It’s been a while since I posted anything here about coaches. I have a lot of love for coaches, even those with whom I haven’t always agreed. Their job is tough, especially when they have to deal with recruiting, tactics, man-management, the media, and even renting the training pitch. Some coaches get paid a ton, but most of them don’t. They all endure crushing pressure and huge emotional swings. The only “bad” coaches are the ones who are cruel, prejudiced, or lazy. But there are still discernible differences in skill. There’s an adage in soccer that only a small number of coaches can make a…
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Metrics
How good is the Championship?
This week at the Dealmakers in Sports conference in New York, the English Football League’s chief executive, Shaun Harvey, was asked where Major League Soccer clubs would place in his country’s soccer pyramid. He replied that the clubs would probably sit somewhere in the lower half of the Championship or the top of League One, in the second and third tiers respectively. But he added that MLS teams might have a hard time making it through a 46-game season that ran through the winter and would probably be “seen off” by most clubs under his purview. I mostly agree with Harvey’s assessment. NYA uses…
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Identifying top young prospects in soccer
A few years ago I wrote a guest blog at OptaPro proposing the Premier League’s stars of the future, based on a simple check of some old models. And guess what – after a year or two, it seemed like I hadn’t done very well! So I decided to figure out a better way of spotting young prospects. Here is the gist. Young players can’t be expected to perform on the pitch in the same way as established regulars. They’re still learning the game, they may be playing an unfamiliar position, and the psychological pressures of senior football can be intense. Every…
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