The beautiful game gets a boost of science from analytics at World Cup

It may not look it watching Saudi Arabia play, but there’s a whole lot of analytics being applied on those Russian pitches during the World Cup.
It’s thought by some that analytics, while useful in baseball, football and basketball, aren’t of much use in fluid sports such as soccer or hockey, where goals are few and possession switches back and forth quickly.
But that couldn’t be further from the truth, a Simon Fraser University professor says. European soccer, in particu