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Spain wins the World Cup, finally claiming a place among the
elite of world soccer after beating the Netherlands by a
single goal deep in extra-time to lift a first World Cup
trophy to go with their European Championship trophy of two
years ago.
The victory confirms them as the best team in the world in
recent times, but in truth, they rarely touched the heights
this month and today there was no repeat of the second half
charge against Germany in the semifinal. The passing was not
as slick and there was little of the authority that we have
become accustomed to with Spain.
They become the lowest scoring champions in the
competition's history following four 1-0 victories
during their progress through a tournament that only
flickered into life and fell far short of what the football
hype machine promised.
The man who won it for them was the best player on the
field, Barcelona's Andres Iniesta. He more than anyone
else constantly sought the ball and, amid the rush, had the
presence of mind to take up intelligent positions in space.
The GCP event was set for a 143 minute period beginning at
20:30 local time. There were 2 extra minutes in the first
half and 3 extra minutes in the second half. Halftime was
15 mins. The match went into Extra Time, of 30 minutes, and
there were a total of 3 extra minutes added to that. The
winning and only score came 4 minutes before the end.
The result is
Chisquare 8563.594 on 8580 df, for p = 0.548 and Z = -0.120.
It is important to keep in mind that we have only a tiny
statistical
effect, so that it is always hard to distinguish signal from
noise. This means that every "success" might be largely
driven by chance, and every "null" might include a real
signal overwhelmed by noise. In the long run, a real effect
can
be identified only by patiently accumulating replications of
similar analyses.
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