The Host Cities and Nation Base Camps

2014-04-27

The Host Cities and Nation Base Camps

 

Souce:protractedcontemplation.wordpress.com

 

This summer sees Brazil host 31 other nations in the 2014 Football World Cup, played over 32 days, in 12 cities. Brazil is the 5th largest country in the world, with an area of 8,515,767 sq km it's big!...and while the World Cup won't be played in every corner of Brazil, there will still be a lot of kilometers covered by the 32 competing Nations. So in this article I will look at the traveling each Nation will have to do during the group stage of the tournament, we will see if any Nations face a huge amount of traveling compared to their rivals, or if any Nations have short trips. I won't posit on whether the amount of travel contributes to any advantage/disadvantage at the moment, but it may be worth investigating the travel Brazilian clubs have to do during the Brazilian season, and the effect this may have; the Copa Libertadores would also be another point of reference. Hopefully this post will be of interest.

 

At world cup 2014 there are twelve cities that will host the 64 games, they are; Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia, Sao Paulo, Fortaleza, Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre, Salvador, Recife, Cuiaba, Manaus, Natal and Curitiba. The plot below shows the host cities; it is created by scraping the longitudes and latitudes of the stadiums from the World Cup 2014 wikipedia page and plotted with the ggmap package. [A plot of the host cities on a satellite map can be seen here, perhaps a little clearer to see the cities, though no borders/states are pre-labeled]

 

Host Cities

 

Other information that is required are the locations of the base camps each Nation has chosen. This information isn't available on the Wikipedia page, so it was sourced (on 21/2/14) from an article on the BBC Sport site (article here, teams could potentially change their base camp, though hopefully not). The Nations choices of base are: Algeria (Sorocaba, SP), Australia (Vitoria, ES), Argentina (Vespasiano, MG), Belgium (Mogi das Cruzes, SP), Bosnia-Hercegovina (Guaruja, SP), Brazil (Teresopolis, RJ), Cameroon (Vitoria, ES), Chile (Belo Horizonte, MG), Colombia (Cotia, SP), Costa Rica (Santos, SP), Croatia (Mata de Sao Joao, BA), Ecuador (Viamao, RS), England (Rio de Janeiro, RJ), France (Ribeirao Preto, SP), Germany (Santa Cruz Cabralia, BA), Ghana (Maceio, AL), Greece (Aracaju, SE), Honduras (Porto Feliz, SP), Italy (Mangaratiba, RJ), Iran (Guarulhos, SP), Ivory Coast (Aguas de Lindoia, SP), Japan (Itu, SP), South Korea (Foz do Iguacu, PR), Mexico (Santos, SP), Netherlands (Rio de Janeiro, RJ), Nigeria (Campinas, SP), Portugal (Campinas, SP), Russia (Itu, SP), Spain (Curitiba, PR), Switzerland (Porto Seguro, BA), Uruguay (Sete Lagoas, MG), United States (Sao Paulo, SP).

 

Most Nations have chosen base camps in the states of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and nearly all have chosen to be near the coast, an exception being South Korea who will be based in Foz du Iguacu, in the Parana state, which sits on the border with Paraguay and Argentina. The locations of the Nations base camps and the host cities are plotted below, I've left the base camps unlabeled due to the close proximity of the points on the map.

 

Nation Base Camps & Host Cities

 

 

Travel. Travel. Travel.

 

Using the geosphere package and the longitudes and latitudes of the venues and team bases it is easy to calculate the distance (as the crow flies) between locations. For reference, a plot which shows the distance from the capital, Brasilia, to the other 11 host cities can be seen here. So if Nations travelled from city to city they would be picking up a lot of frequent flyer miles. However, with base camps being chosen, I will work under the assumption that Nations will “start” the world cup at their chosen base camp, and will always return to their base camp upon completing their game, ie. ahead of the second group game, every Nation will have travelled from their base camp to their first game, back to their base camp after the first game, and then on to their second game. It makes sense to first look at the opening group games and the traveling each Nation will do, below is that plot using the ggplot2 package.

 

 

 

 

The longest travelers are England and Italy (who play one another), they are both camped in the state of Rio de Janeiro, and will travel up to Manaus, England traveling 2857km and Italy 2805km. Meanwhile, Bosnia and Herzegovina face the least amount of traveling, with just 332km to travel from Guaraju in Sao Paulo to Rio de Janerio; their opponents, Argentina, also have a short trip of just 366km (the collective travel of Group F is 1415km, less than half the distance England will travel). Hosts Brazil, and Germany, two favorites also have short journeys, while holders Spain will travel 1786km to their opening game against the Dutch (1212km). The difference between shortest journey, 332km, and the longest journey, 2857km, is 2525km.

 

The plot below shows the individual matches, and the traveling each Nation will do, allowing us to see how direct opponents compare to one another.

 

 

 

Remembering England and Italy face the same journeys back to their base camps ahead of their second games, it quickly becomes clear how much traveling will be done in such a short space of time; 10days between the first game and the final group game. The plot below shows the distance Nations will travel ahead of their second group games.

 

 

 

England have a short 342km trip to their second group game against Uruguay, while Italy have another lengthy journey of 1921km, meaning they will rack up the most kilometers ahead of the second game, traveling 7531km. Argentina will have travelled the fewest kilometers, just 752km, which is 439km fewer than their second match opponents, Iran. Groups F and H collectively have very few kilometers to travel, while Groups D and A (with the exception of Brazil) could have been luckier. Below shows the individual second group games, followed by the cumulative travel ahead of Game 3:

 

 

Distance traveled ahead of 3^rd Group Game

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a long journey to their first fixture, England's' schedule eases somewhat, but still more punishing than most. Argentina and Belgium, who are both tipped to perform in the tournament, have the easiest schedules, but so do their 3 group opponents (in Groups F and H respectively). Group E looks to be the “fairest”, with Nations traveling 5000km between games.

 

The United States will complete the group stage having travelled the most kilometers, totaling out at 12160km, more than 7.5 times the distance that Belgium (1583km) will travel during the group stage. The United States don't have a trip shorter than 2000km to any of their games, could they have picked a better base camp? The plot below shows the trips the US will make to each of their games, from their base in the state of Sao Paulo, up to Manaus, Natal and Recife, it also shows the cumulative distance they will have travelled ahead of each game. The 31 other base camps are faintly plotted, three of which are located in the North of Brazil, very close to two of United States' group games. (click the image to enlarge.)

 

US travel

 

Italy's traveling is similar to that of the United States, they play in the same venues, just in a different order, see a plot here. If Italy or the United States had chosen their base camp in Maceio, AL (which is where Ghana, one of the United States' group opponents did), they would have reduced their traveling to 6391km (Italy) and 6625km (United States). As it turns out, according to James Horncastle, Italy will stay in the North of Brail between Games 2 and 3. This shows my naive assumptions to be naive, and it will be worth looking more in depth to see if other Nations will do similar.

 

 

South Korea's choice of base was interesting, located inland and away from the majority of others, had they chosen a base camp in Sao Paulo they would have had even fewer km to travel, but having googled Foz do Iguacu it does look a lovely location, the plot below shows the trips they must make. If anyone wants a map plot of a different Nation, let me know and I'll post one up on github, there is a plotting function in there, which allows you to quickly replicate plots.

 

 

 

 

Days between games

 

The number of days between fixtures perhaps worth looking at quickly. Ideally everyone would have the same schedule and have similar travel burdens, etc, but logistically it's not feasible. So we will look at the number of days between fixtures, this is done using the dates AND kick off times, so we get days in decimal form. Below is a slideshow of two plots, first the number of days between Games 1 and 2, second the number of days between Games 2 and 3. It's followed by the individual matches and days since each Nations' previous game.