Watching the Croatia Panama game can't help but think someone like Martinez (#6) is the ideal profile of transfer for us, someone in a lesser league (Israel) who has shown they can burn the very best in the world and that would be cheap and in their prime (28).
As you might be able to tell from some of my posts I am very data driven and well the data is saying Mexico's strength lies defensively.
We are just behind Ecuador in global football when it comes to defending.
We have conceded only 2 goals in the last 10 games in games including some powerhouse offenses.
Across all 10 teams - their average goals scored per game was 1.57 with Portgual and scoring 2.4 and Belgium 3.4 per game and even the worst team averaging 0.78.
Iceland still managed to score 1.2 goals per match despite facing strong average opposition of an average Elo of 1823 (Around mexico's Elo).
So it's not like we are playing some bum ass teams, we are actually the very elite in shutting down teams.
If you look back at Vascos record in Spain, his biggest accomplishment was probably not finishing 4th but somehow being the third best defense in his second season. He finished 13th but this was due a terrible attack.
I am fully vested into this team and the world cup, so I was curious if we were better off finishing second since the current discourse is the same, England to cut our chances for quarter finals.
So I built a model to estimate the probabilies of outcomes using Elo rankings and to factor the Azteca and compare paths.
The skinny is that historically playing at home boosts your elo by 100 points, however I tested Mexico specifically at home and we sometimes hit a 150 boost. For reference Mexico sits at 1875 at 18th but with the boost that puts us in 7/8 next to Colombia.
Essentially you have these outcomes:
Finish First: 19% to 38% chances of making quarters. The biggest risk is getting Norway as the first KO match. Essentially if if we clear them then we have close to 50% Chance of beating England which is ironically higher than crossing the Netherlands away from Azteca. Meaning the real risk is our 3rd spot match.
Finish Second: 26% to 38% as your worst match up is Swiss or Canada and a much softer Dutch team.
I was curious how this compared to other models and I was close.
OPTA at 23.5% and Goldman at 33%.
My takeaway is if we somehow end up second its not the end of the world since our overall odds remain equal.
If we finish second we need a bit of luck as the third placed teams would be the real threat. Since England at home is actually easier than the Netherlands in Houston.
Knowing our fucking luck expect it to be France which is part of the group of 3s that we could cross over.
I expect us to get 9 points, as we are essentially going to be super strong at home and could best anyone in that game, the real question is how lucky we get with the first KO match up.
Jsut a heads up to see where he is at
