Most Interesting Facts About FIFA Players from a Data Scientist Perspective
By: Reem Alattas
Tags: Data Analysis, Visualization, Data, FIFA, Data Science

Soccer is the most popular sport worldwide. It is the national sport of most countries in Europe, Latin America, and Middle East. Soccer is practiced by millions of people in more than 140 countries. Therefore, I am dedicating this blog post to people who live and love the “Beautiful Game.” Whether they call it soccer or football, this is for those who are passionate about the game and the data.

In the remaining of this article, I will refer to soccer/football using the word “FIFA,” as FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association: French) is the international governing body for soccer/football. FIFA is responsible for organizing international competitions, such as the World Cup, Continental Championships, and Confederations Cup.

If you do not have a FIFA team to support, you can use this article to aid your search for a team. Otherwise, if you are a big fan of a certain team, you can also read this article to check if your team made it to the list of best FIFA teams.

In this article, I used FIFA 21 complete player dataset to answer the following questions:

Question 1: Who are the top FIFA players?

Question 2: What countries produce the best FIFA players?

Question 3: What are the best FIFA teams?

Data Understanding

FIFA 21 complete dataset includes 107 columns and 17,125 rows.

Let’s print the first 5 rows of this dataset to take a quick look at the data.

We can see that this dataset includes players’ name, age, nationality, and more. There also columns with abbreviated headers, such as OVA, POT, CDM, and more.

In order to know what these abbreviations stand for; I took a look at FIFA 19 complete players dataset as it has the highest usability rank on Kaggle amongst other FIFA datasets. It is worth mentioning I chose FIFA 21 dataset for analysis because of the recency of its data.

By looking at FIFA 19 head (top 5 rows), we immediately figured out that “OVA” and “POT” in FIFA 21 stands for “Overall” and “Potential” scores, respectively.

By comparing the full column list of both datasets: FIFA 21 and FIFA 19, we can find out more abbreviations’ meanings: “W/F” stands for “Weak Foot”, “SM” stands for “Skill Moves,” and “IR” stands for “International Reputation.” Some abbreviations that were mentioned in both datasets, such as “GK” and “CF” stand for the players’ positions “Goalkeeper” and “Center Forward” respectively. However, there are some abbreviations that are still unknown after comparing the two datasets and looking at the values of the columns in FIFA 21 dataset, e.g. BOV.

When describing the FIFA 21 dataset, we find out that it has 17,125 columns and most of the columns have zero missing values, which will simplify the data preparation process. We also discover the following:

· The youngest player is 16 years old and the oldest player is 53 years old.

· The lowest overall player’s score is 38 and the highest is 93.

· The average overall player’s score is 66.97 and the average potential player’s score is 72.49.

Prepare Data

In order to prepare the data for processing and analysis, we need to learn more about the columns with missing values. First, let us find which columns have no missing values.

As the result above shows, many columns have no missing values. The list of columns with no missing values include key attributes that will be used in answering our aforementioned questions. This led us to the next question, which columns have the most missing values?

There is only one column with more than 75% of the values missing, which is “Loan Date End.” We will proceed by dropping the entire column as it is not going to add any value to our analysis.

Evaluation

Question 1: Who are the top FIFA players?

According to the overall players’ score, the top 3 players are: L. Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, and K. De Bruyne. However, if we look at rows 3–6, we realize that those 4 players have the same overall score. The 4 players are: K. De Bruyne, R. Lewandowski, Neymar Jr, J. Oblak.

In order to find out the top 3 players, we will use the number of hits performed by each player in addition to the overall score.

Then, we plot a bar chart for the top 3 plyers to show their overall score and number of hits.

The top players in FIFA 21 according to the overall player’s score and number of hits are: L. Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Neymar Jr. This result might be biased against goal keepers like J. Oblak or players in positions that do not allow them to score a high number of hits.

A Look at Their Feet

FIFA players’ feet are the tools of their trade. So, we are going to take a curiosity look at the preferred foot of FIFA 21 players.

The majority of FIFA 21 players are right-footed, with 12,906 players, versus 4,219 left-footed players. Research indicated that left-footed soccer players have the edge over their right-footed counterparts. Players who prefer their left foot have inverted brain hemisphere functions, which gives them an extra dose of unpredictability. Left-footed FIFA 21 players include Messi, Salah, and Dybala.

The fastest 10 FIFA 21 players can be found after sorting the players according to their “Sprint Speed” in a descending order, then selecting the top 10 values.

The fastest FIFA 21 players are A. Chalá, A. Davies, Adama Traoré, and K. Mbappé with sprinting speed of 96 for each one of them.

Question 2: What countries produce the best FIFA players?

In order to learn about the countries that produce the best players, we must realize that there are 167 different nationalities in FIFA 21.

Then, we need to find out the countries that produce most players. England has the biggest number of FIFA 21 players with 1,707 players, followed by Germany with 1,154 players, then Spain with 1,121. The top 10 countries producing most FIFA 21 players worldwide are shown in the below chart.

However, when selecting the best 100 players based on their overall score, it turned out that the best players belong to 27 different countries and that Spain has the best players with 13 players out of 100, followed by Germany with 11 players, then Brazil and France with 9 players each. The top 10 countries with best 100 FIFA 21 players are demonstrated in the chart below.

Question 3: What are the best FIFA teams?

There are 917 different teams in FIFA 21, as you can see below, but which teams have the best players?

The top 100 players based on the overall score play in 25 teams. Liverpool team has the biggest number of top players with 11 players out of the top 100 players. Then, FC Barcelona came in second with 10 top players. Third, were Real Madrid, Juventus, and Manchester City with 9 top players for each team.

Conclusion

In this post, we analyzed the FIFA 21 complete player dataset to find out the best players, where do they come from, and which teams do they play for.

· The top 100 FIFA players come from 27 different countries.

· The best 100 players play in 25 different clubs.

· The majority of FIFA players are right-footed.

To check out the code of this analysis, visit my GitHub repo.

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