FIFA-1

The only truly international sport is soccer and a major lure for soccer enthusiasts and players alike is the FIFA tournament. The FIFA 2006 tournament was held in Germany with the first matches played June 9, 2006 and the final match played July 9, 2006. There were 32 teams involved with a total of 734 players; 136 players from the southern hemisphere and 598 players from the northern hemisphere. Arsenal was the most represented club with 15 of its players in the tournament, Chelsea was the second most represented club with 14 of its players involved and AC Milan was third with 13 of its players competing. Other well represented clubs included Juventus, Manchester United, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Lyon, Real Madrid and Ajax. The final match pitted France against Italy in a contest everyone will remember. Losing it all: Zidane Moment.

The most life experienced player in the tournament was Ali Boumnijel born April 13, 1966 and the player with the least life experience was Theo Walcott who was born March 16, 1989. There were 732 other players born between those two dates in this competition which captured the largest TV audience in soccer history.

Portugal was declared the Most Entertaining Team, the Best Young Player award went to Lukas Podolski, the Lev Yashin award for Best Goalie was awarded to Gianluigi Buffon and the Adidas Golden Ball award was presented to Zinedine Zidane.

The final standing saw Italy in first place, France second, Germany third and Portugal fourth in a series which was thrilling from start to finish. Germany was a superb host and deserves all the kudos it is receiving. We will all have to suffer the long wait until the next FIFA tournament.

A heliogram was prepared for each of the 734 players using Matrix Software's Win*Star Plus program. The position of Mercury was copied from each heliogram into the Microsoft Access database set up for this project. This same process was repeated for the positions of Venus, Earth and Mars. The distribution in the 12 sectors for the planet Mercury is shown below.

The graph is set up with the 12 sectors distributed along the horizontal axis and the percentage of the soccer players distributed along the vertical axis. Because Mercury orbits the Sun in an elliptical pattern it does not spend the same amount of time in each of the sectors. The time Mercury spends in each sector is shown by the green curve. The distribution of Mercury is shown by the rust colored curve. With perfect randomness one would find 8.3% of the players in each sector.

The Mercury distribution curve somewhat follows the green curve although it drops below it in sector 6 and rises far above it in sectors 8, 9, 10 and 11. This graph shows that the highest percentage of players are born with Mercury in sector 9 (12.3%) and the smallest percentage are born with Mercury in sectors 2, 4 and 6 each with 5.6% of the players. However, Mercury spends twice as long in sector 9 (11 days) as it does in sectors 2 and 4 (5 days) and sector 6 (7 days).

A better way of looking at the distribution of Mercury is to take the player count for Mercury per sector and divide it by the number of days Mercury spends in the sector giving us a total for each sector of players per day. Mercury orbits the sun every 88 days. The results are shown in the table below.

The high count sector is seen to be sector 11 and the low count sector is seen to be sector 6. Many of the sectors display counts that reflect an expected random distribution which is 8.3%. For budding soccer players it would be to your advantage to be born with Mercury in sector 11.

The planet Venus has an almost perfectly circular orbit around the sun and spends 19 days in each sector, circling the sun every 228 Earth days. The distribution of Venus in the sectors is shown in the graph below.

With perfect randomness one would see 8.3% of the players in each sector but that is definitely not what we have here. The highest count for Venus is found in sector 9 (10.1%) and the least number is found with Venus in sector 10 (6.8%). Sectors 1, 7, 8, 9 and 11 have higher counts than expected. For the budding soccer player the ideal would be to have Venus in sector 9 but Venus in sectors 1, 7, 8, and 11 would also be to their advantage.

This is the first project I have completed at the Cosmic Data-Bank in which a significant number (18.5%) of those involved were born in the southern hemisphere. You might ask why this would be important and that is a good question.

Setting up the design parameters for the various projects completed by the Cosmic Data-Bank has always been an important consideration for me. For example, the sectors around the sun are set-up with the start date for sector 1 being the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere which corresponds to the entry of planet Earth into sector 7. In the southern hemisphere that same date would mark the first day of autumn. Because I have associated the sectors with the beginning of the seasons in the northern hemisphere, readers should not conclude that there is a relationship between the season and the soccer players. This question of the seasonal effect will be explored in the following views. There is no doubt that everyone is affected by the seasons in many ways but the question is whether the season of birth reflects in player density for the position of the Earth. Please read on!

The following table shows the counts per sector for the soccer players in both hemispheres. Yellow indicates a high count and green indicates a low count.

Sector	Northern Hemisphere %	Southern Hemisphere %	Combined %
1	6.8	14.7	10.7
2	8.5	2.9	5.7
3	7.2	5.9	6.6
4	9.4	5.9	7.6
5	9.4	14.0	11.7
6	7.5	7.3	7.4
7	8.5	7.3	7.9
8	7.8	10.3	9.0
9	7.5	8.1	7.8
10	9.4	8.1	8.7
11	8.7	10.3	9.5
12	9.2	5.1	7.1
Totals	99.9%	99.9%	99.7%

The high and low counts are quite different between the two hemispheres for the position of Earth in the sectors with only sector 5 seeing much agreement. The combined percentages show that sector 5 has the highest and sector 2 the lowest counts.

The high counts in the southern hemisphere are very interesting. Earth in sector 1 in the south indicates it is the end of winter, the hormones are flowing and people are energized by the arrival of the spring season. Earth in sector 5 in the south indicates it is summer, a time when it is possible to spend much more time outside. The combined effect of season + sector for southern hemisphere players can be seen clearly here.

In the northern hemisphere the placement of Earth in the sectors is the reverse of the south and the combined effect of season + sector is missing in the northern hemisphere counts. For more details see the following 3 views of the data.

The rust colored curve displays in percentage the combined counts per sector for the players of both hemispheres.

The blue colored curve shows the counts per season; eg. the northern hemisphere players in sector 7 and the southern hemisphere players in sector 1 are combined as a total since they both represent the start of the spring season. The combining of totals is continued for N sector 2 + S sector 8, N sector 3 + S sector 9, etc.

The green line shows the perfectly random expected count of 8.3% for each sector.

The blue curve represents the distribution of players if all births are adjusted for the season of the year in the northern hemisphere. This curve shows that the highest count is found in sector 7 which is Spring season in the northern hemisphere and the lowest count is in sector 8 which is also a part of the Spring season in the northern hemisphere.

The rust colored curve represents the distribution of Earth by sector with no adjustment for association with the seasons. The peaks and valleys are easily seen with the highest player count in sector 5 and the lowest player count in sector 3.

In both hemispheres the arrival of spring is celebrated, especially above the Tropic of Cancer and below the Tropic of Capricorn. For soccer players the highest season-combined-count peak is seen in sector 7, the beginning of the spring season in the northern hemisphere. But the peak does not continue into the rest of the spring sectors 8 and 9, in fact the count drops off significantly. The other peaks are found in sectors 2, 5 and 11 none of which begin a season of the year in the northern hemisphere.

In this view the players are divided into two camps; the northern and southern hemisphere camps. The position of the Earth for the 136 soccer players from the southern hemisphere are shown by sector in the rust colored curve. The blue curve shows the 598 players from the northern hemisphere by sector.

The two curves appear to have very little in common. For the Southern hemisphere players there are significant peaks in sectors 1 and 5 and two other peaks in sectors 8 and 11. For the northern hemisphere players the counts are highest in sectors 4, 5, 10 and 12 with the low count found in sector 1. Both curves show a peak in sector 5. The southern hemisphere percentage for sector 2 is 2.9% which is below the axis parameters on the graph. This view shows that the counts per sector in both hemispheres share a peak in sector 5 but have little agreement in other sectors. This view has elaborated on the rust colored curve seen in VIEW #1.

This is an expanded view of the blue curve seen in VIEW #1. Once again the players are divided into northern and southern hemisphere groups and then summed by season. Example; sector 1 in the southern hemisphere marks the start of the Spring sector which is sector 7 in the northern hemisphere. This view shows the counts for both hemispheres adjusted so that the seasons are in agreement in both hemispheres.

Although the differences are still dramatic there is some agreement between the two curves when both hemispheres are aligned for season. This view also displays the very low counts on either side of sector 7, both sectors 6 and 8 having a very small percentage of the southern hemisphere players while sector 7 counts the highest peak. There are complimentary peaks between the two hemispheres in sectors 2, 5 and 7 and complimentary low counts in sectors 1, 3, 6 and 8. There is little agreement in the other remaining 5 sectors. The highest combined count remains in sector 5 seen in VIEW #1, rust colored curve, which has the hemispheres tallied by sector.

The table below shows the relationship between the sectors and the seasons in both hemispheres.

N. Hemisphere Season	Earth in Sectors	S. Hemisphere Season	Earth in Sectors
Spring	7, 8, 9	Spring	1, 2, 3
Summer	10, 11, 12	Summer	4, 5, 6
Autumn	1, 2, 3	Autumn	7, 8, 9
Winter	4, 5, 6	Winter	10, 11, 12

IMPORTANT: The association of the sectors with the seasons only applies to the position of the Earth. For example, the Earth in sector 2 says that in the northern hemisphere Autumn is being experienced whilst in the southern hemisphere it is Spring. Any other planet in sector 2 on a heliogram must not be associated with any season. It is simply sector 2 and should be thought of as a cosmic address. Only the position of the Earth or Sun can be related to the seasons humans know so well.

Mars, like Mercury, has an elliptical orbit around the sun and does not spend the same amount of time in each sector. There are two plotted curves in the graph below. The blue curve indicates the number of days Mars spends in each sector. The rust colored curve plots the counts for the players in each of the sectors. The two curves bear a slight resemblance to each other in places but certainly have some distinct differences as well.

In the table below you can see the count/sector for the players, the number of days Mars spends in each sector. I divided the player count by the number of days and find the number of players born in each sector per day.

Sector 12 sees the most players born per day and this is also reflected in the graph which shows the greatest distance between the player count and the days spent in a sector by Mars. It would be advantageous for the budding soccer star to be born with Mars in sector 12 or sector 8 on their heliogram. Fewer players than expected are born with Mars in sectors 3, 10 or 11.