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On the race for the Pichichi -- Week 15

Leo Messi had been stuck one goal behind Cristiano Ronaldo in the Pichichi race since Week 11.  Since then every brace or hattrick has been matched by his Madrid counterpart.  This week, Real Madrid kicked off first.  With Ronaldo scoring off a beautiful freekick, Messi had to get at least one to keep pace.  Messi opened the first half with a beautiful 1-2-1-2-1-2 (that's 3 give and go's in a row) with Dani Alves before slotting home.  He then went on to score one of the more ridiculous goals of the season to equal Ronaldo for the Pichichi.  Why ridiculous?  He dribbled past 5 defenders in the box by doing nothing more than dribbling in a straight line.  No stepovers, no feints, no swivelling of the hips like a Turkish stripper, just pure dribbling. 

On the race for the Pichichi -- Week 14

When I did the first post on the Pichichi race, I wasn't intending for it to be a recurring theme.  However, I think this year we are witnessing something special that warrants extra attention.  During this week's Barca match, the commentators were saying that Messi averages a goal a game under Pep Guardiola.  Scoring a goal a game is impressive under short spells during the season, but to do it consistently for two and a half seasons is a whole other level. 

Messi and Ronaldo are both averaging more than a goal a game this season.  After their matching hattricks before El Clasico, they followed it up with matching braces after El Clasico.  Their goal scoring pace may seem unsustainable, but Messi had a higher goals per game average for the second part of the 2009-10 season than he has for the start of the 2010-11 season.  If he could match that pace, he'd be on target to score 42 goals this season and still possibly lose the Pichichi to Ronaldo. 

On the race for the Pichichi and the Superclasico

The build up to the Superclasico has been at a fever pitch lately.  The front pages of Spain's sport dailies Marca and SPORT have been running stories about it for weeks now.  Adding to the hysteria is the rivalry between Messi and Ronaldo.  The last few weeks in La Liga has been something of an "anything you can do, I can do better" contest between the two.  I can't recall ever seeing two players scoring at will like this.  Whatever one does, the other has to match or exceed.  Messi, so far this season, has 3 braces and a hattrick -- not a bad haul for week 11.  Ronaldo?  3 braces, a hattrick, and a 4 goal game. 

Last year, the anticipation for the match was at a ridiculous level since it was the first time Ronaldo would be facing Barcelona as a Madrid player.  However, the form that he and Messi were in was nothing compared to the form they are in currently.

In 2009, Messi and Ronald both got off to better starts to the season than in 2010.  However, Ronaldo picked up an injury and Messi cooled off, so they both came into the Superclasico looking somewhat human. 

This season, they both got off to modest starts, but then really kicked it into high gear for the last 5-6 weeks.  What's particularly amazing is that a lot of players are blaming their slow starts to the season on World Cup hangovers.  Doesn't seem to be a problem for these two.   

On the MLS Draft -- Which Position To Pick?

The MLS Superdraft is one of four ways in which teams can reinforce their squad.  They can also sign players from their academis, sign players from outside the league that they scout themselves or be allocated players from the US National Team pool.  Given that there several options on how to get new players, it's important to think about what type of player you want to get through each method.  For the MLS Superdraft, I wanted to see if any patterns appeared that would indicate drafting a certain type of player would be more successful than others. 

I started by looking at the breakdown of what types of players were being drafted and compared that to what the breakdown would be for a 4-4-2 formation.  In the MLS Superdraft, forwards and midfielders are over represented while defenders and goalkeepers are under represented.  For this analysis, I am excluding goalkeepers because the sample size (n=6) is too low to get meaninfgul results.  What this means is that teams are biased towards so-called "flair players".  Are they making the right decisions?

On the Importance of Copa America

This week US Soccer officially announced that its first friendly of 2011 will be against Chile in January and the rumors that they will also be facing Argentina in March were strengthened by FIFA listing that fixture on their official site.  Normally I would be ecstatic over this news, but this week was also the draw for Copa America and the combination of the two really drove home the point of what we'll be missing out on this summer. 

In order to get better, you need to be playing against opposition that really challenges you and pushes you.  In CONCACAF, the US is at a disadvantage.  For our qualifiers, we either destroy small countries that never really had a shot at qualifying, or we slog through horrible, chippy matches against teams fighting for the 3rd and 4th spots.  These games are difficult, but not for the reasons that help the team grow and improve.  Our only real match that pushes us is against Mexico (and thanks to politics within CONMEBOL, 2014 will be the last time we see them in qualifiers).  Compare that to CONMEBOL qualifying where teams are constantly going up against some of the best teams in the world.  Each and every match is difficult (just ask Argentina about their last trip to Bolivia...wasn't pretty).  This is why I love CONMEBOL qualifiers and why I love Copa America.  Copa America is all the tension and excitement of the World Cup, but you get to fast forward through the elimination of all the minnow teams like North Korea, New Zealand and Honduras.  Sure, it's fun to root for the underdogs and hope they can pull off an upset, but honestly, I just want to watch the best teams play the best football.  Copa America gives you that. 

On the MLS Draft: Linear Regression

In my first two posts on the MLS draft I was looking at patterns in the 2009 and 2010 drafts.  I've now started looking at the data from the first 5 seasons.  Again, I'm using minutes played as an indicator of success.  I'm not attempting to predict which players should be picked when and who will be successful in MLS, but instead I'm trying to reveal patterns that show a breakdown in the draft decision making process. 

On the Popularity of MLS on Facebook

Today,  Futebol Finance released their list of top 25 clubs with the most fans of Facebook.  The results aren't too surprising, with the top 25 dominated by the usual suspects of European and South American clubs.  MLS failed to crack their top 25 with a small footnote that Real Salt Lake had only 37,000 fans.  RSL are an odd benchmark, given that the Seattle Sounders lead the league in attendance by a considerable margin.  As of 11/8, Seattle Sounders have 130,000+ fans, putting them at #22 in the world.  What about the Beckham effect?  LA Galaxy have less than 28,000 fans.  At least Seattle can beat LA in something.

On the MLS Draft Part Two

I decided to take a look at how last year's draft class was doing. Specifically, I was wondering if I would see the same patterns in year two or if last year's class was behaving differently. More or less the same patterns appear for the universities producing the draftees. Overall, the same exponential decay seems to happen with playing minutes as the selection number increases. However, we don't see the same pattern of defenders taken late in the draft out performing their expected minutes. Instead we see defenders outperforming for middle picks instead of just in the tail. For the class of 2009, the tail is almost completely filled with players who were cut from their team before ever making their MLS debut. In fact, 13 out of the 30 players taken in 2009 had little to no minutes in their first 2 seasons. The fact that they are no longer with their MLS clubs rules out the theory that they will provide future value to the club. Basically, MLS teams are really bad at figuring out who is good enough to play in the league. It will be interesting to see how these numbers change with the reintroduction of the reserve league and larger rosters. Teams might be more patient with developing young players and have the roster space to do so.

On MLS Attendance

Two things happened recently that got me thinking about the growth of MLS. For the first time in its history, Major League Soccer passed the 4 million person mark in its regular season attendance. Teams also started preparing for season ticket renewals and the announced price hikes didn't go over well with some fans. Toronto FC issued an open letter to its fans, while Sounders FC General Manager Adrian Hanauer admitted that the communication between the club and fans could have been better and that they are working hard to ensure that season ticket holders are happy.

On International Breaks

This weekend I found the Interlull exceptionally boring. Usually I don't mind international breaks too much because I love watching the CONMEBOL qualifiers and of course supporting the US through their qualifiers, but with the cycle being months away from its start I found myself with a complete lack of interest in all of the matches.

With the weekend over I resumed my daily consumption of footy news in preparation for the weekend's matches. Already the injury list is piling up. Inter will be without Milito and Cambiasso after they both picked up injuries on their trip to Japan. 100% completely unnecessary. It also brought back memories of Stuart Holden's broken leg that almost cost him the World Cup.

It got me thinking. How many of these useless friendlies are being played? I looked at the top 25 teams and the answer is quite a few. Over the last 4 year cycle, 44% of the matches played were friendlies and teams averaged 5 friendlies a year. Rooney wants a winter break? Maybe he should ask the FA to cut back on some of these meaningless matches.

On the MLS Draft Part One

I've been playing around with Tableau Public a little more and I have to say I'm impressed. I decided to revisit some work I had done on the MLS draft. Mid-season I decided to look at the correlation between a player's selection spot and the amount of impact they are having with their new team. Currently there is no good metric to estimate impact, so I used minutes played. Yes, it is a very imperfect metric, but it does provide an easy way to compare players of any position. The logic behind using minutes played is that it shows a baseline ability that player X is good enough to make it onto the playing field. If they perform well, they will be selected again, if not, then they won't see much playing time. It tells us nothing about potential or future performance nor about the quality of those minutes played. Certainly there are unique circumstances in each team that could affect a players minutes, but as a stake in the ground to get started I think it's a decent metric.

When I first looked at the data, I noticed that minutes played seemed to decay exponentially as the selection number increased, with a handful of outliers. The drop off was a little surprising. It shows that there are only a handful of players in the draft class that are able to come in and make an impact straight away. Looking at the data again, but this time with the ability to filter by position, I noticed that defenders taken later in the draft outperformed their expected minutes. Something to keep in mind if you're looking for cover in the back and need someone to step up immediately.

On Data Visualizations

I've been meaning to play around with Tableau for a while and I thought my work with games back would be a good start. Visually it isn't that striking, but I think it does a decent job of conveying the information.

Powered by Tableau

On MLS Being a Retirement Home

The European Leagues have started up again, MLS is deep into the playoff race, yet I still find myself waxing nostalgic for the 2010 World Cup. It's a wonderful period of time where it's socially acceptable to watch 3 matches a day for two weeks straight before being weened off of it throught the knockout stage whereas the rest of the time I guiltily own up to watching 4 matches when someone asks me how I spent my Saturday. Normally I can stave off my desire to be back in the summer of 2010, painfully watching the US team concede early goals, only to find some way to get the result late in the match. Today, however, I decided to revisit Bing's Visual Search for the World Cup. It's a neat little tool that lets you sort and filter the players from the tournament based on a number of different categories. Looking at the oldest players I noticed two things:

• Old players tend to be goal keepers
• A lot of the oldies have played or are playing in MLS

Neither of these observations are too surprising. Keepers tend to peak later in their careers so you'd expect them to be over represented at the tail end of the age spectrum. Of the 11 players that weren't keepers, 4 of them had MLS experience: Cuauhtemoc Blanco, Carlos Pavon, Simon Elliot and Blaise Nkufo. Given MLS's reputation as a retirement home for footballers, I wasn't too surprised until I noticed that Nkufo is the only one still playing in the league. If Beckham hadn't been injured, he too would have been on the list, but as a special case since he's been splitting his time between the LA Galaxy and AC Milan. If MLS is a retirement home, it certainly isn't a final resting place. It's nice to see MLS Alums moving on to different clubs and still competing with the world's best, even at the ripe old age of 35.

On Home Field Advantage

Over and over in the press I keep hearing about what a difficult place Qwest Field is to play. Being a season ticket holder, my impression is quite different. Sure, the atmosphere is fantastic and I love going to matches, but I never consider Qwest the fortress that some people like to make it out to be.



Home field advantage in soccer is almost taken as fact and is the reason behind the beloved away goals rule (the theory being that it is more difficult to score away from home so those goals should count more heavily). Stadiums with high attendences and rabid fans are seen as being more advantageous than smaller, quieter stadiums. Altitude is also seen as an advantage, so much so that FIFA tried to ban World Cup qualifiers played above a certain altitude.

On the Playoff Race

One of the problems I've run into with following MLS is figuring out where my team stands in the playoff race. In essence, the top 8 teams make it into the playoffs. In reality, it's possible for a team not in the top 8 to make it into the playoffs, but the likelihood of that happening is very slim. The full rules for qualifying are availabe here. For most soccer leagues, it's easy to figure out who the top 8 teams are. They have a single table format with a balanced schedule. Very few teams have played a different number of matches than the other teams in the league. It's easy to compare apples to apples in this scenario. MLS, on the other hand, has a very bizarre way of scheduling matchs and it's uncommon for teams to have played the same number of matches at any point in the season. How, then, do you figure out where you stand in the table without running through all the scenarios of "Well, if team A beats team B, and then draws against team C, and we beat team D, then...".

I've several approaches to this problem. The first is to use the average points earned per game as an estimate of what a team will do in their games-in-hand. This is a decent approach for the middle of the season when a team's performance will be averaged out over a large number of games. Towards the end of the season, this approach doesn't work as well. For example, if a team is averaged 1.2 PPM, then assuming they will earn 2.4 PPM in their two games-in-hand can be a poor assumption. It's quite reasonable for them to pick up the full 6.

Another approach is to use Monte Carlo simulations to calculate the possible outcomes of future matches. Sports Club Stats is a good example of this approach. The problem is that their estimates are limited to the quality of the model they use for estimating the outcomes. Your outputs are only as good as your inputs and quite frankly, the discipline isn't mature enough to have quality inputs just yet.

Baseball has the concept of games back. It's a beautiful metric that tells you exactly what your team needs to do in order to move into first. Any casual baseball fan can understand it. It's a simple formula that encapsulates where a team stands no matter how many games-in-hand are in play. It got me thinking about whether or not something similar could be applied to a league with trinary outcomes (win, loss, tie). I tweaked the formula a bit to work with ties and the results are decent but take some getting used to. Instead of the simplicity of a half or full game back, there are now weird situations like being 1/6 of a game back. I'm going to update the results each week for the rest of the season to get a feel for how it works. Below are the latest standings as of 9/27.

Team Name	Points	GP	GB From Playoffs
Los Angeles Galaxy	50	26	-3 2/3
Real Salt Lake	48	26	-3
FC Dallas	46	26	-2 1/3
Columbus Crew	45	26	-2
New York Red Bulls	44	26	-1 2/3
San Jose Earthquakes	39	24	-1
Colorado Rapids	38	25	- 1/6
Seattle Sounders FC	39	26	0
Kansas City Wizards	33	25	1 1/2
Toronto FC	31	26	2 2/3
Chicago Fire	26	24	3 1/3
Philadelphia Union	27	25	3 1/2
Chivas USA	25	25	4 1/6
New England Revolution	26	26	4 1/3
Houston Dynamo	26	26	4 1/3
D.C. United	18	26	7

Both the Sounders and KC are deep in the playoff race after going through some dark times this season. At their worst points during the season the teams were only 2 and 2.5 GB respectively. I think that's a testament to parity in MLS and the fact that half the teams qualify for the playoffs.