The Footy Blog's Richard Whittall wrote recently that the nascent realm of soccer analytics blogs remains short of actual analysis — ie. casual fans must draw their own conclusions from increasing amounts of raw data. How fitting then that I'm about to add to the problem, in the form some numbers compiled by my favourite Honduran sports portal.
Hint, the conclusions in question may be more good news for Canada fans.
[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
Diez.hn analyzes the 17* goals Honduras has scored in the 15 games the team has played since last March when the Colombian Luis Suárez took charge of the team. The 17 goals break down as follows:
- 8 goals came from plays through the middle
- 3 came from "long range"
- 2 came from plays down the left
- 2 came from plays down the right
- 2 came from headers
- 1 came from a penalty
First, you'll notice the numbers above add up to 18, not 17. See the footnote below and continue reading. Please.
So, Honduras likes to attack through the middle then? The article also breaks down the scorers of those 17 goals — 13 of them came from the boots and heads of Carlos Costly (six) and Jerry Bengston (seven). The pair accounted for a good portion of the nine goals from the head and through the middle.
Jerry Bengston, who plays his club football at Motagua in Honduras, didn't even make the squad that faces Canada because of a shit domestic season. That's 41% of all the goals the Hondurans have scored in the past year gone right there! And if you add in the fact that both Walter and Mario Martinez (each scorers of one goal) aren't in the squad either, 53% of the goals vanish.
Yes, seven of those 17 goals came in a blowout win versus Grenada, but bear with me.
According the diez.hn "analysis" about half of Honduras' goals come through the middle of the pitch, via either Costly or Bengston, and the latter won't be at BMO Field June 12. Canada's strength in defence is in the middle, with McKenna, Edgar and Jakovic, as opposed to the more problematic flanks.
So based on my ad-hoc reasoning, Canada should be well-suited to defend against a Honduran attack shorn of one half of its most effective strike force when the two teams meet in Toronto on June 12.
Pricey tickets
The Honduran FA released prices for the 37,000 tickets that will go on sale for next Friday's World Cup qualifier between Honduras and Panama in San Pedro Sula. The cheapest seat in the house will cost the equivalent of $11 Canadian dollars, while the most expensive goes for $110. In a city where the median after-tax income is US$435 and the average price of a movie ticket is US$3.50 those prices are not as entirely cheap as I thought they'd be.
*It's clear there is a serious mathematical error being committed here. Based on the listed match reports, Honduras has only scored 17 goals in their past 15 games, not 18. But as long as we trust that the main analysis of where the goals came from on the pitch is correct, my point more or less stands.