The State of MLS Analytics
/A couple weeks back, I tweeted a list of MLS teams that employed someone on staff focused on analytics. Unexpectedly, the tweet got a lot of feedback, mostly people urging their favorite team to hire someone, some saying that their club had one that I didn’t include (hello, RBNY twitter), and some critical feedback or concerns. This is great! People caring about analytics in soccer is an unquestioned good from my perspective. However, I did want to be a bit more nuanced about what I mean by analytics and what staff may be considered primarily focused on analytics.
ASA’s own Kevin Minkus wrote Soccer Analytics 101 over at MLSsoccer.com where he defined analytics as “using data and statistics to better understand something.” For the purposes of deciding what MLS teams have an analytics staff member, the “something” is player recruitment and tactical analysis. I’m talking about using numbers and mathematical models (e.g. xG, xA, g+) to help evaluate transfer targets and team and player performance.
The starting point here is math, not video, although video and the eye test will always be an important step in the process. I’m defining this as separate from sports science, where data and statistics are used to mainly evaluate a team’s own players’ physical performance, things like training loads and injury prevention, although some may argue they shouldn't be separated. Furthermore, it is different than business analytics where data and statistics are used to drive more monetary value for a club, but is not focused on the sporting side.
There is no doubt that MLS staff members wear multiple hats. Just because you have the job title of “data analyst” doesn’t mean you won’t be recruited to film a training session, break down video, or drive new players to Canada to get a visa. Similarly, a sports scientist, video analyst, or performance analyst may spend part of their time looking at statistics as part of their work flow. But there is a difference between using analytics as part of your job and analytics being your job.
Many complained about my initial list as not including enough people, but given the definition I laid out above, I may have been too lenient. A source with a good understanding of the state of MLS data analytics provided an additional definition: “Does the team have some level of custom software?” This raises the stakes a bit—it is not just accessing xG stats from something like Opta/TrueMedia’s Provision, Wyscout, or InStat, but building something yourself. This source listed Colorado, Columbus, Houston, LAFC, Nashville, New England, Seattle, and Toronto as definitely meeting this higher bar, with Vancouver and NYCFC perhaps doing so as well.
MLS released a list of analytics practitioners at each club, but some clubs were not listed and many were obviously not primarily analytics staff, such as a head coach. So, based upon public knowledge and private communications, and knowing full well that anyone outside a club can’t really know what is going on inside, here are the tiers of MLS analytics and what we know about each team:
Tier 1: Literally Better Than Liverpool. The clubs use analytics with a full time staff member for recruitment and/or tactical analysis.
Atlanta United: Lucy Rushton, head of technical recruitment & analysis, has been with Atlanta since before Atlanta’s inaugural season, joining from Reading. Rushton has extensive experience with soccer analytics and has said her background is in data and has detailed her role numerous times in numerous publications and media types.
FC Cincinnati: Alexander Schram, director of analytics and strategy, comes from a data science background joining FC Cincinnati from the soccer analytics firm Remiqz. We don’t know much specifically about what FC Cincy is doing with analytics, but from an Q&A with MLSsoccer.com we know they are fans of the N’Golo Kante Index: a center mid's ratio of balls won to balls lost.
Colorado Rapids: This is an obvious one. Fran Taylor, previously profiled on this site by Mark Asher Goodman, is the assistant general manager and co-founder of an analytics company that was purchased by Arsenal. We don’t hear much about what he and data analyst Matt Pfeffer, a former hockey analyst, are doing, but we can be assured that they are among the analytics teams with the most front office influence in MLS.
Columbus Crew: The Crew’s data analyst Alex Mysiw holds a masters in bioinformatics and has been on staff since 2016. The Crew also utilize Villanova professor Bret Myers as an analytics consultant. Again, we don’t hear much about what the Crew are doing in analytics, but General Manager Tim Bezbatchenko has a long history from his time in Toronto.
Houston Dynamo: Houston has ASA alum Sean Steffen as their data analyst so you know they are doing the right things. Previous analyst Oliver Gage moved on to head up on field performance and recruitment for the Canadian Premier League.
LAFC: Max Odenheimer, LAFC’s data analyst, previously published analytics work at StatsBomb. VP of Soccer Operations and Assistant General Manager Will Kuntz has a baseball analytics background and Bob Bradley is a known follower of the analytics community. Kuntz and Bradley talked about analytics on the StatsBomb podcast.
Nashville SC: One of Nashville’s first front office hirings was Oliver Miller-Farrel from Opta, the leading provider of soccer data. He was joined by data analyst and former StatsBomb contributor Caleb Shreve prior to Nashville’s inaugural season.
New England Revolution: Tim Crawford is the longest serving data analyst in MLS. He talked about his role at the 2019 OptaPro Conference in Chicago. Additionally, team video coordinator Todd Kingston joined the Revs from Opta.
Seattle Sounders: Ravi Ramineni, the Sounders director of soccer analytics has been with Seattle since 2012 when he joined from Microsoft. The Sounders are leaders in the field and host a yearly analytics conference.
Toronto FC: Devin Pleuler is the director of analytics for Toronto. He wrote an analytics column for MLSSoccer.com and worked for Opta prior to joining Toronto. Pleuler is one of the world leaders in the soccer analytics space and routinely presents at conferences such as Sloan and NESSIS. He has also been profiled in The Athletic.
Tier 1.5: Definitely Know What xG Is. These clubs have video/performance/sports scientists that are comfortable with and use analytics but are not full-time analytics staff.
New York Red Bulls: The Red Bulls hired Natasha Patel as head of performance analysis last year joining from Southampton. Patel was brought in “to oversee and expand the club’s use of analytics in areas including opposition scouting, game preparation and player evaluation from the first team through the academy.” No doubt she has plenty of analytics experience, but that doesn't appear to be her primary role at RBNY. Although we don’t know how much analytics support the larger Red Bull network provides, but we do know that Jesse Marsch was passing around ASA articles in the locker room when he was head coach.
New York City FC: Daniel Fradley is the head of performance analysis for NYCFC. Again, we don’t know what he is doing in the analytics space (beyond the use of xG) or what support NYCFC gets from City Football Group.
Vancouver Whitecaps: The Whitecaps have invested heavily into sports science, hiring multiple PhDs in the field, headed by Ben Sporer including data scientist Johann Windt. Vancouver is obviously taking a data based approach, but based on my recruitment-and-tactics definition of analytics, they don’t quite make Tier One.
Tier 2: Watched Moneyball but the Book Was Too Long. Clubs here have either at least one dedicated analytics staff member in name or a front office member with prior data analytics experience who has moved up within the organization. I was unable to find out much about what they do and there is little to no public work about them. Any of these could easily move up a tier with additional info. If you work for one of these clubs feel free to let us know what you are actually doing or that you did read the book.
Charlotte FC: Mark Simpson was announced as head of analytics on March 2, 2020. Simpson was recently the technical director of North Carolina Fusion, a youth club that is associated with Seattle that also has the sad distinction of changing the greatest rip-off logo in American soccer when they took over the Greeensboro USL-2 team. Simpson will also coach Charlotte FC’s U-14 academy team. Simpson does not appear to have any publicly available analytics work, so for now Charlotte will sit in Tier 2 until we find out more about his role. Additionally, Charlotte FC has hired Vincent van Raam as a scout who has experience with data scouting especially in South America.
DC United: Stewart Mairs is the technical director at DC United having previously served as director of strategy and analysis. Mairs previously worked for Prozone, one of the commercial pioneers in analytics, and for the USWNT as a performance analyst. DC does not currently employ a dedicated data analyst, though ASA contributor Sam Goldberg was previously with the club.
FC Dallas: Fredy Herrera serves as the data analyst and video coordinator, but the extent of his analytics role is unknown. MLSSoccer.com also listed assistant coach Mikey Varas as liaising with their third party analytics provider Kin Analytics.
Orlando City: According to Orlando City’s scouting director, Ricardo Moreira, the club hired a data analyst in early 2020. We don’t know the role or name of this person.
Philadelphia Union: Dean Costalas is a scout and data analyst for the Union. His background is in coaching and business but we do not know what his analytics work entails.
Real Salt Lake: Vahe Tanielian is the director of data analytics for RSL. He has a finance background and his only publicly available analytics publication is related to NBA salaries.
Tier 3: The Game's Not Played on a Spreadsheet, Mate. These clubs do not have an analytics staffer listed on their club site and have not reported other staffers using analytics. These clubs may use contractors or farm out their data recruitment and/or tactical analysis to analytics companies (e.g. StatsBomb, 21st Club, SciSports, etc.).
Austin FC: The expansion club is still building their staff and has yet to hire a data analyst to our knowledge. Austin FC had a job listing for a director of sports science and analytics that had some very stringent job requirements.
Chicago Fire: While Chicago does not have a data analyst on staff, Hart Zwingelberg, the senior manager of business analytics, perhaps does some analytics work on the sporting side. The Fire also “work with a number of analytic consultants, both independently and abroad, including Driblab.”
LA Galaxy: According to MLS, general manager Dennis te Klose heads up analytics for the Galaxy.
Minnesota United: According to MLS, director of player personnel Amos Magee heads up analytics for Minnesota. Based upon personal experience in January 2019, Minnesota has multiple people contributing in some capacity in the analytics space, but no one person focused on it.
Montreal Impact: According to MLS, general manager Vassili Cremanzidis heads up analytics for Montreal. He has experience as a performance analyst and his role is described as “managing the first team’s salary cap, as well as preparing and structuring player contracts.”
Inter Miami: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Portland Timbers: Portland Timbers do not currently have a data analyst. When in college, one-time ASA contributor Brendan Kent served as their data analyst.
San Jose Earthquakes: According to MLS, head coach Matias Almeyda heads up analytics for the Quakes with help from “an external data science expert and a machine-learning team from a renowned local university” **coughStanford** and previously partnered with Second Spectrum, the same company that now collects tracking data league-wide..
Sporting Kansas City: Ash Wallace is SKC’s tactical analyst and was listed by MLS as their analytics practitioner. We don’t know his analytics expertise, and, given that Peter Vermes is an “analytics guru,” maybe no one else is needed. Current Kansas House of Representatives member Rui Xu was formerly SKC’s performance and statistical analyst.