Charting the Hex; or, Cupcakes and Corn Smut
Posted on February 7, 2013 9:42 am
PROLOGUE: Well, after one game, the entire premise of this blog entry is teetering. I’m going to stick by my guns for the nonce, though, because I’ve got a big, big regression to the mean vibe about this group. With perhaps one exception.
Qualifying for the World Cup worldwide boils down to (1) always win at home; and (2) always get at least a point on the road. My old pal Kyle used to do a very helpful chart which kept track of how well or poorly teams were doing. If you got won at home, or tied on the road, you were awarded zero (or “par,” if you want to look at it that way). Losing on the road meant -1 points (you failed to achieve the point you were hoping for). Tying at home loses you two points, and losing at home means -3. Do not fail to win at home, in other words. A win on the road meant +2 points, since you exceeded expectations. (This is the only way to get positive points in this system, which is why most of the numbers you get in this system are negative. Zero means things are going extremely well, and positive numbers are a dream scenario, usually reserved to Mexico and Spain.)
When a European team fails to complete these steps, their reward is usually two free years of sulking until the next big tournament. When a CONCACAF team bungles this checklist, though, there are usually ways out of jail. Don’t tell our European friends, but while we’re correct in insisting that our road games are among the toughest in the world, they are correct when they point out CONCACAF qualifying can be very, very forgiving.
Basically, instead of just yelling at you not to panic, I’m going to quantify the proper anxiety level. Here’s the current standings, after Day One:
Costa Rica 0
Honduras 0
Jamaica 0
United States -1
Panama -2
Mexico -2
So, Mexico is in trouble…yet Jamaica doesn’t seem sufficiently rewarded, somehow. What we need are other factors.
One theory of qualification is that you need to beat the group cupcake…since everyone else will, and if you don’t, you fall behind. In other words, the group cupcake cannot help, and can only hurt.
Now, who is the cupcake of the group? The other day on Major League Soccer Soccer, John Bolster said this group has no pushover. Except…Panama beat us in the last Gold Cup and Jamaica beat us in the first round. Maybe we’re the cupcake.
Uh oh.
Well, I’m going to take Mr. Doe’s advice and not think bad thoughts. And I really don’t think we’re going to be the group trampoline, mainly because I honestly don’t think we’re going to drop points at home except maybe/probably to Mexico.
Let’s plug in Panama as the pastry for now, and readjust the standings.
Honduras 0
Jamaica 0
United States -1
Costa Rica -2
Mexico -2
Still doesn’t seem right.
Perhaps one further refinement might work, though. Some groups have a team that pretty much beats the hell out of everyone and makes the winner a foregone conclusion. Therefore, getting any points at all from that team, home or away, is cause for celebration. Again – those are points no one else is getting. While the cupcake devalues the road tie and road win, a first place team winning everywhere decreases the damage suffered from a home tie or loss. What would have been a damaging -2 tie becomes a reasonably honorable +1. A loss goes from a cripping -3 to a straight zero – because that’s what everyone else is getting.
Before last night, the group bully was Mexico. Regression to the mean tells me they still are. Maybe it’s Honduras, although let’s see them beat someone on the road. Let’s keep Mexico as the anticupcake for the moment.
Anticupcake? Uncupcake? Tortilla? But tortillas are good. We need a better term.
Googling “Mexico” and “inedible” leads to the Wikipedia entry for “corn smut,” and perfect.
With Panama as cupcake pro tem, and Mexico as corn smut, the race for second through fourth boils down to this:
Jamaica 1
Honduras 0
United States -1
Costa Rica -2
Which is a long way of saying that last night was a minor setback for the US, as far as the standings. And unless Mexico really is going to tear through the Hex like we thought, it wasn’t even that helpful for Jamaica – they could still easily botch qualification.
I hate to keep repeating myself, but until we lose or draw a game at home, we have very little to worry about.
(EDITED for math)
Dan: Huitlacoche.
You’re welcome
You get extra points for the deeply buried “X” reference. You could have also dropped under the big black sun in there if you had tried.
I like this charting system… although why does Jamaica’s points change in the last chart?
Under the tie on the road, win at home theory, they don’t get a bonus for tying on the road…even in Azteca. In the final chart, any points taken off Mexico anywhere is a positive, so they get one point for their tie. – D.
Auckland, here we come.
“mainly because I honestly don’t think we’re going to drop points at home except maybe/probably to Mexico”
Really? After watching yesterday’s game I wouldn’t be so sure.
As a matter of fact, as of right now, and considering the last few USNT games, I don’t see them beating anybody anywhere. History be damned.
This is not the same US team from the Bradley era. I just don’t see anything in this team that makes me believe they can beat anybody in the Hex.
Cheering for 4th place just like in Semi Pro.
Hey, didn’t they film Lord of the Rings in New Zealand?
This charting system seems excellent. I used to use one in which I tried to project the results of games based on the results of earlier games, figuring a two-goal swing between the home leg and the away leg, but I like this system better.
There shouldn’t be a cupcake at this stage in CONCACAF. Aruba and St. Kitts are long gone. However, at this stage in Europe, the big teams still get an occasional chance to play a minnow like Liechtenstein, the Faeroe Islands or someone similar.
As long as Klinsmann is sticking square pegs into round holes we will be in trouble. That was some godawful coaching yesterday.
I’m with Roger, no cupcake
You’re over thinking this.
Here’s my system, although admittedly I only apply this to USA:
3 points: (can only lose points here): Home to Panama.
2 points: Home to Costa Rica, Honduras, Jamaica
1 point: Home to Mexico, Away to everyone else
0 points: (can only gain here): Azteca
Par of 14 points. After dropping the game against Honduras, we are “on target” for 13 points. Even if we go 0-0 to Costa Rica and lose 0-3 at Mexico, that’s still projecting us (conservatively, IMHO) out to 12 points. At 12 points, we’ll still probably finish in the top-4. We’d be favored against New Zealand. So I’ve got awhile to go before I panic.
Concerned though? Absolutely.
The HEX would the hardest European group, not because of the top teams but because of the bottom. What makes it seem easy is that we get three teams qualifying instead of one.
There are no real cupcakes in the hex. Panama is probably the weakest team left, but they can be difficult to beat.
Can I get a response on this?
It’s not so much the teams (our team or Honduras or any other team), it’s where we have to play them. It’s hard to make multiple flights to multiple destinations, lose sleep, practice here, get on a plane again, go to one of the most dangerous cities in the world, and play in 90 degree weather after playing in cold for 4 months, play on a crappy field against players who grew up playing in sand lot, and be able to perform as they usually do. We basically had one day to prepare.
I didn’t see the match but the comments I heard made this obvious: Dempsey was slow, Chandler was awful, Bradley wasn’t good, etc, etc, etc. Well, last I heard, these guys are doing great jobs for their respective European teams. Are they just not as good as Hondurans?
The one thing that really bothers me is that Klinsmann doesn’t seem to realize the difficulty with CONCACAF qualifying, like we get reminded of every four years. It always comes down to the wire. Not because we always suck, but because Central America is not an easy place in which to play.
I only hope that K-mann starts to realize this and stops having his wing backs run up and down the field in terrible conditions. You’re not in Europe anymore.
Welcome to the Big Time! (joke, that)
What autogolazzo said. I’m afraid everyone has gotten bored with just qualifying. But “just qualifying” is more than enough. The team that plays right now doesn’t have to beat Ghana (although, after today’s result, maybe we have a chance) or tie Italy or beat England or the Czech Rep. It has to not lose to Hondo on the road, and beat them at home. That game was plenty not-lose-able, but putting Zusi and Sasha in was not the tactic. Jurgen should have talked charts with Loney before he flew to Hondo.
Here’s my system (for the delusional US fan):
We tie Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, T&T on the road:
-2 (We suck, our players suck, we have no heart)
We beat Mexico’s youth team in a friendly or the Gold Cup:
+4 (we OWN this team [although we've never won in Mexico])
We beat Spain, Italy, Germany, Argentina in a friendly:
+10 (we’re going to “The Show” baby!)
Albertcamus: wish I could rep here, you hit the nail on the head
OK, I’ll try this with BigSoc table codes: http://www.bigsoccer.com/community/threads/tables-in-posts.1974860/
I’ve created this form of points-vs-home or road expectation. I total up the w-l-t for the home and road teams for the last six cycles (counting the current cycle). Here are the data:
[table]Yr|Rnd|H|V|D|Hg|Vg|H pt|V pt|gp|H pt/g|V pt/g|H gl/g|V gl/g|Dif pt|Dif gl
\1994|SF|13|6|5|53|28|44|23|24|1.833|0.958|2.208|1.167|0.875|1.042
\1998|SF|23|8|5|72|40|74|29|36|2.056|0.806|2.000|1.111|1.250|0.889
\2002|SF|23|9|4|81|34|73|31|36|2.028|0.861|2.250|0.944|1.167|1.306
\2006|SF|14|13|9|62|46|51|48|36|1.417|1.333|1.722|1.278|0.083|0.444
\2010|SF|21|8|7|70|33|70|31|36|1.944|0.861|1.944|0.917|1.083|1.028
\2014|SF|18|11|7|59|41|61|40|36|1.694|1.111|1.639|1.139|0.583|0.500
\1994|F|8|3|1|26|14|25|10|12|2.083|0.833|2.167|1.167|1.250|1.000
\1998|F|15|2|13|53|23|58|19|30|1.933|0.633|1.767|0.767|1.300|1.000
\2002|F|14|10|6|44|29|48|36|30|1.600|1.200|1.467|0.967|0.400|0.500
\2006|F|20|6|4|57|26|64|22|30|2.133|0.733|1.900|0.867|1.400|1.033
\2010|F|20|5|5|59|29|65|20|30|2.167|0.667|1.967|0.967|1.500|1.000
\2014|F|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|-1.000|-1.000|-1.000|-1.000|0.000|0.000
\Tot|SF|112|55|37|397|222|373|202|204|1.828|0.990|1.946|1.088|0.838|0.858
\Tot|F|77|26|29|239|121|260|107|132|1.970|0.811|1.811|0.917|1.159|0.894
\Tot|All|189|81|66|636|343|633|309|336|1.884|0.920|1.893|1.021|0.964|0.872[/table]
(notes: The 1994 cycle had two-point wins; they are converted to three points for this calculation. And of course, the USA did not participate in 1994 qualifying. One neutral-site tie-breaker game is not included.)
So, you expect to get 1.884 points per home match, and 0.920 per road match. So to compute the “scaled” points, take the current points in the standard 3-1-0 format, and subtrace 1.884 per home match (no matter the result) and 0.920 per road match.
Some interesting numbers: the last two hex’s, the home team won 20 times, and the last one had the highers PPG for the home team. And road goals are very tough to get: in all four hex’s, there was less than one road goal per game.
uh, o.k., the table codes worked in a post, but not in a blog reply.
The US are going through, but I think the following will happen. You will lose your next two matches, the USSF will fire Klinsmann and get Bruce Arena back to the helm. You will win your remaining games. You qualify.
I never though I would write this for a Dan Loney article but … this is clear and insightful analysis. Credit where credit is due.
It seems like the consensus is that Mexico is the dominant team and there is no clear minnow.
In that case, maybe you should take Mexico out of the analysis and assign a tie at home and a loss away as the expected outcomes vs Mexico along with the typical win at home, tie on the road approach described.
Jamaica – +2 (tie on road vs Mexico)
Costa Rica – 0 (tie on road)
Honduras – 0 (win at home)
USA – -1 (loss on road)
Panama – -2 (tie at home)
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