Welcome to another edition of the #asaroundtable, ASA’s weekly discussion forum. This week, our question comes from one of our regular contributors, Cheuk Hei Ho. If you have any questions you want asked, feel free to hit us up @AnalysisEvolved, or email us at americansocceranalysis@gmail.com. Cheuk, take it away.
Read MoreOur model gives LAFC a 65% chance to win MLS Cup, which is admittedly an absurdly high figure. Such a figure requires that LAFC have, on average, greater than 85% chances of winning each of three games on their way to the championship. Despite getting all three of those games at home, 85% still feels almost impossible against some good teams. So I’m here to break down what factors are giving LAFC such good chances in our model, and why that model is “wrong.”
Let’s do it like this. LAFC is most likely to play Minnesota in the second round, a team that adequately represents the caliber of a typical MLS playoff team that LAFC will face. For reference, Minnesota was second in the conference in goal differential (GD) and third in the conference in expected goal differential (xGD). I’ll start as though Minnesota were playing itself on a neutral field, and then I’ll layer in the various factors that make LAFC different, and that get us to more than 85% chances of winning a knockout matchup.
Read MoreIf you’re reading this website, you probably already know Carlos Vela has been quite good at soccer over the last several months. You probably even know that he set some records. If you’re a truly astute observer and loyal reader <link to old story>, you’ll even know the numbers he passed to set some of those records. Now that the regular season is over, let’s take a look at those marks - old and new - and look ahead at playoff records that he (or Zlatan, or Josef Martinez, or really any number of players) might take down in the coming weeks.
Read MoreDuring the Renaissance era, the English language went through a revolution where vowel pronunciation radically changed. This was known as The Great Vowel Shift, and ultimately led to modern English. Similarly, in the late 2010s, goal kicks were revolutionized in what I am calling The Great Goal Kick Shift. Seemingly a worldwide phenomenon, the location where goal kicks were taken rapidly shifted from their traditional location at the corners of the 6-yard box towards the center of the field.
Read MoreRecently, this tweet created a small firestorm in the soccer analytics community. While it is unclear the source of the error, it was pretty clear that there weren’t 1,300 passes and 50 shots in an English League 2 match. This led to responses from prominent analysts such as StatsBomb’s Ted Knutson (including on his podcast [starts at 10:45]), Opta’s (and ASA alum) Tom Worville and Ryan Bahia, and Chris Anderson, author of The Numbers Game. All of them were saying pretty much the same thing: question the data you are using. If the data you are using to analyze a problem is not valid, then your solutions won’t be either.
So what do we know about the data that is used for soccer analysis? Previous studies have shown that people are pretty good at agreeing about what type of event occured in a soccer game (e.g. shots, tackles). But as far as I can tell, the accuracy and precision of locations of game events among the various data providers has not been studied. As Joe Mulberry pointed out when looking at the troubling inconsistencies between spatial tracking data and event data, small differences in locations can have big effects on downstream analysis including expected goals (xG) models. In other words, small inconsistencies in how data is tracked can have big consequences for the models built off that data. So what are the differences between how soccer data providers collect and report their data?
Read MoreThe year 2019 brought a new Crew. Anthony Precourt got his wish and slithered away to Austin, while head coach and sporting director Gregg Berhalter began his rehabilitation of the US national team, leaving behind five years of solid results in Columbus. Replacing them was a new ownership group and front office led by the Haslam and Edwards families. Toronto FC’s Tim Bezbatchenko came in to lead the Crew’s soccer operations and former MLS Champion Caleb Porter took over as the head coach. With the smallest offseason turnover of a perennial playoff team, expectations were that Porter would provide a steady hand for continued success this season. However, that hasn’t happened and Columbus remains third to last in the Eastern Conference with only a game left in the season. Did the transition fail to succeed because Porter couldn’t implement his vision, or because that vision just didn’t work?
Read MoreThe premise of this column, for anyone new, is that we take the five highest valued shots from open play according to our expected goal model, and dissect the plays while talking about the players, the teams, and how our model works (or sometimes doesn’t). Sometimes I just yell into the wind about crossing.
Let’s see what we’ve got.
Read MoreAmidst another difficult season for the Colorado Rapids, a few changes have provided hope for the club and its supporters. Sacking Anthony Hudson was long overdue after a season and a half of shaky leadership, poor results, and a feeling that the team was falling behind newer and better run MLS franchises. The change in manager, plus the addition of various proven MLS vets like Nicolas Mezquida, Clint Irwin, Sam Nicholson, and Keegan Rosenberry; undervalued young talents such as Lalas Abubakar and Jonathan Lewis; and the development of homegrown talents Cole Bassett, Sam Vines, and Sebastian Anderson has reinvigorated the squad and given fans hope for an improved season in 2020. However, this has left many of the players acquired under Hudson in limbo. Will they form a part of the Rapids core moving forward, or will they be victims of another Rocky Mountain rebuild? One player who has proven his value to the team—albeit in an unusual way—is also one of the least talked about around the league. That player is Jack Price.
*Hold for applause*
Read MoreThere’s a great little line of dialogue in the 1993 film ‘True Romance’* where Christian Slater tells Saul Rubinek “You have to come to terms with your fear and desire.” This is a phrase I love so much that I would put it in a sermon, if it weren’t for the fact that there’s simply no good way to quote Quentin Tarantino from the pulpit.
Fear and desire - that is the perfect expression for MLS' odd relationship towards the domestic Latinx** market. It also applies well to how MLS and Mexico's Liga MX soccer begin out their strange and exciting new venture, as the two have planned for an expanded 'Leagues' Cup' competition, and are exploring the possibility of interleague play and perhaps more.
Read MoreHere at American Soccer Analysis we try to publish cutting edge articles on soccer that don’t rely on narrative, anecdote, or lazy comparison, preferring instead to rely on data, experimentation, and a ruthless questioning of all of our own previously held beliefs. As you might surmise from this somewhat pompous description, doing that is hard, and our writers have more opinions and insights than we could possibly publish. That is why we are coming out with a new series, the ASA roundtable, a weekly discussion between our contributors on questions facing the soccer and soccer analytics communities today. We look forward to your feedback, and if you want to submit a question just tweet it to @analysisevolved or email us!
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