Continuing our application of “mean time between” metrics to the World Cup, I consider mean time between stoppages.

These metrics, and all those related to the 2014 FIFA World Cup, are derived from data from Press Association‘s Match Story feed, which was distributed through the Soccermetrics API.  Below is a table of mean time between stoppages (MTBS) over regulation time of all matches of the tournament:

Mean time between stoppages of all matches at 2014 FIFA World Cup, regulation time only. Data sourced from Press Association MatchStory feed and served from Soccermetrics Connect API.

Below is the chart of MTBS over all matches officiated by World Cup referees.  They are sorted in descending order by MTBS over regulation time.  Mean time between stoppages is not only subject to the frequency of fouls, but also the frequency of the ball being out of play, which the two teams and the referee impact.  MTBS tends to vary between 35 and 55 seconds, but there are some exceptions, such as the first halves of matches officiated by Peter O’Leary and Björn Kuipers.  The variation between first and second half MTBS tends to be less than 10%, but there are some significant differences in the matches officiated by O’Leary and Kuipers.  Those differences could be discounted as a reversion to the mean, though.  More interesting are the drops in MTBS observed in the matches officiated by Yuichi Nishimura, Jonas Eriksson and Felix Brych, from figures in the first half near the average MTBS for all referees to the second-half figures are the low end of the range.  Bakary Gassama refereed just the one match, but the MTBF and MTBS were very low.

The second chart displays the average MTBS of World Cup finalists over all of their matches played.  As with the referee table, the rows are sorted in descending order by MTBS over regulation time.  In contrast to the referees, the range of MTBS for teams is much narrower — between 40 and 50 seconds.  The narrow range could be a result of teams playing more matches than the referees; after all, only four referees appeared more than four times, while sixteen of the 32 finalists played at least four matches.  Nigeria was the lone side whose average MTBS exceeded 50 seconds over all halves of regulation time, but France and Mexico were very close to this mark as well.  At the low end, Uruguay’s MTBS was consistently low between both halves of regulation time.   Most of the finalists experienced variations of MTBS within five seconds, with matches involving Ecuador (+5.9 sec) and Spain (+9.2 sec) experiencing longer intervals between stoppages, and matches involving Nigeria (-5.7 sec), Bosnia (-5.9 sec), Russia (-5.5 sec), and Colombia (-7.0 sec) experiencing shorter intervals.

I’m still working through an explanation of what these figures mean.  It’s possible that mean times between fouls and stoppages have some meaning, and it’s possible that they have very little.  In the next few posts, I hope to present some more analysis to further examine these metrics.