Positions and The Diminishing Value of Formations

It's Christmas Eve, so what better time to highlight an article by Jonathan Wilson of the UK Guardian which talks a little about formations and the future of positions in soccer?!

As positions become more specialised, as we divide the holder into destroyer, regista and carrier, and all points in between, so the importance of formations has diminished. Terms like 4-4-2 or 4-2-3-1 are useful as a rough guide, but only that: the higher the level, the more teams are agglomerations of bundles of attributes; the key is balance rather than fitting to some abstract designation, even if that shape can be useful in the defensive phase.

This is something that Drew, Matthias and I have mentioned on past podcasts and something that I believe is a true within the "modern era" of soccer. Players are increasingly versatile, and as such are able to handle more duties on the pitch, as well as the fact that it's being more expected of them. The reality is that we see players put into areas of the pitch based on what they are able to do and what makes them unique to the roster. Wilson speaks of position rather than an interpretation of what I assume is a role.

Parreira's 4-6 vision of the future has been overtaken by a 3-7, either as three centre-backs or two centre-backs with a destroyer just in front of them. That is another discussion, but what is true is that to speak of a holding role is merely to describe a player's position on the pitch and not how he interprets it.

Wilson here is speaking of Brazilian national team coach Carlos Alberto Parreira and his prediction that soccer would migrate to more ambiguous roles. Also this article was speaking specifically to the roles of midfielders, but I think we can safely apply his words to the attack as a whole. There is a possibility we may be seeing something of this prophecy come about in Major League Soccer in 2014. Teams such as Portland, Chicago, Columbus, New England, and even Seattle with some of it's recent moves, have the pieces to move towards a 4-6 where they have a lesser-defined striker, or "false nine," at the top of their formation. These teams' capable scorers like Darlington Nagbe, Mike Magee, Federico Hinguian, Diego Fagundez and Clint Dempsey aren't relegated to striker positions by convention, where they probably wouldn't play best anyway.

This isn't to say that strikers or players of those specific roles and old time "mentality" is absolutely wrong or trash now. No, I think this is something that you incorporate. As Wilson said in his post, "it's about balance," and it's about putting together a group of players that are able to A) create good shots on the opponent's goal and B) defend and attempt to prevent shots against its own goal.

This goes further into building a roster and down through a rabbit hole of discussion which I'm sure that we could have any time, and which would eventually eclipse my knowledge base. That said, I think this is real. I don't think this is a fad but something that will be realized as a changing of the guard and a new way of thinking.

I'll excuse myself as I mutter something about idealism, while trying not to have the door hit me in the hindquarters as I woke out.

A Closer Look At The MLS MVP Race

Editor's Note: This was the first of many articles by Jacob, who can be found at @MLSAtheist on twitter. It's quite amazing, and I encourage you to read it. He's one of several wonderful writers that we are adding to the site in the coming weeks. Please give him a follow and good feedback, as you have for Drew, Matty, and me. This is all part of putting together newer, better site content.

Not long ago, I saw a piece on ESPN handicapping the MLS MVP race, featuring the one and only Alexi Lalas. Say what you will about Lalas, but what he said on this topic got my mind jogging. The season was still a couple weeks from being complete, but the Redhead tipped Marco Di Vaio over Mike Magee for the award, based mostly on his higher goal total. He explained that goals are the rarest and most important event in soccer, so the guy who scores the most (and in the most games, giving his team a better chance to win) is the best candidate for the award. But here at American Soccer Analysis, we know that just because a guy puts the final touch on a goal doesn’t necessarily make him the most valuable component of that play, let alone that season.

Anyway, Lalas had a point: goals are important. And whether you like it or not, goal scorers and creators are always going to be the award winners in this sport. But still, looking solely at goal totals seems far too simplistic when handicapping the race for MVP. So, as we are wont to do around here, I tried to delve a little deeper.

First of all, you can contribute to goals without being the one to actually kick it into the net. I’ll do the most obvious thing possible, and just add assists to the equation. Additionally, not every player gets to play the same amount. Especially in MLS, where some of the top players are constantly called away for international duty, some MVP candidates only play in two-thirds of his team’s games. But if the premise here is that the award is intended to go to the most prolific goal creator, we should really look at how many goals they create when they’re actually on the field.

Here are the ten top MVP candidates (I know they probably aren’t all that deserving, but ten is a good round number and I’m a little OCD), and how many goals they’ve created, as well as their per 90 minute rate.

Player	Goals	Assists	G+A Per 90
M. Magee	21	4	.806
M. Di Vaio	20	2	.698
R. Keane	16	11	1.22
J. Morales	8	10	.710
Camilo	22	6	1.04
D. Valeri	10	13	.909
F. Higuain	11	9	.694
D. Fagundez	13	7	.742
T. Cahill	11	5	.642
G. Zusi	6	8	.535

It’s no surprise to see Keane and Camilo leading the way with over one per game, as they have the highest sum of goals and assists, and Keane did his work in fairly limited minutes. But again, goals and assists are a little too superficial for us here at ASA. After all, some goals are the fault of terrible defending, goalkeeping, or just some really fortunate bounces; instead it’s preferred to look at chance creation. If a player is consistently creating chances, it’s nearly inevitable that it should lead to more goals. Now rather than just the shots that actually end up in the net, we’ll run the numbers regarding shots, as well as passes that lead to shots (key passes) for the same players:

Player	Shots	Key Passes	Shots Created Per 90
M. Magee*	114	65	5.77
M. Di Vaio	89	25	3.62
R. Keane	54	53	4.86
J. Morales	33	94	5.01
Camilo	95	37	4.91
D. Valeri	55	59	4.51
F. Higuain	69	115	6.39
D. Fagundez	43	27	2.60
T. Cahill	47	19	2.65
G. Zusi	41	75	4.43

This time we’ve got a couple of different leaders, as Federico Higuain and Mike Magee take the lead thanks to their trigger-happy styles. Higuain’s incredible number of key passes, despite playing for a middling Crew team, should raise some eyebrows---the dude’s an absolutely fantastic attacker.

Still, I have an issue with just looking at shots created. After all, we know not all shots are created equal. Without looking up the shot location data of every one of the shots in the above table, I think there’s still a way to improve the statistics: add in a factor of accuracy.

For Higuain, creating over six shots a game is terrific. But from watching a lot of Columbus games, I can tell you that plenty of those shots were low percentage bombs from 30 yards out, and plenty of others were taken by other fairly inept Crew attackers. To try to factor this in, I’d like to look at how many shots on target each player creates - the ones that actually have a chance at becoming goals. While shots on goal stats for individual players are easy to find, it’s tougher to decipher when key passes lead to shots that test keepers rather than boots into the stands. To compensate, I used each player’s team percentage of shots on target to estimate how many key passes turned into shots on goal, leading to the final following table:

Player	Shots on Goal	Key Passes	Team Shot%	SoG Created Per 90
M. Magee*	50	65	48% / 51%	2.68
M. Di Vaio	56	25	54%	2.21
R. Keane	31	53	48%	2.56
J. Morales	19	94	52%	2.68
Camilo	56	37	49%	2.76
D. Valeri	31	59	49%	2.36
F. Higuain	36	115	43%	2.96
D. Fagundez	30	27	50%	1.57
T. Cahill	22	19	48%	1.25
G. Zusi	21	75	42%	2.00

There we have it. My endorsement for MVP this season, based on a combination of Alexi Lalas’ inspiration and my own twisted statistical mind, is Federico Higuain of the 16th-best team in the league, the Columbus Crew.

Just kidding, guys! Obviously the MVP debate should take more into account than who creates shots on goal. Defense, leadership, your team actually winning---all of these things should and do matter. But still, I think this was an interesting exercise and hopefully opened at least one set of eyes to how prolific Higuain is.

Finally, a few thoughts/takeaways in bullet form:

• Higuain was held back by his team’s terrible shooting accuracy, but not as much as Graham Zusi. Now I understand why analytic folks like Sporting Kansas City’s chance creation so much, yet the team hasn’t always seen the results.
• Diego Fagundez is incredibly selective about his shooting - almost 70% of his shots hit the target.
• Javi Morales doesn’t shoot much for being so prolific at creating others shots. Reminds me of this post by Tempo Free Soccer---really interesting as far as categorizing attackers as shooters vs. providers.

*Since Magee was traded mid-season, his season total stats were harder to find. While I used Squawka for everyone else’s stats, I ended up having to tally Magee’s game-by-game stats from Who Scored. It’s possible that the two sites have different standards for what constitutes a shot or key pass, and that could’ve skewed the data for Magee. I’m not sure any of them look too far out of whack that I’m too suspicious, but it’s possible so I thought it should be noted.

Show Down: Juan Agudelo vs. Diego Fagundez

During our podcast on Thursday night, a short side conversation was sparked between Drew and me. Who would you take in a situation where you are starting a new team: Juan Agudelo or Diego Fagundez. While the question and how it's presented matters (i.e. how many years of control do you have, salary cap situation, blah, blah, blah) because it gives us context, let's not go there. The discussion here is more about the general response. We've all, myself included, just generally assumed that the answer to any question between the two is: "Agudelo now, Fagundez later". But what makes us think that Fagundez isn't the better option right now? While doing our podcast I generally have between 9 and 15 browser tabs open with general bits of information. I'm sure my wife would argue that it's more like 50. Whatever. It's a lot. During that point in the podcast, I had Squawka up and quoted a total performance score of 452 for Fagundez, as opposed to Juan Agudelo and his shockingly low score of only 57.

So, the response then transforms itself from the answer that we thought we were sure of, to understanding what exactly Agudelo has done over the course of the season. Trust me, I get that numbers, especially in soccer, can't tell an entire story. But they can help see us things that our brains don't naturally keep track of.

Agudelo, in my mind, is a special case of a lot of talent doing one specific thing and being credited for far more than perhaps initially thought. I know the other side of that argument stresses his physical traits and goal-scoring ability. Sure, those are two HUGE things when it comes to this game. Speed kills and Agudelo knows how to turn it on.

Let's take a look below.

	Mins	Goals	Shots	Goals pSh	Chances Created
Fagundez	2419	13	43	0.30	27
Agudelo	1019	7	17	0.41	4

First, we can see one thing. And it's quiet amazing. Together, the two players produced 20 goals on 60 shots. Take a second to think about that because that's major. The Revolution took 37 shots and scored just one goal over their first five matches of the season. These guys get thrown into the line-up and procure 20 goals on just 60 shots. That's special.

Second, what is most obviously the difference between the two is the number of chances created. You'll see in a second that Agudelo still made a fine amount of passes. The issue isn't that he's a ball hog, or that he just wants the chances for himself. The problem is those passes did not become chances on goal. You'd hope that a guy who gets plenty of attention from the defense has the ability to find open teammates that can create goals.

	Mins	Pass p90	TO p90	Pass pTO	Avg Length	Dribbles	DisPos per 90
Fagundez	2419	22.17	2.08	10.65	14m	0.86	1.71
Agudelo	1019	28.52	3	9.51	13m	0.53	2.91

Alright, onto the possession-based stuff. There are some interesting thoughts here. Such as Agudelo taking less dribbles, making shorter passes, and making more of them. It's not something that I would have generally have thought of about him. I think of an individual who is looking to constantly run at defenders, but maybe that isn't the whole picture. That said, he's still losing the ball quiet a bit, and while Fagundez doesn't make as many passes, he's less error-prone and creates more pockets of space up the field with the ball at his feet.

	Mins	Fouls	Cards	Tackles	Blocks	Interceptions	Clearances
Fagundez	2419	0.81	3	1.3	0.11	0.74	0.33
Agudelo	1019	3.53	2	1.4	0.09	0.35	0.71

The biggest number that stands out to me on this page is the number of fouls committed per 90 minutes by Agudelo. There is no way he makes that many fouls and continues to only pull about 6 cards over the course of a full season. That's impossible. Outside of that, you see that each of these players is rather close to one another. One is a bit more on top of clearances while the other interceptions.

Really, that's probably due to two random factors. 1) Agudelo is in the middle of the box more often for corner kicks, and 2) Fagundez works in the midfield where errant passes are more probable.

It's important to realize these players aren't like for like. Trying to compare them as apples to apples isn't going to work and makes this work less productive. I am willing to acknowledge that. Agudelo did have some opportunities in the midfield this season, however, he was primarily featured up top in the striker role. Likewise, Fagundez had some exciting moments playing center forward, but was primarily used out wide as a left midfielder.

Because they don't occupy the same space, certain statistical attributes that we associate with these players are going to be either more or less inflated. They have different responsibilities so they aren't going to be the same player statistically. We don't have a "Wins Above Replacement" calculator, as awesome as that would be.

There is no key that unlocks all events and makes them equal, as if to say this player is better than that player, regardless of position or team. Maybe this post was a complete waste because we should be comparing these two teammates to the rest of the league, rather than to each other. What I do know is that Fagundez is less a player of the future and more of an MLS standout now, but when Agudelo leaves for Stoke, he is still going to be missed by the Revs.