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As we begin to transition from the heights of Summer–with the wonderful Ashes test series now sadly behind us– to autumnal football seasons kicking off, it's a great time of year. Hope springs eternal for football fans up and down the country as they hope their teams latest summer signing is the next club legend and their pre-season form wasn't just a result of playing under-cooked opponents. For me: my hope was that my team, Tonbridge Angels (playing in the National League South) would build upon their strong 9th place finish the previous season. Signings looked to have strengthened the squad and pre-season results were promising with many goals scored and attractive football being played. After two consecutive 1-0 defeats, one red card and currently lying 23rd out of 24 in the league my hopes are transitioning slowly to a more modest: "let's try and stay up, lads".
While Premier League football kicks into gear we have the culminating of the Women's World Cup to look forward to. The tournament itself looks to have been a huge success with fantastic attendances being achieved. It's also great to see the depth of the game increasing with shocks becoming more commonplace. Can England's lionesses "bring it home"? My gut feeling is the occasion of playing home nation Australia in the semi-final might be too much but hey, what do I know?!
We start the round-up with football and kick off with this eye-catching stadium like design from Nick van Lieshout that predicts the fortunes of the Italian club teams in the Coppa Italia. According to Nick, get your money on an Inter versus Napoli final. You heard it here first!
Sticking with Italian football, Théo Koessler has honoured the fantastic 28-year (yes, 28 YEARS) career of the legend that is Gianluigi Buffon. Often a nemesis to English hopes Théo looks at the early part of Buffon's journey with the matches for his first club, Parma.
The draft concept used in American sport has always fascinated me. When player loyalty is such a huge deal in many sports in England the idea that players can be picked to represent different teams each year is a curious one for me. Rob Taylor found himself with a bit of free time and so put it to great use to produce this brilliant viz depicting the English Premier Fantasy Football draft style selection that he and his friends used. I would love to see how this would work in the real world. Haaland starting the 2023/24 season for Luton Town?!
Imagine this scenario: you're a very busy person with most of your time taken up with work. What little time you have is spent attending to family needs. The time has come to recharge those batteries on a well-deserved vacation. Cocktail ordered, relaxing on a sunbed and listening to those happy sounds of children playing in the swimming pool. What more could one want? Well, to whip out the Laptop and create viz, of course! To be fair to Simon, the holiday sun has worked wonders as he has turned out a stunner looking at the length of injury time in the opening round of English Football League matches. I hope some middle ground will be found eventually, games of well over 100 minutes finishing at quarter past five on a Saturday are not what anyone wants to see.
And not satisfied with using his pool time to visualise data I can only imagine Mr Beaumont took his Laptop to dinner with him to create this epic resource for his beloved Portsmouth containing details of over 1,000 matches covering all the opponents 'Pompey' will have to face this season.
Switching sports now and for those still pining for Ashes Cricket (is it me or did the series fly past far too quickly?) then check out some of the fascinating stats provided by The CricViz Analyst. There are tons of interesting titbits to check out in the Twitter feed but one of my favourites is this piece showing all the dismissals of David Warner from Stuart Broad.
It's only a couple of weeks until College Football swings into action and timing this perfectly, Samuel Epley updates his Conference realignment simulator. As always with Samuel, a staggering amount of detail to explore, brilliantly packaged up in a well-designed viz.
Every so often I see a viz that I just stare at, transfixed, for a while and then dive in and begin exploring. One such instance occurred this week with this creation from Matthew Antoline. Inspired by the work of artist Georg Nees, Matthew explores the crumbling fortunes of MLB teams in the 2015 season. It's captivating seeing how, as the season progresses, and teams fall further behind, their first solid structure of blocks collapses. Love this!
We are suckers for a small multiple here at Sports Viz Sunday and Darragh Murray treats us with this view showing how teams competing for Australian Rules Footballs most prestigious prize–the pennant– have fared. The little touches are often what turns a small multiple from good to great and Darragh achieves these brilliantly here.
And if that wasn't fantastic enough we get to see how it was built as Darragh joins CJ to talk about his data preparation, analysis and visualisation in Tableau. Well worth a read.
Finally, while an old post, I felt it well worth sharing as I learned a number of interesting facts about the Mens Football World Cup trophies–past and present. Fantastic infographic style achieved with this and some fascinating insights too.
Another fantastic weeks worth of content, I'm sure you'll all agree. Enjoy your weeks ahead and see you back here next Sunday.
Simon and the #sportsvizsunday crew