Sports aren’t static. Big changes happen, sometimes suddenly and other times gradually – but either way, they happen. Baseball’s starting pitchers used to go nine innings routinely. Basketball players didn’t dunk. Ice hockey teams had never heard of line changes. And soccer has a long history of tactical innovations, to which this post might just contribute. First, let me say that I’m not a coach. I’ve played thousands of hours of soccer, but I’ve never coached a single match. I also have a background that’s very different from most coaches in the world’s top leagues. So what I recommend here may…
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Recently Sam Gregory, a writer for Sportsnet in Canada, published a blog at OptaPro that examined the relationship between shots and variation in attack. I want to say first of all that I have a lot of respect for Sam. If and when I expand this business, Sam is exactly the sort of promising young analyst I’ll want to hire. He has a great understanding of both soccer and statistics. In this case, however, we differ markedly in how we’d take on the topic in question. Sam’s approach was to use a linear regression, where he was estimating this equation:…
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I’ve always been fascinated by the things clubs do to give their teams an extra edge. It’s not just in soccer; there are numerous examples of baseball, basketball, and American football clubs using everything from locker room heating to air flow in the stadium to hamper the opposition. And so I came to consider that humblest of soccer moments, the throw-in. A throw-in is, of course, just another kind of pass. Opposing teams defend them particularly avidly in their own half of the field, but attacking teams usually have routine to ensure a completion. If an attacking team is particularly…
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