The last World Cup had the highest number of Arabic teams qualifying to a World Cup. The four teams were Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco,and Tunisia. Egypt and Saudi Arabia shared their group with the host Russia and Uruguay. Morocco was in the death group with Portugal,Spain and Iran. Tunisia was with Panama, England, and Belgium. Sadly, all the Arabic teams were knocked out from the first round, but who did better? Let’s compare styles of play, and see which team created more chances or took more shots. But before jumping to conclusions, let’s take a brief look at the history of Arabic teams in the World Cup.
Arab History in the World Cup
First Arabic team to make it to the World Cup was Egypt in 1934. It was more of invitational tournament back then. Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia has the highest number of appearances with 5 each. The furthest an Arabic national team made it was the round of 16. Saudi Arabia did it in 1994 and got knocked out by Sweden.Both Morocco and Algeria made it 1986 and 2014 respectively and both were knocked out by Germany (Western Germany back in 1986).
Initial Predictions & What happened
Before the start of the of the World Cup, Egypt and Saudi Arabia were the most likely to make it out of group A with Uruguay. Morocco and Tunisia had a harder groups while facing Portugal and Spain in one group and England and Belgium in the other. What went down? Egypt had its worst World Cup performance out of their two other qualifications not getting a single point and even losing to Saudi Arabia (which also lost their other two games). Morocco got only one point losing 95th minute from Iran from an own goal, losing to Rolando's Portugal, and drawing to Spain. Tunisia managed to get three points by winning vs Panama but losing to both England and Belgium. So we would say the best team is either Tunisia or Saudi. Let's look at some graphs. 
This graph represents number of shots created per pass which is a good performance indicator. At first, we would assume that Tunisia and Saudi did the best right? Looking at all points, I would say Morocco had the best World Cup as Morocco's performances were above average then Tunisia comes second then Saudi Arabia then finally Egypt. But this does not answer an important question, why? Why did this teams perform like this, maybe play style had to do with their performances so let's check PassShot Heat Map for each(It gives us a ratio of the number of passes that team makes 15 seconds before taking a shot from certain area on the field against the average team). 
As the first graph suggested, Tunisia and Morocco managed to create more chances than the average team especially from the right side from Nabil Dirar for Morocco and for Tunisia from the deep right center midfield Ferjani Sassi. Fahad Al Muwallad was the star player for Saudi Arabia as the left midfielder was the key for Saudi's attack. Egypt used Mo Salah as the center of play or sending long balls to the striker coming from the center of field from either Tarek Hamed or Mohamed El Neney. These graphs may answer the question of which teams created more chances but looking at graphs Egypt performed either on par or even better than Saudi Arabia so we are left with the same question. What happened to Egypt and Mo Salah in 2018 World Cup. The answer is quite simple. What happened to Egypt was not on the pitch as the Pharaohs got entangled with PR problems and even politics before and during the World Cup. I think Tifo Football explains it much better than me. But to end a higher note, the best Arabic team in Russia 2018 World Cup goes to the Lions of the Atlas Mountain, Morocco(at least in my personal opinion).
That's a wrap for this blog post. Comment if you think a different team performed better than Morocco (maybe Tunisia) or what do you think happened to Egypt. If you want to become a data scientist in 2022 check out this link. If you want to read more data analysis of World Cup 2018, check this link. All feedback is appreciated and if you like please share it. Next week, I will complete the data scientist mini-series but until then enjoy!
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