Women's World Cup 2023 - Group Stage Network Diagrams

[redfiona99]

Slightly late, but really, who starts a World Cup on a Thursday!!!

Make these charts revealed some interesting things:

1 - All teams have at least 1 player playing in their home league except Canada. I'm not sure if that's because the US league is both so strong and right next door.
2 - All teams have at least one player playing abroad.
3 - Adding more teams has made the diagram much messier.
4 - A remarkable number of Zambia's players (4/23) play in the Kazakh league. Also, I found out there was a Kazakh league. This shouldn't have surprised me.
5 - There are Saudi Arabian women's teams. That really did surprise me.

What does the diagram look like?









The club teams with the most representatives are Barcelona, with 17, Chelsea, with 16 and Paris Saint-Germain with 14.

There are 32 teams but 24 communities.







The communities are as follows:
1 - Vietnam
2 - Zambia
3 - Philippines
4 - Argentina and Brazil
5 - Panama and Costa Rica
6 - China
7 - Colomba
8 - Portugal and Nigeria
9 - New Zealand
10 - South Africa
11 - Haiti
12 - Jamaica and Canada
13 - United States
14 - South Korea
15 - Spain
16 - Ireland
17 - Morocco
18 - Swizerland
19 - France and Netherlands
20 - Australia, Sweded and England
21 - Japan
22 - Denmark and Norway
23 - Italy
24 - Germany



It's actually really hard to tell where the centre of the diagram. Obviously, there's the physical centre, which would be Brazil or New Zealand in terms of national teams and Pachuca for the club teams, but the weight of the teams is concentrated in the bottom, where Sweden, Norway and Denmark make a really heavy cluster.

That also makes it hard to make predictions (as L requires). The following are mine from this diagram, with the caveat that it was really hard to distinguish the centre of the diagram.

Group A - Philippines and New Zealand out, but closer than expected (I said this before the NZ vs Norway game and have witnesses to me saying it. Multiple witnesses. I should also apologise to Norway for drawing them in my work sweepstakes.)
Group B - Nigeria and Ireland out
Group C - Zambia and Costa Rica out
Group D - China and Haiti out
Group E - Portual and Vietnam out
Group F - Brazil and Panama out, but that sounds weird to my ears
Group G - South Africa and Argentina are out, but see previous statement
Group H - Morocco and Colombia out

Comments

[ioplokon]

fwiw Casey Stoney has Ireland as a sleeper favorite & particularly thinks they're a tough matchup for the US.

[redfiona99]

We live in hope re: Ireland

[lilacsigil]

There's also an Afghanistan women's team at the tournament - because they all got asylum in Australia. They're playing some friendly matches. But they don't have official recognition because their country now refuses to recognise them so FIFA won't either, which is downright shitty.

Everyone was surprised at NZ winning, including NZ, I think!

[redfiona99]

FIFA's continuing uselessness on all fronts remains frustrating.

I'm not sure NZ's win can be blamed on me getting Norway in the sweepstake but I doubt it helped ;)