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Over the years I've got better at dealing with Englands departures from major tournaments. From the low point of the golden generations failings in 2004 and 2006 to the embarrassment of 2016 my optimism has gradually been eroded and together with the added sense of maturity and responsibility of watching the games with my oldest son I went into this tournament with a very healthy attitude. Last night my overriding emotion wasn't anger or sadness but one of pride having finally gone toe-to-toe with one of the worlds top nations. It was always going to be a game of fine margins and despite a number of questionable decisions by the referee, anyone supporting England last night should be excited about the future. It will come home, one day.
Let's get the gut-wrenching viz out of the way as we start the round-up this week. In pretty much every stat I've seen, England came out on top, apart from the one we all know is most important. StatsBomb shows this and includes an xG race chart as well. Slightly distorted with the two penalties and France's first goal coming from a long-range effort it still does highlight the number of chances England had, many of which I replayed in my mind last night. "What if?"
The days other quarter-final saw no less amount of drama with the red wall of Morocco successfully repelling everything Portugal could throw at them. This graphic by StatsBomb shows the sheer scale of that defensive effort. Can Morocco do the same against France? With this World Cup, you wouldn't bet against it.
I love the variety of national anthems on offer at the World Cup and Christina has categorised them based on the emotions we feel when hearing them. I can't recall hearing the anthem of Costa Rica during the tournament but I might give it a listen now!
Victor Manual shares this viz created by Damola Ladipo which deservedly won Tableau's #VOTD. Originally published in July 2021 I make no apologies for sharing its powerful content and beautiful visualisation again in this round-up.
Our very own, Mo Wootten, has been digging for data related to non-league football, specifically data related to his team, Walthamstow. I'm impressed with the range of data he has managed to compile to produce this dashboard portraying the season so far. I agree Mo, it would be great to have a little more data available on the non-league side of things.
Some lovely touches in this dashboard from yasushi ishikawa focusing on the recent Thanksgiving NFL game between Dallas Cowboys and Detrot Lions. Nice use of colour and crisp visuals help bring this game to life. Great job,yasushi!
Brett2point0 pulls out the animated bubble chart to show the progression of the New England Patriots in defensive yardage allowed in the NFL.
Those that follow F1 will know that Max Verstappen was dominant in the 2022 season and this viz from Samo Drole captures this nicely showcasing the record number of wins in an F1 season.
If you are looking for a little sports viz inspiration check out the work students of
Anna Kozak, Mateusz Krzyziński, Hubert Ruczynski and Mikołaj Spytek submitted for a Data Visualization Techniques course for second-year Data Science students at the Warsaw University of Technology.
Sports viz Sunday regular, Bo McCready dusts off his printing machine to produce this beautiful print of Austin FCs 2022 season. A lovely visualisation, looking even better on paper.
An interesting blog post next from Daniel Murray exploring best practices for data extraction.
It was great to see #sportsvizsunday so well appreciated in Tableau's recent communities and initiatives promotion. So are so many fantastic projects out there so do check out the thread for inspiration and motivation.
That's it for this week. Fantastic work everybody and despite the result yesterday, the great thing about sport is there's always the next match to look forward to. Bring on USA/Canada/Mexico 2026!
Simon and the #sportsvizsunday team