Infostrada Sports twitter accounts renamed to Gracenote

As Infostrada Sports rebrands to Gracenote Sports, we want to inform you that we’re changing our Twitter handles over to Gracenote. If you’re already following one or more of our accounts, know that this will be a seamless transition. You won’t have to do a thing to continue to get the same outstanding sports scores, stats, facts & figures and insights.

Johan Cruyff (68) – one of all-time greats passes away

FOOTBALL – Johan Cruyff, one of the greatest footballers and visionaries of the beautiful game has passed away at the age of 68. From Ajax to Barcelona he revolutionised the game, always focussing on attacking football.

You can find his career overview here

ANALYSE THIS: PSG more likely to progress than historic results suggest

FOOTBALL – The Champions League first legs have all been played and the favourites to progress generally look in good shape to do so. There are two common ways to assess what the likelihood of going through actually is – the first uses historical results and calculates the frequency with which teams recording a particular result went through. The second uses a statistical model based on team ratings to assess the chances of progress. The two methods give broadly the same chance for each of the four ties won by the away team but if a match is drawn or results in a narrow home win, the chances from the two methods begin to diverge.

ANALYSE THIS: Euro Club Index makes unfamiliar opponents familar

FOOTBALL – The reaction to Manchester United’s defeat by FC Midtjylland has been one of shock with the English club being derided as “dismal” in the media and the display described as “unacceptable” by one of United’s own players, Michael Carrick. Five days earlier, United lost by a similar scoreline to Sunderland without the same level of criticism from either outside or within. According to the Euro Club Index, Danish champions FC Midtjylland are actually at about the same level of quality as the Black Cats from England’s North East. Prior to Thursday night’s fixture, Midtjylland were ranked 136^th by this pan-European ranking with Sunderland 132^nd . The difference in opinion therefore lies in people’s perspective with the quality of smaller clubs like Midtjylland being underestimated by media and fans alike because of their lack of knowledge of the team or the league in which they play.

ANALYSE THIS: Settled team one of the keys to Leicester’s success

FOOTBALL – Thirty-five years ago Aston Villa famously, and surprisingly, won the league title with just 14 players. Three years earlier, Nottingham Forest won the league immediately after promotion using just 16 players. Arsenal’s 1989 title win, their first for 18 years, was achieved with just 17 starters. This season, Leicester City have been the great surprises of the Premier League and have also followed a similar pattern in their selections. In the first 22 matches of the season, Leicester manager Claudio Ranieri has picked just 17 players in his starting line-ups and the club could still equal the Premier League era record for fewest starting players in a season.

What are “Scoring Opportunities”?

FOOTBALL – The Guardian’s analysis of Leicester City’s surprise season included a reference to scoring opportunities, one of the numerous variables that we at Infostrada Sports collect in our live coverage of football matches around the world. As explained in the article, this is a measure which counts major chances whether they result in a shot or not. Calculating the difference between scoring opportunities for and against produces a measure which is highly correlated with the league table standings. Below are some examples of goal attempts which would be classified as scoring opportunities.

ANALYSE THIS: Premier League rich but performs below par

FOOTBALL – The Deloitte Money League has been released and unsurprisingly, the Euro Club Index ranking, which rates clubs based on performance, is highly correlated with this annual ranking of wealth. Four of the top-five clubs on the Deloitte list are also in the Euro Club Index top-10. Manchester United are the big exception at third in the Money League but ranked only 13^th by the Euro Club Index. Another Premier League club, Liverpool, are the ninth richest in the world but are currently only just hanging onto a place in the Euro Club Index top-25. All nine Premier League clubs in Deloitte’s top-20 richest are ranked lower by the Euro Club Index.

ANALYSE THIS – Champions League Group of Death?

FOOTBALL – The Euro Club Index (www.euroclubindex.com) rates all teams in top flight football in Europe and today has proved a guide to assess the 2015/2016 Champions League group stage draw. It points out the Group of Death, the teams facing strongest/weakest opposition and also the teams that were most fortunate/unfortunate in the draw.

RECORD: Spain to serve up five-star CL campaign

FOOTBALL – Valencia CF reached the main stage of the Champions League and made Spain the first country ever to be represented by five teams in one CL season. In Thursday’s draw pots Valencia will be joined by fellow Spanish sides FC Barcelona, Real Madrid, Atlético Madrid and Sevilla FC.

ANALYSE THIS: USA, Germany, Japan & Canada expected in last four

FOOTBALL – The FIFA World rankings for women’s football have provided a good basis for our forecast so far with seven of our eight favourites in the second round progressing through to the quarter-finals. In addition, our pre-tournament forecast correctly predicted six of the eight quarter-finalists, and two of the exact match-ups (France v Germany and England v Canada) in this round. Our updated forecast for the quarter-final matches expects the United States to play Germany and Japan to play Canada in the last four. These exact semi-final pairings were also predicted in our pre-tournament forecast.