal value for each team home and away against every other team, or equivalently, the probability of a home win, draw, or away win in each match. Results are weighted in time, so that more recent results count more heavily. In order to predict the performance of, say, CUB in group A of WCQ, I add up the predicted win-draw-loss shares in each of their six matches, CUB-GUA, CUB-TRI, CUB-USA, GUA-CUB, TRI-CUB, and USA-CUB, in order to predict their performance in the group. Now, something I can do on the computer is also simulate the CUB-CUB match, i.e., a match between a team whose strength is calculated based on CUB results in home matches versus a team whose strength is calculated based on CUB results in away matches. The predicted goal difference in the hypothetical CUB-CUB match is Cuba's home field advantage, and similarly for the other 11 teams in the region.



#1 USA
#12 Honduras

Sorry, but those guesses aren't correct either. ;)

[NoSix]

Mexico (large) and Haiti (small)

Nice try, but neither of those are correct. MEX's home field advantage is the 4th highest, and HAI's is 10th.

[MoRado]

Well, this thread was split off from its original context in the "statistical power rankings" thread. ....

and that`s why nobody has guessed yet!... nice topic to be discussed as wel
No matter what does the number say, I still think that Ricardo Saprissa stadium and Azteca`s give the biggest home field advantage in CONCACAF to Mexico-America, Costa Rica-Saprissa

[NoSix]

and that`s why nobody has guessed yet!... nice topic to be discussed as wel
No matter what does the number say, I still think that Ricardo Saprissa stadium and Azteca`s give the biggest home field advantage in CONCACAF to Mexico-America, Costa Rica-Saprissa

We can always argue until we are blue in the face about how much of an advantage one's home fans, one's home altitude, smog, pitch, etc. mean vs another teams, but home field advantage can be precisely quantified. The simple approach would just be to take the difference between a teams average goal difference in home matches versus away matches over the last, say, 5 years. The advantage to my computer calculation is that it adjusts for strength of schedule differences between teams, as well as time weights results, so that the quantity being computed - in this case, home field advantage - best captures the team's current form.

[NoSix]

Here's a clue: the teams with the largest and smallest home field advantage, interestingly enough, happen to be neighbors.

Rep to the first person who guesses correctly. :)

[MoRado]

honduras and guatemala

[NoSix]

honduras and guatemala

Close, but no cigar, senor! :p

[Azuran]

Here's a clue: the teams with the largest and smallest home field advantage, interestingly enough, happen to be neighbors.

Rep to the first person who guesses correctly. :)

Honduras and El Salvador

[tomwilhelm]

Honduras and El Salvador

That's about the only guess I can think of, given the options left...

[NoSix]

Honduras and El Salvador

Yes, the catrachos and cuscatlecos it is. We have a winner!

The full table, where HFA is home field advantage in goals per game:


Team HFA
HON 0.74
CUB 0.67
JAM 0.67
MEX 0.66
CAN 0.64
CRC 0.63
TRI 0.59
SUR 0.54
USA 0.49
HAI 0.42
GUA 0.39
SLV 0.34

[tomwilhelm]

What would be the "ability to get points away" rankings? Presumably not the inverse of this, right?

[NoSix]

What would be the "ability to get points away" rankings? Presumably not the inverse of this, right?

Not the inverse, the same! Another name for home field advantage would be away field disadvantage. It's a glass half-empty vs. half-full situation - an El Salvador fan might think it quite impressive that his team performs so consistently on the road compared to its home performance, with only an 0.34 goal per game away field disadvantage - the best in the region!

Edit: actually you are right in that the rankings for away field disadvantage would be just the inverse of the home field advantage ones - SLV going from 12th to 1st, etc.

[CiudadanoDelMundo]

yeah Estadio Azteca is the largest....more ppl create more intimidation for the other country and more support for mexico