FIFA - FRANCE FOOTBALL GOLDEN BALL 2013 | IS CRISTIANO RONALDO ALREADY THE WINNER ?

Tomorrow night we will have a new ( or renewed ) "King of World Football". FIFA-France Football will announce the winner of the "2013 FIFA Golden Ball Award" in Zurich in front of a "creme de la creme" audience from three candidates: Franck Ribery (Bayern Munich), Lionel Messi ( FC Barcelona) & Cristiano Ronaldo ( Real Madrid ).Whoever of these three "Titans of Football" is proclaimed the winner,

REAL MADRID COENTRAO COULD GO ON LOAN TO MANCHESTER UNITED

News out of England - "Sunday Telegraph" - & picked up locally by "AS" suggest that Spanish Football Club Real Madrid & English Premier League Club Manchester United are very close to shutting the loan of left-back & Portuguese International Fabio Coentrao. The Real Madrid player was apparently very close to signing last summer for English Club but the deal fell through in the last moment. Now

SPANISH FOOTBALL - LIGA - ROUND 19 | FINAL RESULTS SATURDAY GAMES

Spanish Football tonight with Round 19 Liga matches. Here are all the final results - scorers along with the goalscorers.




Granada played Valladolid Friday Night & defeated them 4 - 0 . Valladolid were out played & out classed & in the process got themselves into classification ladder "red zone". Granada was on fire & the goals came from Murillo with a brilliant overhead goal in the 11th min,

ATLETICO DE MADRID TEAM PHOTO 2014

Coinciding with the todays big Spanish Liga Round 19 match between the current joint leaders of the classification table, Atletico de Madrid & FC Barcelona, thought I post the lastest Team Photo of Atletico de Madrid. 



ATLETICO DE MADRID TEAM PHOTO 2014


It surprises me more & more the amount of readers from around the World who are Atletico de Madrid fans/followers by their comments on the

Gameweek 21 Preview

Thankyou for all the kind words of encouragement this week after my confession of apathy surrounding my fantasy scribbles of late. It wasn't meant as a plea for attention but the messages were genuinely humbling and have forced me back to my senses quicker than expected. I still don't have anything interesting to write this week, but here is the week's data and my model is at least up to date again. Here's hoping to see you back in these pages soon.

Learn About Tableau

DIEGO SIMEONE 3 RD BEST COACH FOR 2013 ACCORDING TO IFFHS

The FIFA backed "IFFHS" ( International Federation of Football History & Statistics ) has released its list of the "Best World Football - Soccer Coaches for 2013". The Top Spot without any surprise goes to a deserved ex-Bayern Munich Coach Jupp Heynckes with 216 pts,  thus being "crowned" "Best Coach for 2013".Argentine Diego Simeone Coach of Spanish Football Club Atletico de Madrid breaks into

REAL MADRID | ARSENAL FC - TOTTENHAM HOTSPURS EYE ALVARO MORATA | LOAN

It was posted here weeks back, English Premier League Clubs Arsenal FC & Tottenham Hotspurs have Real Madrid young U-21 Spanish International forward Alvaro Morata on their list of "Winter Market 2014" incorporations. The Spanish Football Club via the voice of its Coach Carlo Ancelotti has let known that the player will stay, however Arsenal through Manager/Coach Arsene Wenger has been heavily

SPANISH CUP - COPA DEL REY - THURSDAY GAMES FINAL RESULTS

The last three remaining Spanish Cup last 16 Clubs - Copa del Rey or Kings Cup - 1º st games were played tonight with the following final results - scores along with the goalscorers.




Real Sociedad & Villarreal played out a 0 - 0 final result match. It was even, equally fought & with chances to both sides. But the true heroes tonight were Real Sociedad goalie Zubikaria & Villarreal goalkeeper

IFFHS RELEASES THE TOP WORLD SOCCER - FOOTBALL CLUBS FOR 2013

The FIFA backed "IFFHS" ( International Football Federation of History & Statistics ) has published its rankings for the "Best World Football Club" for 2013. The top place is not a surprise as Bayern Munich virtually won every important title. Its the first time since IFFHS has been established that a German Club reaches the Nº 1 spotIn the Spanish Football case the top Spanish Club is Real

SPANISH CUP - COPA DEL REY - RESULTS WEDNESDAY MATCHES

Four Spanish Cup - Copa del Rey - 1ºst leg games scheduled tonight with the following final results - scores & all the goalscorers.





Madrid 2º Division Club - & "big Club Killer - Alcorcon won RCD Espanyol 1 - 0. Terrible game from Espanyol which was way below its habitual First Division level, while Alcorcon put in a great performance & could have scored more in the second half. The Alcorcon

XABI ALONSO TO STAY AT REAL MADRID | WILL RENEW HIS CONTRACT

Huge sigh of relief for Real Madrid Directives, the Technical Staff, the squad & the fan base after Spanish International midfielder & 32 year old player Xabi Alonso announced formally his intention to continue at the Club & renew contract.




The wait has been long, & perhaps with hindsight over exaggerated. The very latest was that Xabi Alonso would leave due to "personal reasons", however in

SPANISH CUP - COPA DEL REY | FINAL RESULT 1-1 DRAW VALENCIA - ATLETICO DE MADRID

Spanish Cup - Copa del Rey - advances this week with the last 16 Clubs stage & the 1ºst leg matches. Tonight the first of the 8 schedule Spanish Cup encounters was between Valencia CF & Atletico de Madrid. The final result 1 - 1 in extremis that gives  Atletico de Madrid an important away goal advantage with the 2º leg to be played in Madrid.




Valencia & Atletico were cautious for most of the

ANGEL DI MARIA "GRABS HIS BALLS" & HIS FUTURE AT REAL MADRID

Just got back home after a few more days off enjoying the last end of the Festive Season. My relative surprise was to see todays Spanish Sports papers in complete unison after a Football Player grabbed his nuts. 

Now you may think that grabbing ones "balls" is a fairly common masculine habit, you are correct, but that "primitive" action magnifies itself if you're Real Madrid player Angel Di

A brief update

Happy holidays everyone; it's been a while. For those not on Twitter, I was away in Costa Rica over the break without much - if any - internet access hence the lack of posts around these electronic pages. Well, actually, that's only the main reason, not the only one. In truth I've become a bit disillusioned with the fantasy game the past couple of months, partly due to my other commitments which make copying data at 2am somewhat less appealing, partly due to a lack of excitement in this year's game and finally due to the constant frustration I have with today's internet culture.

This blog is a labour of love and aside from the small amount of money I made from the pre-season guide many of you graciously purchased, I don't get much out of this beyond the enjoyment of interacting with readers and hopefully helping a few of you to gain a couple of extra fantasy points every now and then. While some of that enjoyment remains, I feel it has waned over time and there's only so many posts you can write whose only comments are nit-picking spelling mistakes or challenging your whole approach without any kind of factual basis before you start to question why exactly you are doing what you do.

I like to consider myself a man of science (particularly that of a dismal nature) yet in reality I lack the discipline of a true scientist who can keep going with failure after failure in pursuit of some defined goal. Though I'm somewhat old fashioned compared to some of my peers, one miserable attribute I have inherited on my Generation Y chromosome is the need for 'results' and while the current iteration of the model is reasonably good in this area, pushing it to the next level of accuracy is going to take a significant amount of work (if indeed it's even possible). The development of such a model follows the path of many other projects where the returns of the initial investment are vast but then diminish over time. As a clunky analogy, I've picked up the gold nuggets lying on a river bed, or drilled the top layer of oil, and all that remains is to get very dirty with heavy machinery that will take years to get even a fraction of the progress enjoyed in the early days. This probably also follows something of the 80/20 principle where 80% accuracy was achieved with 20% work and now I'm faced with doing 80% of the work for only a 20% improvement (and in reality it's probably more extreme than that).

Anyway, this all won't mean much as things will essentially carry on as they have over the past couple of weeks. I will continue to update the data tables every week and post a gameweek preview but I'm taking a break from the research side and thus the number of extra posts will decline. I might suddenly be inspired and rattle off a post every day for a week but right now that looks unlikely and I wanted to be honest with you all, most of whom have been incredibly generous with your support of this site over the years.

I will continue to be somewhat active on Twitter so please feel free to get in touch there (@plfantasy), though if it's to criticize the results of the model, I'm almost certain to not respond (again, I'm not a real scientist so no peer review here).

Thanks for your continued support and hopefully I'll be back with a vengeance when I feel I have something worth saying.

SPANISH FOOTBALL , NEYMAR & 2014

Happy 2014 to all the readers & hope you had a great entry into the New Year with celebration & good vibes. Spanish Football with Liga gets back on course this weekend with Round 18.Most teams are back training already, with FC Barcelona back tonight with a recovered Messi & Victor Valdes. Real Madrid defeated Paris St Germain in Doha ( Qatar ) 1 - 0 with goal from Jese in a Friendly put together