2023 MLS Analytics Survey

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2023 MLS Analytics Survey

Every year, we update the State of MLS Analytics by putting teams into tiers based upon how many analytics staff they have. However, the number of analytics staff members doesn’t necessarily say anything about the quality of work that a club is producing or if analytics is being incorporated into team decision making. And unfortunately, we can never really know what is going on inside a club’s analytics department. This year, though, we decided to do the best we could to get behind the scenes and asked club analytics staff for their input.

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State of MLS Analytics: May 2023

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State of MLS Analytics: May 2023

Over the last few years, analytics in MLS has been turned on its head. Five years ago, if a team had one person “doing analytics,” it was a big deal. Now, questions are asked if a club doesn’t - and it is not uncommon for clubs to have multiple people on staff. The Tiers of MLS Analytics are now based upon the number of full time analytics staff members a club employs.

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BOTHALTEROUT: Training an AI to hate the USMNT

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BOTHALTEROUT: Training an AI to hate the USMNT

The United States Men’s National Team Twitter community is an interesting place. While there is lots of good stuff there, like detailed tactical analysis and extensive coverage of every bounce pass, there is also a large contingent of people that seem to hate everything about soccer in this country. Win or lose, you’ll see them in the replies of many tweets from US Soccer or journalists confidently expressing why whatever just happened is bad for the current and future state of American soccer and they have the solution.

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The State of MLS Analytics Ahead of the 2021 Season

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The State of MLS Analytics Ahead of the 2021 Season

This is an update to last Summer’s article on the state of analytics at MLS clubs. The last few months have been a big one for MLS analytics signings. Harvard’s Laurie Shaw was hired by City Football Group, former Opta and SportLogiq employee Sam Gregory took his talents to Ft. Lauderdale, Cory Jez transferred from the Utah Jazz to Austin FC, Nikos Overheul moved to Vancouver after working for StatsBomb and Smartodds, and American Soccer Analysis’ own Sam Goldberg and Kevin Minkus were hired by New York Red Bulls and the Chicago Fire, respectively. Given this, teams are polarizing into the haves and have nots. In this update I’ve dropped the Tier 1.5 “Definitely Know What xG Is“ as teams in that tier moved up.

Last year, 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.

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