WEEK 2 - World Cup: Why Brazil should have won.

World Cup: Why Brazil should have won

By Richard Allen Greene, CNN

July 14, 2014 -- Updated 1055 GMT (1855 HKT)

 (CNN) -- It's all over now. Germany won the World Cup, which can't have surprised anyone who watched it demolish Brazil en route to the championship.

But according to CNN's calculations, Brazil should have taken home the trophy.

While Lionel Messi was battling Thomas Muller to be the tournament's top goal scorer, while Tim Howard and Guillermo Ochoa were batting away shots on goal, while Roy Hodgson and Fabio Capello were stalking the sidelines, CNN was looking at the bigger picture.

We started with the FIFA world ranking for each team going into the World Cup, starting with Spain ranked number one, all the way down to Australia at 62.

Then we looked at how much each country was paying its manager.

Russia topped that table, paying Capello nearly $11.5 million a year, according to Nick Harris of Sporting Intelligence. England came a distant second, with Italy, Brazil and Switzerland rounding out the top five.

Soccer-mad Mexico came dead last, paying manager Miguel Herrera about $214,000.

Next we added in each country's population size, since bigger countries have larger pools to draw potential soccer stars from. The United States was the biggest country to qualify, followed by Brazil, Nigeria, Russia and Japan. Bosnia-Herzegovina and Uruguay were the smallest, both with populations under 4 million.

Then we averaged the three measures -- ranking, manager salary and population size -- to come up with our own prediction for how each team would fare in the World Cup.

Our predicted winner: Brazil. It was the second-largest country in the tournament, ranked third in the world by FIFA, and with manager Luiz Felipe Scolari's $3.8 million salary putting him fourth.

It fared well enough in the group stages, but once things got serious, the hosts completely fell apart, conceding 10 goals in their last two matches and scoring only 1.

That left it in 4th place, three below where we predicted it should end up.

Germany, on the other hand, overperformed, but not by much.

We picked it to come second, and it came first, for a rating of +1.

Our statistics also tell us who the biggest over- and under-achievers of the tournament were.

Some are obvious. The numbers suggest Costa Rica should have come 27th overall, but it trounced the big boys in the Group of Death and came out 8th, by FIFA's official statistics.

Second-place Argentina also did far better than our predictions.

Yes, it was ranked fifth in the world going into the tournament, but it didn't shell out big money for a manager -- Alejandro Sabella was the 22nd-best paid coach -- and Argentina falls in the middle of the population table. Of course, having Messi be one member of that population makes a difference, even if the Hand of God didn't touch him in the final.

Spain, on the other hand, was a giant dud. Ranked third in the CNN table, it actually came 23rd.

Only one nation came out worse: England. Ranked 10th in the world, with the second-best paid manager and and the 11th-largest population, we think it should have come fifth. It came 26th.

Italy and Russia also suffered in our rankings, partly for paying their managers so handsomely. We say Italy should have come third, not 22nd, and Russia should have tied at sixth place with the United States.

Russia actually came 24th, while Team USA came 15th.

The numbers also show one remarkable coincidence. On paper, Belgium and Greece are almost identical.

Belgium was ranked 11th by FIFA. Greece was ranked 12th.

Both have populations of about 11 million people, and the two nations paid their managers exactly the same salary.

Both teams did better than we predicted.

We picked Greece to come 18th, but it managed 13th.

Belgium did even better, coming sixth, nine places higher than our calculations suggested.

CNN's Patrick Sung, Manuela Lanza and John Sinnott contributed to this report.

From : http://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/14/sport/football/world-cup-cnn-who-should-have-won/index.html?iid=article_sidebar

where-Brazil 
when-July 14, 2014
why-Germany won the champion, but the calculation shows that Brazil should have won it.
who- Brazil soccer team
what- explain why Brazil should won the 1st in FIFA World Cup in three mainly viewpoints.
how- Due to different populations, salary paid to the coach and the rank during the forehead tournament.

WORDS TO KNOW:
trophy - 錦標
tournament - 錦標賽
stalk - 悄悄走近
concede - 失球

dud - 無用的人

WEEK 1 - What happened with Asiana Flight 214?

What happened with Asiana Flight 214?

updated 10:00 PM EDT, Fri July 12, 2013

Asiana Airlines Flight 214 originated in Seoul, South Korea, destined for San Francisco. Here's what we know about Saturday's crash landing. 
Full story »

3 minutes
BEFORE IMPACT

The flight descended faster and more steeply than previous flights on this same route.

The graph to the right, showing approximate altitude data from FlightAware.com, displays approach information from the same flight the day before the crash and Saturday's approach, which indicates a steeper decline in altitude.

Note: NTSB investigators have found nothing to corroborate online flight tracking records, such as the ones shown here, that Saturday's Flight 214 descended from cruising altitude much more steeply and rapidly than previous Asiana flights on the same route. The National Transportation Safety Board says it found no "abnormally steep descent data."

7 seconds
BEFORE IMPACT

A preliminary readout from the flight data and cockpit voice recorders shows the aircraft was approaching well below the target landing speed of 137 knots (157 mph).

At seven seconds before impact, the pilots are heard acknowledging the slow speed and attempted to spool up the engines to increase the plane's speed.

4 seconds
BEFORE IMPACT

At four seconds, the plane's computer triggers a "stick-shaker" warning, indicating an impending aerodynamic stall. A stall occurs when there is not enough airspeed to sustain lift to keep the aircraft in flight.

3 seconds
BEFORE IMPACT

The flight data recorder shows the lowest recorded airspeed during the approach, at 103 knots (118 mph). At this time, the engine power was recorded at 50% and increasing.

One of the crew members call out for a "go-around," an attempt to abort the landing. Both engines were producing power up to the time of impact, according to investigators.

1.5 seconds
BEFORE IMPACT

At 1.5 seconds before impact, a second call for a go-around is made, this time by another member of the crew.

Passengers on board describe hearing the engines spooling up and the nose tilting up just before impact.

Impact

The flight data recorder indicated an airspeed of 106 knots (122 mph) at the time of the crash, well below the targeted 137 knots.

According to investigators, the plane's main landing gear struck the rock sea wall well before the start of the runway, followed by the tail section of the aircraft.

NTSB investigators discovered the lower portion of the tail cone in the rocks of the sea wall, as well as a significant piece of the tail found in the water. Additional parts were reportedly visible in the water at low tide.

Watch exclusive video of the crash landing 

Three flight attendants in the rear of the plane were ejected from the aircraft during impact, and were found injured beside the runway.

The debris field runs from the water, slightly right of the paved threshold and runway center, all the way to the stopped aircraft fuselage. Pieces of the cabin were discovered very early on in the debris field, including aircraft parts, galley materials, newspapers, and magazines, according to investigators.

One of the eight doors on the aircraft was separated during the impact. The remaining seven doors were found attached to the fuselage.

The rest of the Boeing 777's tail section, including its vertical and horizontal stabilizers, was found near the end of the paved threshold, just before the start of the runway. Total loss of the tail section would have made the aircraft extremely difficult to control.

The fuselage came to rest off the left side of the runway, and it's pointed toward the right.

The right engine is detached from the wing and wedged against the right side of the fuselage, catching fire due to an oil tank rupture. The left engine detached from the wing during the crash and is a considerable distance from the fuselage in a grassy area to the right of Runway 28L.

After impact

Most of the fire damage to the aircraft occurred after the Boeing 777 came to a stop on its belly, but most of the passengers were able to evacuate before fire breached the passenger cabin. Passengers described the cabin interior as heavily damaged, with overhead bins dropping and two life raft/escape slides inflating inside the aircraft, trapping two flight attendants, whom passengers and other crew members helped free.

The coroner says one of the two passengers killed appears to have been run over by an emergency vehicle, but final cause of death has not been determined. Asiana has identified the two deceased as Ye Mengyuan and Wang Linjia of China. Both were 16.

The crew

There were three pilots in the cockpit at the time of the crash, according to crew interviews conducted by investigators.

The "flying pilot" -- as NTSB chairman Deborah Hersman referred to him -- was a veteran pilot with nearly 10,000 hours of total flying time, though he was in his "initial operating experience" in flying the Boeing 777. He had flown 10 legs and had about 35 hours of flying time with the 777, which put him about halfway through the required training of 20 legs and 60 flight hours, when the plane went down, Hersman said.

Sitting next to the "flying pilot" in the right seat was an instructor pilot -- another veteran captain with an estimated 13,000 hours of total flying time. The instructor pilot told investigators he was the pilot in command at the time of the crash. This was the first time he and the pilot he was instructing had flown together, and the first time he had acted as an instructor pilot.

In the cockpit jumpseat was a relief first officer with an estimated 900 - 1,000 hours of flying time on the 777.

A fourth pilot, the relief captain, was seated in the passenger cabin during the crash. The relief captain and relief first officer had flown the aircraft during the cruise portion of the trans-Pacific flight, allowing the flying pilot and instructor pilot to rest and eat during the flight.

Of the pilots in the cockpit, only the relief first officer was injured -- neither of the two pilots at the controls were admitted to the hospital. The pilots did not undergo drug or alcohol testing after Saturday's crash landing, Hersman said. The United States does not have "oversight" of foreign-based operators or their crews.

From： http://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2013/07/us/asiana-214/index.html

where-San Francisco

when-July 6, 2013

who-all the passengers and crew on Asiana Flight 214

what-the plane crashed when lading

why-Saturday's Flight 214 descended from cruising altitude much more steeply 

        and rapidly than previous Asiana flights on the same route.

how- Because the plane were flying much higher than usual attitude when approaching, 

         the pilot descended the plane but too extremely, the plane crashed eventually due to stall.

Keywords:

preliminary - 初步的

readout - 判讀

impending - 即將到來的

aerodynamic - 空氣動力學

abort - 中止

cone - 錐體

rear - 後面

eject - 噴出

debris - 碎片

fuselage - 飛機機身

detach - 分離

rupture - 破裂

veteran - 老將;資深者