The Philadelphia Union are off to their best start in team history. They sit among the league leaders with 17 points in the first eight games and have looked in control in doing so, amassing +6 xGD in the process. But a funny thing happened on the way to the top of the league table. The Union’s pass completion percentage has dropped to 66%, the worst rate in the league in the last 10 years.
Read MoreOver the last few years, analytics in MLS has been turned on its head. Whereas 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. With the hiring of the league’s first general manager that came up through analytics, DC United’s Lucy Rushton, a new system was needed to grade MLS teams. This system is not based on how well teams utilize analytics like previous editions, in part because that can be very hard to know from the outside, but on the number of people, a team employs to do it.
Read MoreAt the theoretical height of her powers, Janine Beckie, former 8th-overall pick in the NWSL draft, is back Stateside with a point to prove. With her contract with Manchester City ending at the end of this year, Beckie made the move to join the very Maple Leaf-centric Portland Thorns, a move no doubt aided by the obvious Canadian throughlines of Rhian Wilkinson, Karina LeBlanc, and her strike partner-in-crime Christine Sinclair. I’ll save the Thorns tactical breakdown for our preseason previews post Challenge Cup (keep your eyes peeled), but who exactly are the Thorns getting?
Read MoreAmidst all the chaos that the 2021 NWSL season brought (which we won’t get into in this space) there was some fantastic soccer played. While the goals per 90 were at their lowest in many years, that did not mean the matches were without intrigue: the manufactured parity that is commonplace within the American sports ecosystem has thankfully not led to teams essentially being copycats of one another. Still, like almost any league, there exists a clear and definitive “style” which conditions what we see week in and week out.
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