By Abhishek Chakraborty
With the 2014 Soccer World Cup now just a few months away, the wait for the biggest tournament is on. Soccer pundits from around the globe have started analyzing the performance of the players and the national teams, with a view to predicting the team that is finally going to lift the prestigious trophy. This project also looks to answers some of the common questions. Which team stands most prepared heading into the tournament?? Which player would win the golden ball?? Who is going to be the top scorer?? Which teams are going to be the semifinalists??
The project will look into the performances of players (for eg, goals scored and assists for attacking players) in some of the best leagues in the world for the current season, with their individual stats collected from www.espnsoccernet.com. Their performance stats for their respective national teams are also available in this website. The idea would be to relate each player to his national team, develop a weighted index based on their performances, and use these indices to predict how much effect he is going to have in the tournament.
This will in turn determine how good are the chances of the national teams to progress to the final stages of the tournament.