Tomorrow Real Madrid and Microsoft will launch a new app to connect fans to the club and to each other. The app will offer extra content during matches, including video from multiple camera angles, as well as games and competitions for users. But it will also give fans access to about 250 series of match data in real time… and that’s what caught my eye. Today I asked José Ángel Sánchez, the club’s director-general, and Orlando Ayala of Microsoft just how they were going to make all that information available. For example, would fans be able to download the data…
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Last season Liverpool, a storied soccer club that hasn’t won England’s top division since 1990, was in the race for the title down to the final day. Having finished seventh the previous campaign, everything was finally going right – but did the referees have anything to do with it? Liverpool certainly had plenty of English fans, regardless of their favorite team, rooting for them to unseat the league’s recent powerhouses. Their dogged captain, Steven Gerrard, supplied a fiery passion to the team, and the effervescent talents of Raheem Sterling, Daniel Sturridge, and Luis Suárez provided the goals. As Liverpool’s mainly…
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It’s not hard to see why Wigan Athletic suffered relegation at the end of the 2012-13 English Premier League season. If a club gives up 73 goals, as Wigan did, chances are it’s going down. In fact, since the league went to 20 teams, every single one that conceded 73 times or more was relegated. But why did Wigan leak goals like a sieve? I ask this question because Wigan’s then-coach, Roberto Martínez, has been running into defensive problems at Everton, too. It’s also an interesting question because, by at least a few popular statistics, Wigan didn’t look that bad….
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