Okay, so today I’m gonna spill the beans on something I tinkered with recently: a little dive into the Tanzania vs. DR Congo match. It wasn’t some deep analysis or anything, just a personal project to mess around with some data and see what I could learn.
First off, I grabbed the game summary from ESPN. You know, the basic stuff: final score, date, etc. The final score was 2-0, Congo DR winning, and the game was on October 15, 2024. Just wanted to have that as a base.
Next, I started digging for more detailed stats. I wasn’t aiming for crazy advanced analytics, just the standard stuff like ball possession, shots on goal, fouls, you know, the things you usually see during a game recap. I pieced together info from a couple different sports sites. It was a bit of a hunt, as some sites were paywalled or had incomplete data.
Then came the fun part. I threw all the info into a spreadsheet. Nothing fancy, just a simple table with columns for each team and rows for each statistic. I like seeing everything laid out plainly. It’s easier to spot patterns that way.
After that, I began to play around with the numbers. I calculated the percentage of ball possession for each team. I compared the number of shots on goal with the actual goals scored to see which team was more efficient. I also looked at the number of fouls committed to see if one team played more aggressively.
What did I find? Well, DR Congo clearly dominated the game. While the basic stats confirmed that, the spreadsheet made it so much clearer. For example, they had significantly more shots on target and a higher ball possession percentage. Tanzania seemed to struggle to create clear-cut chances.
It wasn’t earth-shattering, but it was cool to visualize the game through numbers. It’s amazing how much you can tell about a game just by organizing the data and doing some simple calculations. I might try to expand this with more games from the Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers, maybe build some basic predictive models. Who knows?
Anyway, that’s it. My little football data adventure. Hope it was interesting!
