Wait What?
The prolific rise of Christian Pulisic as an American soccer hero over the past year has led to two things in my life specifically:
- I have had my hopes and dreams crushed by our national team (#USMNT)
- I have started watching the Bundesliga more often, and have become an avid fan of Borussia Dortmund (the team Pulisic plays for when he is not busy losing to Caribbean Island squads with his fellow countrymen)
In the wake of the USMNT not qualifying to the World Cup in 2018, I have placed the full burden of my fanship on Dortmund for the past few weeks. Perhaps many other Americans have done the same, because Dortmund seem to be weighed down by all these expectations. In fact, just this past week they lost their spot atop the league table to Bayern Munich.
Talk Data to Me…
Note: No match statistics from this past week (Oct 28th) are included yet
In an effort to fully process this information and make lemons out of lemonade, I decided to visualize their ice cold streak over the last few weeks in a Tableau Dashboard(Data source: http://www.football-data.co.uk/)
Dortmund started the season hot, and have maintained the largest positive goal differential all season. The peak of their form was on September 23rd, when they beat their rivals Borussia Monchengladbach 6-1 and cemented themselves at the top position in the Bundesliga.
Following this convincing victory from Dortmund, Bayern had 2 draws in a row against teams they should have easily beaten (Wolfsburg, and Hertha Berlin). In fact, the probability of a draw in both of these games was 2.4% (according to BET365 odds). It was in between these two games that Bayern fired their coach Carlo Ancelotti, and internal turmoil may have been to blame.
The two Bayern ties stand out as outliers in terms of probable match outcomes.
However, Dortmund have not won a game in the Bundesliga since defeating Augsburg 2-1 at the end of September (and they have been having a tough time in the Champions League as well). This left the door wide open for Bayern, who tied them in points October 21st, and just surpassed them this weekend (October 28th).
The Silver Lining
All this being said, it is still early in the season and one should expect a team’s form to ebb and flow as the season goes along. In addition, Pulisic is still only 19! By the time the next World Cup rolls around he will be a weathered veteran at the ripe age of 23. Finally, I am sure there are plenty of other hidden storylines I have missed, so check out the dashboard and let me know what you think!