Do we have any world cup fans.
Charting distance covered @ Mexico game 1:
Avg player distance in game 1: 8.91km
Player A: 10.97km
I wonder how accurate those speed measurements are? If that’s true, that’s really impressive. I figured Robben had lost a bit of his top end after having picked up so many hamstring or lower body injuries over the past few years.
I’m recording the day games and watching on FF through them at Night.
All the High Scoring games make “Good TV” 
lol and so are all of the last few minutes/seconds Scores.
MEX not letting BRAZIL score is also GTV for me.
MEX not scoring any of their own Goooooaaaaaalllllsss- not so much.
USA’s win was very nice.
RE: Speed
When I played some Baseball some guys would always say they were fast and I would always challenge them…I would always false start/explode before the GO so they could see how fast I could start…most would not Race after that.
BUT
the Street I grew up on had many many fast ppl for real…on any given day we would race 40 yards…some days I would win and some days I was 6th or 7th (Last).
Losing was no big deal. Short Memory.
Good Times!!
10.97 (miles??) calculates to average pace of an 8:12/mile (about 7.3 miles per hour: 10.97 / 1.5 hrs; 60 minutes/7.3 miles per hour=8.21, .21*60=12 seconds).
Numbers seem impressive until you look deeper. I took Charlie’s advice and went to a college game where my athletes were playing. One was outside mid. I timed the total time with the ball, and on another stop watch, the total time sprinting. She played 75 minutes total. Total time with ball was 20 seconds (including one touch passes), and total sprint time was less than 90 seconds. I’ have seen other research published studies saying EPL players have the ball less than 2 minutes a match on average, and sprinting time is very little.
It’s hard to do what I did using the TV, because you get cut off from most of the field, but you could certainly time the total time a player is in possession of the ball. Pick any player you think gets the ball a lot and time it. Chances are, its under 3 minutes total.
I had a hard time convincing coaches “playing games to get fit” and playing games to “get touches” was a bunch of crap. You are better off doing a fitness session or a fast paced skill session. Games are good for tactical play and testing skills/fitness.
Just my two cents.
That’s one of the theories as to why US players are behind skill-wise of their respective European counterparts of the same ages. The US kids grow up playing games while elsewhere around the world they work on skills or street games (very small space and lots of touches). The US system is built off the little league baseball system (games), not to mention soccer tournaments every weekend are money makers.
Distance covered was “KM”. I have always thought of soccer coaches as old school coaches when it came to speed and conditioning training. It seems like most of the better teams are doing speed work (sled work etc). I think the German coach for the Usa team is doing some good things. He’s a believer in the beep fitness test and overall fitness and training.
If KM, then the speeds are even slower.
I have seen a good number of female college players do various fitness tests. One summer, we did one test a week for the girls to tryout each schools fitness test. The result was a comparison of what school had the hardest test. Certainly there was an observable difference. However, the difficulty of the test, in my opinion, did not result in game fitness or fall camp preparation. I find repeat sprint tests not specific for the game, and aerobic tests even more non-specific.
Beep test (continuous or intermittent) was a popular test. I think part of it is the coaches have no clue and hear about it, so they use it. I’ve seen the Danish test used, various repeated sprint intervals, 1 mile and 2 mile timed runs. “My test” was double big circuit. If an athlete could complete double big circuit, they had no problem passing any of the above tests. However, someone might be continuous beep test fit, but would have trouble on some of the sprint intervals.
Player feedback was important to me. I’d ask how they felt during training and during matches. Those who could do DBC always said the game felt easy, they never were tired. Not always the case for the 2 mile aerobic test under 14 minutes (for most female schools)
I like to see the gps data on players maximum speed. I know it’s been mentioned but I am not following the WC due to other commitments. If you find any data, please share!
ESTI
There’s a big pile of statistics available for the World Cup which (I’m assuming) uses GPS data among other verifiable sources that’s published directly through FIFA.com.
http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/statistics/index.html
To answer my own question, not only is Arjen Robben not the fastest player ever recorded, he’s not even the fastest player at this tournament. (The columns sort by variable so I just sorted for speed in descending order and it gives a very concise summation.) There are all sorts of neat interpretations possible as they’ve divided it up fairly well as far as I can tell.
http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/statistics/players/distance.html
Great link. It would be interesting to see individual possession times. Some players might not have had situations to go full out to reach 30+ km/hr.
Mex got a raw deal against the Dutch by that one Ref. IMO he knowingly made a Horrible call after that one guy - AR clearly lost the ball and did his trickery after losing the ball. I thought the refs were only this bad in Boxing!
He forgot to fall against ARG late in the game -3 min. left- and he knew it.
http://www.sbnation.com/lookit/2014/7/10/5887493/javier-mascherano-torn-anus-argentina-netherlands-world-cup
I think his true words were lost in Translation.
What’s with all the falling and fake injuries at this stage?
BRA vs. GER was great fun too watch for sure.
The one announcer had a correct analogy. If this were Boxing the ref. would be forced to call the fight.
If this were boxing however, any one of these guys would act like Mike Tyson just Hit/Bit them when all they received was a jab to the side of the Head.