After a strong run of form including friendly wins against Germany and the Netherlands, the United States Men’s National Team came fourth in the CONCACAF Gold Cup and must now beat Mexico in October to go to the Confederations Cup. This is not what most American fans expected of their team; much of the ethos of American soccer is built on the idea of continuous improvement. But have things actually gone downhill? I decided to look at some numbers from the last three World Cups. Specifically, I wanted to see if the United States had a better squad in the…
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Almost two years ago, I wrote an article for Bloomberg Sports about the common traits of ideal soccer/football metrics. Given the recent proliferation of metrics for players and teams, I think it’s worth adding a few ideas about what makes some metrics valuable and others almost worthless. Winning versus style. The biggest question about metrics is whether they measure something that leads to winning. If a metric isn’t correlated with results, then it’s probably answering a question about style. Style can be important – some teams are known for a certain style of play and want to maintain it – but…
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Soccer analysts – and sports analysts in general – put a lot of effort into evaluating players. Whether it’s for recruiting, team selection, scouting the opposition, planning tactics, or predicting results, measuring players’ ability and performance is crucial. Yet there is surprising little written about the content of player ratings. That’s too bad, since a club probably won’t want to use an analyst’s ratings if it can’t understand the underlying components, or indeed why the analyst chose them. I like to begin this discussion is by building from the ground up in the most general way. Let’s start by talking…
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