Vu Nguyen’s
playground of ideas

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I have to say that I really like this graphic. It is aes­thet­i­cally pleas­ing and super com­pact. You can scan the charts for the scores, when each goal is scored dur­ing the game, and the most active period of the game (with high­est num­ber of shots and com­pleted passes). What else could one ask for? Perhaps high­light the win­ning team and pro­vide the final score, instead of me count­ing the red dots. But besides that, I really like this graphic.

Here is a few words from Umbro’s blog:

…We’ve enlisted the expert hand of top graphic designer Michael Deal to bring the data from South Africa to life. Using info sup­plied by data experts Opta, Michael has crafted these beau­ti­ful ways to analyse the action from the 48 group games.

By sim­ply look­ing at when suc­cess­ful passes (green lines) have been made in the game, along­side shots (blue tri­an­gles) and goals (red cir­cles), you can build an intrigu­ing pic­ture of how the match pro­gressed. For instance, the detail of Spain’s sur­prise defeat to Switzerland comes to life in the graphic at the top of the page, while an overview of all the action can be gleaned by look­ing at data from all the matches so far…

Thanks, Martin.