The 2018 FIFA World Cup starts in a few hours time.
I am looking forward to accessing the data shared on the official website for the tournament.
One of the measures that will interest me is ball in play time.
In the 2014 FIFA World Cup, the median ball in play time for the first twelve games of the tournament was 55 minutes 30 seconds.
The game by game profile for those games was:
The range was: Chile v Australia and Argentina v Bosnia & Herzogovina (both 61 minutes); Brazil v Croatia (53 minutes).
Photo Credit
Luzhniki Stadium, Moscow (Derek Holtham, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
