May 13, 2020

Goals Added: Recap and Roundtable

May 13, 2020/ Alex Bartiromo

Hi everyone, welcome to our 2020 ASA Goals Added coronavirus roundtable spectacular!! In this roundtable, you will have a chance to read about the hottest new innovation in the analytics world, already spawning imitators across the world before it’s even rolled out. But what is Goals Added (g+) and what can it teach us about the beautiful game that past metrics weren’t able to? To discuss this topic, we have some of the world’s foremost experts, the people who built the dang thing. Welcome, everybody!

Let’s start from the beginning. Readers can read about the g+ model and what it measures. What are the origins of this project and why did you start working on it? I read somewhere that it has been in the works for five years! Has it evolved over that period? Are you asking the same questions you were then? What does g+ allow us to do that we weren’t able to before?

April 23, 2020

"We're Not Supposed to be Here": Nick Rimando's Legacy in MLS

April 23, 2020/ Alex Bartiromo

Nick Rimando stands on his line. Actually, standing isn’t the right word to describe what goalkeepers do before a penalty. They wiggle, shimmy, stare down the penalty kick taker. In this case: David Beckham, bleached blond and bemused. This little American couldn’t lace up my boots. He doesn’t deserve a chance to stop me, David Beckham. Surprisingly, Rimando has a similar thought. “‘We’re not supposed to be here’,” he would recount his thought process to MLSsoccer a few years later. “Everyone in this crowd, everyone who follows this league doesn’t think that we should be here, doesn’t think that we should win this game. This is the Galaxy’s game.”

Beckham steps up. Rimando shuffles to his left, half-diving, half falling down. Fully realizing his mistake. The dive is uncertain; he looks like someone who realizes their phone is still in their pocket the instant before they crash into the deep end of a pool. The shot rolls into the net without trouble.

December 10, 2019

Offseason Outlook: New York Red Bulls

December 10, 2019/ Alex Bartiromo

The New York Red Bulls have a strong developmental and tactical system in place, from the first team to the academy, allowing them to maintain a high floor performance-wise, as the losses of several high-profile players have not negatively affected them as much as expected. However, the team’s lack of spending (3rd lowest salary outlay in the league) on high-end talent appeared to catch up with them this season, as their point total plummeted from 71 to 48. More importantly in terms of future performance, its xP dropped from 58.8 to 47.6. Additionally, its xGD dropped from the second highest in the league in 2018—18.6—to right around the equator (3.8). In English, the Red Bulls went from being one of the league’s elite teams to one that was merely average. With major contracts like Bradley Wright-Phillips’ coming off the books this offseason, as well as the potential departure of stalwart and 2018 MLS Defender of the Year Aaron Long, the Red Bulls have the opportunity to retool their roster significantly to complement their steady pipeline of MLS-ready academy players. Either that, or they are looking at a severe personnel crisis that could see them lose ground to more profligate clubs.

November 01, 2019

ASA Roundtable: The One About Home-Field Advantage

November 01, 2019/ Alex Bartiromo

With a break in the MLS Postseason schedule, we here at ASA figured we’d give you something just as good as a second leg (RIP), and a good deal more wholesome than another Toronto/Seattle MLS cup final: another roundtable! This week, our question comes from contributing writer, WOWY inventor, and tactician extraordinaire Cheuk Hei Ho.

October 15, 2019

ASA Roundtable: The One About False Nines

October 15, 2019/ Alex Bartiromo

Welcome to another edition of the #asaroundtable, ASA’s weekly discussion forum. This week, our question comes from one of our regular contributors, Cheuk Hei Ho. If you have any questions you want asked, feel free to hit us up @AnalysisEvolved, or email us at americansocceranalysis@gmail.com. Cheuk, take it away.

September 25, 2019

The Price is Right! How Jack Price fits the Rapids, and the Rapids fit Jack Price

September 25, 2019/ Alex Bartiromo

Amidst another difficult season for the Colorado Rapids, a few changes have provided hope for the club and its supporters. Sacking Anthony Hudson was long overdue after a season and a half of shaky leadership, poor results, and a feeling that the team was falling behind newer and better run MLS franchises. The change in manager, plus the addition of various proven MLS vets like Nicolas Mezquida, Clint Irwin, Sam Nicholson, and Keegan Rosenberry; undervalued young talents such as Lalas Abubakar and Jonathan Lewis; and the development of homegrown talents Cole Bassett, Sam Vines, and Sebastian Anderson has reinvigorated the squad and given fans hope for an improved season in 2020. However, this has left many of the players acquired under Hudson in limbo. Will they form a part of the Rapids core moving forward, or will they be victims of another Rocky Mountain rebuild? One player who has proven his value to the team—albeit in an unusual way—is also one of the least talked about around the league. That player is Jack Price.

*Hold for applause*

September 23, 2019

ASA Roundtable: Defensive Actions

September 23, 2019/ Alex Bartiromo

Here at American Soccer Analysis we try to publish cutting edge articles on soccer that don’t rely on narrative, anecdote, or lazy comparison, preferring instead to rely on data, experimentation, and a ruthless questioning of all of our own previously held beliefs. As you might surmise from this somewhat pompous description, doing that is hard, and our writers have more opinions and insights than we could possibly publish. That is why we are coming out with a new series, the ASA roundtable, a weekly discussion between our contributors on questions facing the soccer and soccer analytics communities today. We look forward to your feedback, and if you want to submit a question just tweet it to @analysisevolved or email us!

June 13, 2019

The Impact of VAR on Penalties

June 13, 2019/ Alex Bartiromo

A couple weeks ago I took a look at the role that penalties play in adding luck to the outcome of an MLS match. In the process of writing that article, something came up that warranted further investigation, but didn’t quite fit into my initial piece. We wondered whether the introduction of Video Assistant Referee (VAR) in 2017 had changed the distribution of penalty calls in MLS. With that in mind, I decided to take another look at the penalty data to see what I could find about the nature of penalty calls themselves, rather than how they affect the outcome of a match, and whether the introduction of new technology affected referees’ decisions.

May 07, 2019

The Evolution of MLS Penalty Kicks (and How to Fix Them)

May 07, 2019/ Alex Bartiromo

Back in 2017, Vox published a video summarizing research from Michael Mauboussin’s book The Success Equation, which ranked the major team sports on a scale of luck to skill using a formula that included games played, player size, number of possessions, chances, and various other factors. This research wasn’t intended to measure player skill—surprise! professional athletes tend to be very skillful at their chosen sport—but rather how well their sports “capture” that skill. in other words, the study sought to show how well results in those sports could be predicted by player skills. Soccer—specifically, the Premier League—came out as the second most “skill-based” of the major sports, ranking behind only basketball in terms of its non-randomness. Still, as anyone who’s watched any CONCACAF matches can attest, luck is an, um, “relevant” factor in the outcome of a match.

Still, beyond the obvious instances of human fallibility (and the question of if and how much the introduction of VAR has reduced this “luck factor” is a question that should be explored in more depth) the video brings up the question of what aspects of the sport are “lucky” vs. “skilled”, and whether the existing balance of those two is the most desirable.