The history of all those fancy football stats on TV

Retro

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One may not associate football with advanced technology as it's just 22 players kicking a ball around some grass, right? But there's actually a ton of technology involved and it wouldn't be the world's number one sport without it. In fact, it wouldn't be anywhere without TV technology and all the other tech that goes into it.

This BBC article focuses on how all those advanced football stats you see on TV are worked out. Their origins actually date all the way back to the early 1950s - a lifetime ago. Read all about their history in the article below. It all started with one guy that had an obsession about them.


Below, is the computer console from the Atlas supercomputer made in the early 1960s that was used to process the football stats data. Bit different to the graphical monsters of today, isn't it? Doesn't even have a video monitor of any kind. One really did have to be a computer engineer to use one of these things. Read all about it at the Wikipedia article below.


atlascomputerconsole.jpg
 

Ian

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My cousin's heavily into this stuff. He is one of the people behind statsbomb, sophisticated data miners that came up with Expected Goals and various other stats
 

Retro

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@Ian Cool. Maybe if he''d like to register here and tell us all about it, that would be great. :)
 
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