The Most Pressing Questions in MLS

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The Most Pressing Questions in MLS

Pressing has become a bigger and bigger part of the identity of soccer globally within the last decade. MLS teams have shifted along with the global trends. Take the New York Red Bulls and Philadelphia Union: two teams with an aggressive pressing style fundamental in the clubs’ DNA and instilled from the very top of the organization. More and more MLS teams are pressing aggressively, and though not all teams are following the all-out model set by the Red Bulls and Union, pressing has become a standard element of many teams’ gameplans.

But how widespread is it really? And what are some of the key differences in strategies? Using pressure data from Football Reference and Statsbomb, I tried to make some sense of where MLS teams stand in the pressing landscape.

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Where Goals Come From: Playing the Killer Final Ball

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Where Goals Come From: Playing the Killer Final Ball

This is the third article of Season Two and tenth overall article in a series of articles and videos in the Where Goals Come From project from Jamon Moore and Carl Carpenter.

In our last article, we discussed how Expected Goals (xG) helps us evaluate the quality of the shots that a team takes and concedes. That evaluation can happen with individual shots, with a full game, several games (looking at trends), and over the course of a season. As we know from Season One of this series, the type of shot a player gives us a good indication of the typical Goal Conversion Rate (GCR), starting with the very effective shots from Through balls and Cutbacks. We have twelve types of shots in total in our framework, including penalty shots, across five different categories.

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Where Goals Come From: What It Takes For Teams To Be Elite

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Where Goals Come From: What It Takes For Teams To Be Elite

This is the first article of Season Two and ninth overall article in a series of articles and videos in the Where Goals Come From project from Jamon Moore and Carl Carpenter.

Season Two Introduction

In the eight articles of Season One of the Where Goals Come From project we demonstrated how “progressive pass” goals make up 40% of the goals scored in professional soccer.

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Where Goals Come From: Training for Progressive Pass Finishing

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Where Goals Come From: Training for Progressive Pass Finishing

This is the seventh article in a series of articles and videos in the Where Goals Come From project from Jamon Moore and Carl Carpenter.

Now that we have inundated you with progressive passing data, videos, and presentations, now comes the time where I provide examples of how to create these types of opportunities in matches by applying these attacking principles to training. This is the part which is the most important to me personally: it’s easy for us to theorize and analyze what successful teams do well and identify these as the top levels of the game, however, the goal (no pun intended) of the Where Goals Come From project is ultimately to impact clubs and coaches to incorporate this framework into their strategy and game models.

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The Tactical Proactivity of each MLS Team

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The Tactical Proactivity of each MLS Team

The MLS playoff drama is peaking with all but a half dozen teams dreaming of postseason glory. All the teams have played their tactical cards by now and the chess matches from here on out should be very entertaining. It’s therefore high time to look at a model whose goal is to examine the very chess moves that teams are making and look for insights. The Proactivity Score (Pscore), an attempt to numerically represent a teams basic tactical approach, has been updated through August 27th and there are some interesting new trends. Here’s a chart of where teams stand:

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The case for pulling the goalie in soccer and the math behind Ben Olsen's madness

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The case for pulling the goalie in soccer and the math behind Ben Olsen's madness

The game is ice hockey. One team is behind a goal as the seconds wind down. Conventional thinking for the head coach of the losing team is to direct the goalie off the ice while a substitute enters the game. This gives the team a six to five player advantage at one end of the ice, but gives the leading team a much higher chance of adding to their lead. Starting in 2013 NHL teams became more aggressive with this strategy, and a paper released earlier this year proposed that teams should get at least three times as aggressive as they are. The math clearly lines up with the strategy.

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Orlando, DC, and MLS' Latest Strategic Fashions

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Orlando, DC, and MLS' Latest Strategic Fashions

The press (whether high, counter, or other) is in vogue in MLS. MLS teams are, on average, they pressiest they’ve ever been. The Red Bulls, NYCFC, Atlanta, and New England all primarily defend in some form of press. A handful of other teams - Sporting Kansas City and LAFC most prominently - go to it on occasion. Orlando City began the season trying to play a higher pressure defense:

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Roster Consistency Part Two: Do Consistent Lineups Lead to Better Results?

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Roster Consistency Part Two: Do Consistent Lineups Lead to Better Results?

In a previous article, I looked at the effect of roster consistency on overall team performance. There were enough interesting trends in the data that I wanted to look a little closer and try to see if there is a “right” number of changes that teams should make on a week-to-week basis.

After looking at each squad’s rotation and how it affected their performance over the past three years, it makes sense to look at how changing lineups from one week to the next effected team’s performances in that week. That is to say, given a team’s roster changes from the previous week, how likely were they to perform well?

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Savarese’s Christmas Tree and the Pair That Make It Work

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Savarese’s Christmas Tree and the Pair That Make It Work

Across the Major League Soccer landscape, there are some exciting attacking duos. From Atlanta’s prized combo of Miguel Almiron and Josef Martinez, to LAFC’s Carlos Vela and Diego Rossi, to RBNY’s Bradley Wright-Phillips and Kaku, attacking players grab headlines. In this week’s analysis article, we are going to break down a less heralded, but possibly more intriguing, duo than any of those previously mentioned. We are going to look at Diego Valeri and Sebastian Blanco, the Portland Timbers dynamic, creative attacking pair. 

In order to properly appreciate the work that Valeri and Blanco are doing this season, first we need to take a step back and look at the bigger, tactical picture in Portland.

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