Further Analysis of the AFCON 2015 Quarter Finals: Luck must run out, or does it?

In my last post I talked about how skill and/or luck helped the quarter-final victors take their spoils.

In this post I am looking at another chart to explore the topic from another angle.

The chart I have made looks at PDO (Luck) of the teams playing in the quarter-finals of the tournament. It compares their group-stage PDO to their PDO statistic from the quarter-finals. Of course, this is imperfect as a comparison because the group stage PDO is over 3 games whereas the quarter-final PDO is from just one. However, the comparison is insightful as it shows that of the 6 teams with PDOs of over 1000 in the group stages, 4 were eliminated in the quarter-finals: Algeria, Congo, Guinea & Tunisia.

PDO indicates luck. Luck is subject to the laws of gravity. In short, it is possible that those four teams' luck ran out in the quarter-finals. Spare a moment to sympathise with Tunisia all the same.

Interesting to also note how 'lucky' the Ivory Coast and Equatorial Guinea were in the quarter-finals when thinking about what may happen in the semi-finals... As I said before, I think the counter-attacking performance of the Ivory Coast was excellent and, overall, deserving of victory. Furthermore, the Cinderella-story of Equatorial Guinea in front of their home crowd is a force to be reckoned with.