Nearly everyone loves football and people definitely like talking about it. So when it’s the World Cup, the talk is just non-stop about the players, the performance, the goals, the diving, and the fake fouls. But people rarely have numbers to back up a point or argument with their friends.

Step in Hotwire, who presented an idea to its business intelligence client, Information Builders, to analyse every game of the 2006 World Cup for the quirky and more interesting side of football. Who cares about possession, tackles, and pass completion, when you can get data on the number of dives, tantrums, wrong-offsides, and where goals where scored? What is more, the statistics would be presented in a format (based on an Information Builders product) that would allow people to do their own analysis (such as by country, player, etc.) and to draw their own conclusions. The talk would definitely get more interesting!