Harald's Original Miscellany - More Truth about Football - Part 3

To change the team means to earn more
money...what about the football millionaires?
How often do they change the team?

Are you ready for more statistics on your favorite kind of sports? Well, data is fun, and obviously Big Data means Big Fun. There are lot's of interesting things to discover while exploring data, and wikipedia (i.e. dbpedia for the insiders) provides all the necessary means.

Have you ever wondered about this kind of slave trade in professional football? Well, I wouldn't exactly call the transfer of a millionaire to a higher paying job a 'slave trade'. But, have you ever thought about the following question: Do the real good (and well paid) players more often change the team - or is it vice versa, that teams try to get rid of players that have a bad season or are on the decline? Who knows? Let's have a look on the data:

TeamChanges	NumPlayers
16	2
15	26
14	84
13	287
12	792
11	2247
10	3848
9	5109
8	6464
7	8110
6	9790
5	11264
4	11837
3	11448
2	10961
1	6515

Here, we have a table providing an overview about how many players (in wikipedia) have changed their team for how many times [1]. Obviously, it seems to be some kind of Gaussian distribution with a peak between 2 and 6 team switches. OK, what about the players? Where are the top players listed in this table? Well, David Beckham switched team 11 times according to wikipedia, Cristiano Ronaldo 8 times, Thierry Henry 9 times. At least these numbers are above average which we had identified to be between 2 and 6. This seems to give proof to our original assumption.

person	TeamChanges	popularity
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Cristiano_Ronaldo	8	1794
http://dbpedia.org/resource/David_Beckham	11	1572
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Thierry_Henry	9	1414
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Lionel_Messi	7	1404
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Wayne_Rooney	5	1343
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Frank_Lampard	5	1188
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Pel%C3%A9	4	1111
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Didier_Drogba	8	1047
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Ronaldo	10	1037
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Michael_Owen	6	1011

But, we get a better overview, if we look at the average popularity of each switching group in the table [3]:

TeamChanges	NumPlayers	avgindegree
16	2	107.5
15	26	76.769230769230769
14	84	47.297619047619048
13	287	60.885017421602787
12	788	45.073604060913706
11	2235	37.206263982102908
10	3800	32.577631578947368
9	5023	30.939080230937687
8	6332	29.685881238155401
7	7935	25.499054820415879
6	9525	23.188346456692913
5	10886	18.682895462061363
4	11423	14.937844699290904
3	10842	11.131802250507286
2	10089	7.704628803647537
1	5534	5.19588001445609

As we had originally thought, on the average, the popularity of the players rises with the number of team changes. Although the top group with 16 changes is far from the highest possible popularity scores (as e.g. 1572 for David Beckham). Hmm, maybe there is a correlation among the number of achieved goals with the number of team changes? Is it more likely that a top goal hunter switches team more often? Let's have a look [4]:

TeamChanges	NumPlayers	AvgGoals
16	2	22.5
15	26	28.807692307692308
14	83	37.855421686746988
13	287	38.062717770034843
12	781	39.939820742637644
11	2205	38.625850340136054
10	3784	35.646141649048626
9	4980	32.826907630522088
8	6296	29.489517153748412
7	7826	24.455788397648863
6	9314	21.937835516426884
5	10471	18.655142775284118
4	10627	16.317869577491296
3	9612	12.756450270495214
2	7193	9.911858751564021
1	4624	4.444204152249135

Looks interesting. Top goal scorer have 9 to 14 team switches. This is way above the average. Thus, the more goals you score, the more often you will have the chance of being transferred (and thus earn more money). Players that don't score goals will obviously not be transferred (that often).

References:

[1] How many players have how many team changes overall?
[2] The Top10 popular soccer players and their number of team changes
[3] The average popularity of football players regarding the number of team switches
[4] Number of average goals per soccer player with respect to the number of team changes

Harald's Original Miscellany - The Truth about Football - Part 2

John Terry Celebration Meme, read on and you will understand...

Of course you always wanted to know, who is the best football player of all times. Sure this might be a question about which real football afficionados might argue forever. Also Wikipedia will not be able to give you the definite answer. But, we can play around with the available data and maybe we find out something interesting about football players again ...

But, first at all, I want to say thank you to Kingsley Idehen, who gave me the hint for my SPARQL query links to use the parameter "qtxt=" instead of "query=", which enables others to see the original query and to use it for further data explorations. Thus, all SPARQL query links will be given in this form.

So let's start with the most simple query: Select all football players and their popularity (indegree) in descending order starting with the most popular player. We must be a little bit careful, because the class SoccerPlayer does not only contain "real persons" but also popular roles of football players such as e.g. "Captain". Therefore, we filter the results for entities that have a name (via foaf:name). Here are the Top50 football players according to wikipedia. For the entire list, please refer to the references [1].

Name	Popularity
Cristiano Ronaldo	1794
David Beckham	1572
Thierry Henry	1414
Lionel Messi	1404
Wayne Rooney	1343
Frank Lampard	1188
Pelé	1111
Didier Drogba	1047
Ronaldo	1037
Michael Owen	1011
Steven Gerrard	1002
Zlatan Ibrahimović	964
Alessandro Del Piero	926
Ronaldinho	914
Raúl (footballer)	903
Ryan Giggs	894
Fernando Torres	889
Zinedine Zidane	867
Ruud van Nistelrooy	861
Robbie Keane	861
Samuel Eto'o	859
Landon Donovan	835
Andriy Shevchenko	823
Kaká	804
Francesco Totti	730
Robin van Persie	720
Paul Scholes	692
Hernán Crespo	680
David Villa	669
John Terry	669
Cesc Fàbregas	669
George Best	667
Carlos Tévez	666
Robinho	643
Gary Lineker	641
Teddy Sheringham	633
Andrew Cole	620
Dwayne De Rosario	617
Xavi	616
Jermain Defoe	613
Craig Bellamy	609
Dimitar Berbatov	587
David Trezeguet	587
Luis Suárez	581
Peter Crouch	577
Michael Ballack	572
Miroslav Klose	568
Luís Figo	567
Lee Dong-Gook	558
Filippo Inzaghi	557

Yes, it was obvious for everybody that names such as Ronaldo, Beckham, Thierry, Pelé occur among the top popular players. Unfortunately, I'm not a football expert to comment further on that. Let's have a look, whether popularity corresponds with the number of achieved goals. However, this information is not easy to extract. For some of the football players, there's a property dbprop:totalGoals, while most of them has dbprop:goals. But the later sometimes exists multiple times for single years or periods. Thus, we have to sum up all dbprop:goals, while keeping in mind not to count any number more often than once (because an entry might be reproduced in our result list for several reasons).

Name	Goals	Popularity
David Schofield (footballer)	76543210	9
Alcindo Sartori	5019110	160
Oh Seung-Bum	1842256	32
Marei Al Ramly	6037	11
Darío Espínola	1715	6
Kim Andersson	1537	23
Stefan Lövgren	1328	18
Nikola Karabatić	1318	84
Elias Ribeiro de Oliveira	1187	26
Mohd Amar Rohidan	1020	38
Slaviša Žungul	856	113
John Bartley (footballer)	762	1
Zoran Karić	759	11
Jimmy Greaves	748	342
Ernest Spiteri Gonzi	704	11
Pierre van Hooijdonk	670	238
Reg Date	664	3
Trevor Phillips (footballer)	655	4
Joan Linares	645	12
Domenic Mobilio	625	58
Pelé	620	1111
Harry Johnson (footballer born 1899)	610	25
Ernst Stojaspal	602	23
Max Morlock	588	66
Ernie Hine	574	72
Branko Šegota	561	38
Serhiy Koridze	557	4
Salvinu Schembri	538	6
Konstantin Yeryomenko	537	13
Tony Brown (English footballer)	498	47
Waldo Machado	497	36
Nguyen Minh Phuong	496	50
Tony Cascarino	496	141
Leônidas da Silva	484	98
Zeki Rıza Sporel	470	75
Ángeles Parejo	469	9
Tommy Dickson	457	13
Elisabetta Vignotto	454	22
Alberto Spencer	445	99
Stefan Schwoch	435	7
Peter Kitchen	429	16
Edgar Kail	427	7
Eusébio	423	433
Giorgos Sideris	415	51
Tommy Browell	414	88
Patricio Margetic	412	14
Arsénio Trindade Duarte	409	19
Uwe Seeler	406	153
Hughie Gallacher	406	131
Dragan Džajić	401	150

Again we see, that DBpedia data (resp. Wikipedia data) is somehow 'noisy'. The first 3 ranks are obviously wrong concerning the number of goals. Simply because if David Schofield really would have achieved 76,543,210 goals, it would mean that he had won about 5 goals per minute of all the 32 years of his entire life so far. This must be kind of an extraction error. If we look at the players with more than 1000 goals, then a closer inspection reveals some handballers that either are also footballers or are wrongly declared to be footballers. In handball it is easier to achieve a higher number of goals compared to football. Trevor Phillips and John Bartley really achieved more than 600 goals, but their popularity score signals that they did achieve this not necessarely in the major league. The first top ranked prominent football player in this list definitely is Pelé with 620 goals. The only other two in this Top50 list I have already heard of are Eusébio and Uwe Seeler, but don't take me as a reference :)

Lets order the list again the other way around according to the most popular players to investigate their goal score:

Name	Goals	Popularity
Cristiano Ronaldo	227	1794
David Beckham	95	1572
Thierry Henry	265	1414
Lionel Messi	223	1404
Wayne Rooney	156	1343
Frank Lampard	163	1188
Pelé	620	1111
Didier Drogba	160	1047
Ronaldo	217	1037
Michael Owen	163	1011
Steven Gerrard	98	1002
Zlatan Ibrahimović	198	964
Alessandro Del Piero	223	926
Ronaldinho	157	914
Raúl (footballer)	280	903
Ryan Giggs	114	894
Fernando Torres	161	889
Zinedine Zidane	95	867
Ruud van Nistelrooy	249	861
Robbie Keane	179	861
Samuel Eto'o	219	859
Landon Donovan	135	835
Andriy Shevchenko	219	823
Kaká	114	804
Francesco Totti	226	730
Robin van Persie	130	720
Paul Scholes	107	692
Hernán Crespo	198	680
John Terry	30	669
David Villa	234	669
Cesc Fàbregas	50	669
George Best	238	667
Carlos Tévez	135	666
Robinho	122	643
Gary Lineker	243	641
Teddy Sheringham	289	633
Andrew Cole	226	620
Dwayne De Rosario	94	617
Xavi	57	616
Jermain Defoe	151	613
Craig Bellamy	113	609
Dimitar Berbatov	189	587
David Trezeguet	218	587
Luis Suárez	128	581
Peter Crouch	102	577
Michael Ballack	117	572
Miroslav Klose	181	568
Luís Figo	91	567
Filippo Inzaghi	184	557
Patrick Vieira	45	551

As we would expect, most of the popular football players are also good goal scorers. Well, there are a few exceptions. Take John Terry with a popularity score of 669 and only 30 goals. Why might he be so popular then? Taking a closer look at Wikipedia reveals that Terry plays at centre back position and is the captain of Chelsea in the Premier League. Well, that's already something for popularity. But, if you look even closer, you will find more: under the topic 'Controversies' you will find charges for assault and affray, a £60 fine for parking his Bentley in a disabled bay, extramarital affair allegations as well as racial abuse allegations. But, neither of these is directly responsible for Terry's popularity. In fact it's an internet meme (cf. introductory picture of this article). John Terry was suspended for the UEFA Final and had to watch his team in a suit and tie on the sidelines. He did look quite miserable as he sat there, watching his team defend for their lives and then miraculously pull out the victory. However, as soon as Chelsea made the victory, it was party time for Terry! He immediately threw off his suit like Superman and revealed his full Chelsea kit underneath his suit. The internet community enjoyed his dedication to his club and soccer so much that immediately a popular internet meme lampooning his behaviour appeared on the web, becoming one of the most popular online jokes in 2012. Terry has been pictured taking part in great moments in history and fiction. These included the fall of the Berlin Wall, the freeing of Nelson Mandela, the triumph of Rocky Balboa, as well as the first landing on the Moon [3]. Well, this should be reason for some popularity :)

[1] List of most popular Football Players

[2] List of top goal scorer among popular Football players

[3] John Terry's Celebration Memes

Harald's Original Miscellany - The Truth about Football

The England National football team, 1893, photo: wikipedia

Well, it's the time of the Worldcup 2014. Why should I bother you with the peculiarities of authors and writers, when we can also have a look on Football! As you might remember, we had about 15,328 individuals in Wikipedia classified as authors [1]. What do you think, how many footballers are there compared to authors? Well there's a huge difference: 162,597 referenced footballer players, i.e. about 10 times as much as authors [2]. Maybe you think now there might be an overlap. How many football players are also listed as authors? I am sorry to disappoint you, but there is no overlap. No football player is also listed as being an author.

Fact No. 1: Footballers are no authors, and vice versa.

So you might wonder, what other categories these football players are in to get a better overview about what we are talking about. Interestingly, when looking at the most popular categories, you will soon find the large number of expatriates among those players. The Top5 expatriate nationalities among football players are: Brazil, Argentina, Russia, France, Serbia [3]. If you look at the bottom of the list, you will find the more or less exotic combinations, such as e.g. Hungarian expatriates in Uzbekistan, or Cameroonian expatriates in Venezuela, or even German expatriates in the Netherlands ;-)

Fact No. 2: Only a few Hungarian football players emigrate to Uzbekistan.

And in which countries they prefer to emigrate? The Top5 countries for football players to emigrate are: England, Germany, Spain, Italy, France [4]. At least for France the statistics seems to be balanced somehow, while England and Germany are the leading nations to attract foreign football players all around the world. Very interesting also the bottom of the list, where as the "least attractive" countries Gambia, Guam, Nepal, or Antigua and Barbuda are listed.

Fact No.3: French football players seem to be undecided whether to stay or leave the country.

But what about the categories that do not have a direct relationship to football in the first place? Let's filter out these categories and let's have a look on what football players are up to.

alternative professions of football players	#players
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Director110014939	279
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Migrant110314952	271
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/National109625401	250
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Intellectual109621545	237
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Alumnus109786338	234
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Scholar110557854	234
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Striker110663996	134
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Worker109632518	73
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/SkilledWorker110605985	64
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Unfortunate109630641	56
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Trainer110722575	55
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Coach109931640	54
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Communicator109610660	51
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Serviceman110582746	51
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Expert109617867	43
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Observer110369528	33
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Cricketer109977326	32
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Adult109605289	28
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Victim110752093	28
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Rival110533013	27
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Official110372076	26
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Adjudicator109769636	26
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/MilitaryOfficer110317007	25
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/EnlistedPerson110058777	25
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Soldier110622053	25
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Referee110514429	25
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/BadPerson109831962	23
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Wrongdoer109633969	23
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Writer110794014	21
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Professional110480253	21
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/EnglishCricketers	20
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/OlympicBronzeMedalistsForGermany	18
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Creator109614315	18
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/AsianGamesGoldMedalistsForIran	16
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/OlympicGoldMedalistsForTheUnitedStates	16
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Presenter110466387	16
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Survivor110681194	16
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Entertainer109616922	16
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Performer110415638	16
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Captain109893191	15
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/CommissionedMilitaryOfficer109943239	15
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/CommissionedOfficer109942970	15
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Artist109812338	15
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/OlympicSilverMedalistsForParaguay	14
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/OlympicSilverMedalistsForPoland	14
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Journalist110224578	14
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Principal110474950	13
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/Criminal109977660	13
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/OlympicGoldMedalistsForArgentina	12
http://dbpedia.org/class/yago/OlympicBronzeMedalistsForItaly	12

Please find the entire list in the references [5].

Fact No. 4: There are more intellectuals among football players than bad persons.

Wow, 237 football players are also categorized as being intellectuals, while 23 football players are listed as "bad persons". But, in this statistics, we will also find 21 writers(!) among the football players, as well as 15 artists, 14 journalists, and 13 criminals.
Further down the list, you will also find

• 12 politicians, 
• 8 identical twins, 
• 8(!) head of state, 
• 7 musicians, 
• 4 comedians (I'll bet there are more...), 
• 4 scientists, 
• 3 singers, 
• 2 mammals,
• 2 Gentleman Cricketeers,
• 2 gambling addicts,
• 2 aviators,
• 2 painters,
• 1 UFO conspiracy theorists,
• 1 bank robber,
• 1 rapper,
• 1 plumber,

etc.

So what does this tell us about football players?

Fact No. 5: There are more politicians among football players than comedians.

Well, in general, and according to Wikipedia, football players most times stick to their original profession. While emigrating here and there sometimes, there are only a few among them who actually have a second career outside of their original profession. Please note that we did not follow categories like football manager, football trainer, football coach, etc. Anyway, we finally did find also some authors among them....

Fact No. 6: There are writers among the football players...although they are not listed as authors.

to be continued....

Please find the full tables with all the results listed here in the References:

[1] total number of authors (?author rdf:type dbpedia-owl:Writer .)
[2] total number of football players (?player rdf:type dbpedia-owl:SoccerPlayer .)
[3] expatriate football players by home country
[4] expatriate football players by emigration country
[5] occupations of football players other than football