Chicago Fire 2019 Season Preview
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A successful 2019 season for the Chicago Fire will be predicated on making up for the miscues of their 2018 offseason.
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FC Dallas 2019 Season Preview
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The 2018 season for FC Dallas feels like a lifetime ago, thanks in large part to massive changes the club undergone during the offseason. The face and heartbeat of the club, Oscar Pareja, left for a new challenge and after his departure the roster and coaching staff were overhauled in a matter of weeks. With the change comes a new wind of hope and optimism, especially when you hear the way newly minted head coach and former FCD Academy Director Luchi Gonzalez speaks so eloquently about his vision for Dallas in 2019, and how the newly formed North Texas Soccer Club will help bridge more FCD players from the Academy and the first team.
Read MoreOrlando City SC 2019 Season Preview
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It was the worst of times. 2018 is a year that Orlando City fans could forget if it didn’t make up 25% of the team’s MLS existence. No, the dull scab of mediocrity that Orlando had become finally broke sometime in April of last year and the rest of the league was there to season aggressively with rock salt. Jason Kreis was dismissed, and while that was indeed understandable, James O’Connor’s task of righting a sinking ship has now unfortunately shifted into excavating a wreck. In a league that has had no shortage of underachievers in its youth and adolescence, Orlando’s 2018 was a special kind of dark comedy. They stepped on every conceivable rake, went out, purchased several new rakes at great expense, and then stepped on all of those as well.
Read MoreWhat it takes to win the Champions League
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There's something great about knockout tournaments, especially involving teams that are completely unfamiliar with each other. NCAA March Madness and the World Cup are perfect examples; seeing your favorite team play against a relative unknown like Murray St. or Ghana carries a little extra intrigue than your average game against a conference opponent. For MLS fans, CONCACAF Champions League embodies this opportunity.
Increasingly, CCL has been painted as an MLS vs. Liga MX referendum, one in which MLS teams steadily gain but never overtake Mexico's dominant position in the region. But lost in that narrative is that CCL includes teams from a handful of other countries, too. These MLS-Liga MX matchups will get the majority of publicity (starting with Sporting KC-Toluca in the first knockout round), but seven other MLS/Liga MX teams have to knock off Central American or Caribbean opponents before those glamour matchups are set in stone. If you think these first round matchups are just a formality, just ask an FC Dallas fan how their campaign went last year (spoiler alert: they lost to Panamanian side Tauro before they even got to face a Mexican team).
Read MoreMachine Learning the Crew
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Machine learning is so hot right now and if Skynet is going to destroy all humans, it should at least know a little bit about Major League Soccer’s Columbus Crew. To wit, I created a machine learning model to classify which position in a Gregg Berhalter 4-2-3-1 formation a player most likely played in during a single game.
I chose the Crew for a couple reasons. First, they are my favorite team. Second, they had consistent coaching for a long period of time with a defined style of play. The latter is very important, as the model has to be trained well in order for the results to make sense. Since the Crew almost always played a 4-2-3-1 that relied on ball possession to disorganize the defense and create goal opportunities (get used to that phrase USMNT fans) it was a perfect test of whether this kind of thing could be done.
Read MoreInteractive Tables Update
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We recently updated the app with a few more bells and whistles so that you can make more noise. I explained the xGoal model changes earlier(link), so here I’ll highlight the app’s key updates. We’ve made the app accessible publicly, we’ve integrated compensation into the data tabs, and we’ve improved sidebar filter options.
Read MoreModel Update: Coefficient Blending
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With our most recent app update, you might notice that some numbers in the xGoals tables have changed for past years where it wouldn’t normally make sense to see changes. As an example, Josef Martinez had 29.2 xG in 2018, but updated app shows 28.7 (-1.7%). No, this is not an Atlanta effect, though I can understand why you might support such an effect. Gyasi Zardes lost 0.5 xG as well (-2.4%), and no one dislikes Columbus.
We have updated our xGoal models with the 2018 season’s data, and that is the culprit of all the discrepancies since the last version of the app. I have already cited the largest two discrepancies by magnitude, so this isn’t some major overhaul of the model. In fact, only 2018’s xG values have been materially adjusted.* The new model estimated 35.6 fewer xGoals in 2018 than it did before, equivalent to a 2.8% drop.
Read MoreHow to find Transfer Market Success in MLS
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Analyzing Foreign Transfers to MLS with Survival Analysis
Finding success in the global transfer market is a critical part of a winning MLS season. While the U.S. is obviously progressing as a soccer nation, there just aren’t enough talented players from this country to satisfy its growing thirst for exciting play and trophies. Still, signing players that are unfamiliar with MLS has also been a risky prospect. Foreign signings with poor outcomes can waste valuable international roster spots, and destroy a team’s budget in a relatively low-spending league. However, Atlanta United and LAFC have shown that signing players who can contribute immediately can make an expansion team an immediate contender. Understanding the historical structural patterns in the success and failure of past MLS teams could offer insights into navigating these decisions, for both future teams and those who need players for 2019 and beyond. Obviously, the most important considerations for signing a player have to do with style of play and personality, but understanding general hotspots and mistakes could improve the odds of signing foreign players who succeed in MLS.
Read MoreA Tale of Two Central Defensive Midfielders
/Michael Bradley and Wil Trapp share several obvious qualities. They are both captains for club and country. They are both smooth passing defensive midfielders, and they both possess excellent heads of hair. Another similarity is that they rarely shoot or score goals, each collecting only one goal over the last three seasons. Coincidentally, both of those goals are what we could enthusiastically describe as "wonder-goals." Bradley's long-distance chip for the US national team in a World Cup qualifier against Mexico at the Azteca (a goal not remembered as fondly as it deserves due to the rest of qualifying) and Trapp for the Crew to win a match in stoppage time against Orlando City this past summer. However, one difference between these two players was how each responded to the confidence boost that came after scoring a once-in-a-career goal.
Read MoreGoing to WAR for Points Above Replacement in Soccer
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Baseball popularized the use of the Wins Above Replacement (WAR) statistic; representing a player’s estimated contribution to a team’s win tally above what a generic replacement would contribute. In this sense, it’s a roster management tool to support a keep/replace decision. However, WAR stats are often used by others for general performance comparisons. But soccer (or football if you like) does not have widespread use of a WAR-like statistic.
In soccer, performance indices are typically confidential and proprietary, making it difficult to verify their validity. Teams and analysts, understandably so, do not want to give away their competitive advantage. And those that are shared publicly, do not usually describe values in terms of team performance, or comparisons to replacements.
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