Soccer, when viewed through a lens pulled back wide enough is basically an exercise in futility. There are so many ways that players are prevented from accomplishing their most basic directive of kicking the ball over that goal line. Some of these are personal failings. Some are systemic. Some are manufactured. Some, of course, are just your no frills varietal of lousy luck.
Read MoreWhen the season started this year, there were a lot of questions floating around the Western conference. Will LAFC make it back into the playoffs. Will Nashville take the next step and be a shield contender? Can anyone stop Seattle?
In hindsight, these questions are quite silly, considering how these storylines played out, but that’s the type of thing only hindsight can bring. In reality, making predictions about MLS, especially before a game is even played, is very difficult. Heck, even with the right data, making predictions in MLS is hard.
There is also the matter of humans being bad at interpreting probability in general. Below are the playoff odds for the Western Conference going into decision day, and, as you can see, we have seen some major changes in probabilities.
Read MoreAmerican Soccer Analysis introduced the metric g+ (goals added) back in May of 2020. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that it has changed the very way people think about and discuss soccer. Ok, that’s a bit of an overstatement, but it’s NOT an overstatement to say that in the two ensuing years, people have definitely looked at the g+ tables and gone “Maynor Figueroa? REALLY?”
Read MoreThe MLS playoff season is fast approaching, and with 2-3 games left to go (depending on the team), we are now into the part of the season where the question of who is going make the playoffs is a desperate one for teams on the bubble. In the interest of fueling the existential dread of these fanbases, and, in keeping with the ASA tradition of releasing our playoff model projections whenever we get to them, we remembered that we should probably release those. So, without further ado, as I know half the readers will be gamblers wanting the good stuff up front, here are those projections.
Read MoreWhile valuations of offensive actions in soccer are, by no means, perfect, they are still significantly more accurate and meaningful than how we evaluate defensive actions and players’ defensive contributions. In a challenge-accepted moment of weakness, we took a stab at better assigning a Goals Added (g+) equivalent for defense: g- (“g minus”). What we’re about to share will blow your mind reinforce just how hard it is to quantify the value of an individual’s defensive actions, but hopefully I can also entertain you down this rabbit hole we’ve been playing around in for more than a year.
Read MoreIn May, I took a look at pressing data, trying to assess where teams had shifted from last season to this one. Considering most places where MLS is played are experiencing summer weather, I figured it was time to check back in on how MLS clubs handled the heat and more than half a season of minutes on players’ legs. Part of the impetus for digging into pressing data now is to try to understand how things have changed since May.
Read MoreAmerican Soccer Analysis has been in the analytics game since 2013, and, early on in this project, we noticed something that’s always troubled us when it comes to taking the seminal analytics studies and concepts developed in Europe and applying it to an MLS data-set. To put it frankly, they don’t work as well.
Read MoreThis is the first article of what we are terming The Replication Project where we take an important soccer analytics finding from yesteryear and see if it still holds up with modern data. While this can be just a straightforward replication, it can also lead down some rabbit holes as you will find in this first installment where we look at whether the claim that xG is the best predictor of future performance still holds up.
Read MoreIf you’re reading this, you’ve seen the headlines. $2.5 BILLION dollars for Major League Soccer. A relationship with APPLE. NO Blackouts!
The last domestic TV deal signed in 2015 totaled roughly $720 million, so this seems like a pretty big step up. Perhaps MLS will finally be a league of choice. It is 2022 after all.
As usual, to get at something closer to the truth we must go beneath the headlines. There are a few drivers of the headline value that need to be unwound to determine just where we might expect MLS to go from here and how this might transform the quality on the pitch.
Read MoreAsk anybody around my age (now pretty old!) to describe their first experience playing Pokemon Red or Blue, and they can probably tell you. From Professor Oak being unsure of your gender, to the feeling when you first venture into the grass to wrangle a Rattata, those first moments of stepping into a much bigger world are seared onto our consciousnesses even decades past the game’s release.
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