August 04, 2020

Defining Roles: How Every Player Contributes to Goals

August 04, 2020/ ASA Staff

Formations are a lie, for the most part. We all know this by now; learning a team’s formation generally tells you very little about how they play. One reason for this is that positions are also a lie. Nani and Diego Rossi are both wingers on paper, but anyone who watches the two knows that they play very differently. We’ve made more specific terms, like inverted winger, to help describe the difference. But what if you hadn’t seen a player play yet? What if you’d like some objective way to define a player’s role beyond just their position? Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a data-driven way of determining a playstyle that we could use to give us an idea of how a winger...wings?

July 28, 2020

G+Boost: Measuring What Happens After the Pass

July 28, 2020/ John Muller

What makes a passer good?

Completed passes are better than incomplete, and more passes seem like they’re probably better than fewer, so you might start with the proposition that a player who attempts a lot of passes with a high success rate is a good passer. Darlington Nagbe got a lot of this kind of praise after the group stage of the pandemic tournament.

July 24, 2020

Determining the Best Lineup Formation for Controlling the Field

July 24, 2020/ Sam Goldberg

From video games, to board games, to athletic competitions, having a well thought out strategy is vital to winning a game. In soccer, a major part of this pre-game strategy is deciding upon the formation, shape, and structure for a team to play. A variety of different factors would persuade a coach to structure their team into different offensive and defensive structures on a game to game basis. Some of these factors include, but are certainly not limited to: strength of squad, opposition strengths, squad availability, perceived space available, and more. Moreover, formations often are fluid and can change at half time or during the game based on a coaches instruction.

This article will analyze certain formations and shapes that are more spatially beneficial to offensive teams than defensive teams, and vice versa, and will be validated through both original metrics and metrics already used within the field.

July 22, 2020

An Ode to Christian Pulisic

July 22, 2020/ Kieran Doyle-Davis

We are now well and truly back with the return of English football and to everyone’s shock and horror, Christian Pulisic is still really good! Since the return of the EPL hee bagged the equalizer against Aston Villa with a hard back post run and a more-difficult-than-it-looked half volley into the roof of the goal, then scored one of the most hilariously pacey solo goals I’ve ever seen to open the scoring against Manchester City. Soon after, without scoring, he lifted Chelsea out of one of the worst halves of their season against Leicester with dynamic pressing and outrageously direct transition dribbling. He followed up those performances with assists against West Ham, Watford and Norwich, and a really impressive weak footed finish against Crystal Palace. Like I said, he’s really good.

July 17, 2020

What Each Goalkeeper Needs to do to Advance in the Challenge Cup

July 17, 2020/ Bill Reno

Win or go home! After four games each participating NWSL team (RIP Orlando Pride) faces off in a do or die situation. With the group stage done, now it’s time to look ahead to what each goalkeeper needs to do to push their team into the semifinals of the NWSL Challenge Cup.

July 16, 2020

MLS Is Back: Week One Highs And Lows

July 16, 2020/ Carl Carpenter

My excellent colleagues at ASA have done some terrific work in rolling out Goals Added (g+) the past couple months, putting out methodology articles, and finding new and creative ways to assess player performance on the pitch through this metric. We highly recommend you read the articles linked above, but g+ is the model we built to assign value to every single on-ball action that happens in a soccer game. The return of MLS has given us at ASA the first extended period of which to use this g+ data since the league’s restart, so through the medium of video analysis I will be looking at some of the major actions of g+ during the first week of action. I’ll be giving context to the numbers behind it: where the players did well, where they did poorly, and why g+ afforded them the values they were given!

July 15, 2020

The Most Interesting Teams in the NWSL Challenge Cup So Far

July 15, 2020/ ASA Staff

The preliminary rounds of the Challenge Cup are wrapped up. The seeds are set.

While the first few games saw teams experiment with styles of play and roster rotation (at least for some teams), teams now have to put the pieces together as the knockout rounds begin. We looked at the performances of a couple teams to see where they’re succeeding, and more importantly, what they need to improve upon to be successful in their knockout matches. Here's a look at four of the teams we found most interesting thus far.

July 14, 2020

Ranking the Top 10 Defenses in MLS History

July 14, 2020/ Jared Young

The accuracy of Paul Bryant’s mantra “defense wins championships” has long been debated. A more defendable line would have been “defense improves your chance of winning championships,” but no one was ever quoted for being overly precise. However the phrasing, a dig through the archives of Major League Soccer history reveals the old adage still has merit. There have been 41 teams in the league’s 24 regular seasons that allowed 1.1 goals per game or fewer. All 41 of those teams made the playoffs.

41 of 41.

100 percent.

Seven of those teams lifted the MLS Cup, a pretty darn good return of one every six times. Defense might not win championships, but it certainly appears to improve the odds.

July 10, 2020

NWSL Challenge Cup Goalkeeper Power Rankings: Round Three

July 10, 2020/ Bill Reno

We’ve made it through round three of the NWSL Challenge Cup and there’s a new top dog in the house, with some solid performances from new faces! Be sure to catch up on our round one and round two recaps, but round three was the strongest round by far for goalkeepers, so let’s get into it.

July 08, 2020

NWSL Challenge Cup Goalkeeper Power Rankings: Round Two

July 08, 2020/ Bill Reno

Two rounds down, two more to go, and then the real action starts: knockout rounds! Read up on last week’s goalkeeping round up here, if you’re a true goalkeeping nerd.

1.) Alyssa Naeher (Chicago Red Stars) - Naeher wasn’t featured against the Portland Thorns. Return later in the week for a recap on round three or scroll down to see how Emily Boyd and Cassie Miller did in her stead.

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