Charles Apple

Graphics are a very, very important part of covering the big game. And when it comes to big games, none are bigger than the World Cup of soccer, which begins this Friday and runs through July 11 in South Africa.

Yes, many of us in the U.S. don’t follow soccer at all. But outside the U.S., soccer is enormous. Folks live and breathe this stuff. Newspapers and magazines fall all over themselves to outdo each other with elaborate presentations and graphics and tributes to their local teams.

And no one does soccer graphics better than Konstantinos Antonopoulos, news producer — basically, presentation chief for print and online — of Exedra, a sports newspaper in Athens, Greece.

We asked Konstantinos what he was doing for the cup this year. He sent us a vast amount of material, despite the fact that he has to be very busy getting all this done.

Konstantinos writes:

I took some time to translate at least the headers, so people can understand what the graphs are about.

And I’m grateful. Because not only do I and most of my readers not really understand soccer all that well, we’re not so hot with reading Greek, either!

Anyway, here’s a sampling of the types of graphics Konstantinos has done or is doing for the Cup (click nearly anything today for a larger look):

Here’s a newspaper page where a professional coach is analyzing one team. He breaks down their offensive and defensive strengths and weaknesses and I use various types of signage to indicate the players movement into the field.

Basically, a big scouting report, except using an opposing coach as a source.

A page from the magazine we produced about Greece going to the World Cup. There were 23 pages like this one, with info on each player:

From the same magazine, a map of where the Greek team is going to travel in South Africa:

Because of their drawing, Team Greece will apparently not appear in Cape Town, the most gorgeous city in all the country. I hope Greeks will get a chance to zip over and check it out while they’re there.

Again from the same magazine, all-time stats of the Greek national team. We ran a full list (eight pages long) with all their matches in amazing detail. This spread followed with the numbers:

You’re beginning to see why I’m so crazy about Konstantinos’ work, right? I love his use of color and the clever ways he arranges data. His graphics have a fresh, modern look but they don’t appear to sacrifice readability or accuracy at all.

Moving right along…

From our World Cup magazine, here is a spread with the records of the World Cup and all the teams that have ever participated:

The results of previous World Cups (I translated only the first one, 1930 Uruguay):

We ran a page on each grouping in the magazine to open the section on the teams of that group. So there were eight pages similar to this:

I’m guessing the page designer dropped text into that space at the bottom. I’m also guessing the little white boxes are for readers to fill in the score as the month progresses.

I will be doing one of these for every match played. This is unfinished for now, I will be done by Friday’s kick-off.

Every match played. A total of 64 matches over 30 days. Geez. This is what I meant by busy. Konstantinos is one busy dude.

I asked Konstantinos to give me a few tips about graphically covering soccer — since most of us have never done it before. He sent along a wealth of suggestions…

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FORMATIONS

The most basic soccer term. It is how players are placed on the field.

Be accurate and people will understand. Visualize it and people will understand. 4-4-2; got it.

You may be lucky to find an actual formation chart, like this one:

This is how the players really were positioned in the field and it can enlighten the reader without the reporter having to explain, for example, why Bayern [the team on the left] did not make a serious challenge in the Champions League final — because Inter [the team on the right] had five players around the center, outnumbering the two the Germans had. Take a look at the above diagram to see for yourself.

I do this using a 50% opaque icon as a typical formation, while the 100% one shows the actual position in the field.

Or, if you know a coach with good experience who can help, you can create a graphic like this yourself.

—
NUMBERS

I’m not mentioning the basic match info, because I assume you will have those: Result, scorers, yellow and red cards, substitutions.

You’ll most probably have some more numbers available soon after the match ends. The FIFA match page should have them up and running during the match and a summary afterwards.

The Castrol Football page usually does an excellent job in having a lot of numbers available. The Visual Sport guys will most definitely have a wealth of info during the World Cup.

Also, look for the usual coverage from AP and Reuters.

What’s important are the basic facts:

• Total shots
• Shots on target
• Shots off target
• Shots blocked
• Headers
• Completed passes
• Attempted passes
• Solo runs
• Assists made
• Saves
• Fouls suffered
• Crosses
• Offsides
• Errors
• Total time played
• Ball possession
• Distance covered

You may find extra numbers and, if you wish, go ahead and include them for the experienced reader: Duels won, Key passes, Tackles made, etc.

Also, most of the above stats break down into separate categories: passes may be long, medium or short; solo runs may be into the attacking third, into the key area or into the penalty area, and so on.

UEFA usually offers all of these for the Champions League; FIFA may do so as well. There may even be a passing chart available.

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GOING THE EXTRA MILE

If you wanna go the extra mile, take some notes yourself during the match:

• Where did everything happen? Make a little dummy football field and jot down the exact positions of shots and crossings. Add a little mark at the proper wing (left, center or right) whenever the attacking team advances.
• When did everything happen? Make a timeline of 90 minutes and mark with a bullet when every shot, goal, yellow or red card and substitution was made in the match. Make sure you leave enough room for two or three events happening during the same minute.
• How did the key players move? Pick one or two from each side, usually the ones in the most influential positions (playmakers, wingers, defensive midfielders) and mark the area he was usually covering, his most common passes, the way he was usually moving towards the opponent’s area, to where was he running when he had the ball.
• Use a heatmap to show the areas of the field where a player moved most often or where most duels happened. Info will probably be available by Castrol or VisualSport or maybe FIFA itself.

—
GOOD INSPIRATION

1. Try to look for Marca infographics (Here’s a good batch of them).

A couple of quick examples from Diario Marca, a daily Spanish sports newspaper:

2. Javier Sprang has a great eye.

This is a reference to Sprang’s Sprang Factory infographics blog:

3. Follow Chiqui Esteban’s and Carlos Gamez Kindelan’s work at lainformacion.com.

“This is an awesome example,” Konstantinos says. In fact, this appears to be about one of the passing charts that Konstantinos mentioned earlier:

And there are a lot more out there.

Thanks much to Konstantinos for taking so much time to share tips with us.

Those of you on Facebook can find three of Konstantinos’ 11 graphics galleries here, here and here.

Find Exedra’s home page here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 10th, 2010 at 7:41 am and is filed under Graphics, International newspapers, Sports design, World Cup. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.