MLS Is Back: Week One Highs And Lows

MLS Is Back: Week One Highs And Lows

My excellent colleagues at ASA have done some terrific work in rolling out Goals Added (g+) the past couple months, putting out methodology articles, and finding new and creative ways to assess player performance on the pitch through this metric. We highly recommend you read the articles linked above, but g+ is the model we built to assign value to every single on-ball action that happens in a soccer game. The return of MLS has given us at ASA the first extended period of which to use this g+ data since the league’s restart, so through the medium of video analysis I will be looking at some of the major actions of g+ during the first week of action. I’ll be giving context to the numbers behind it: where the players did well, where they did poorly, and why g+ afforded them the values they were given!

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2020 Season Preview: Inter Miami

2020 Season Preview: Inter Miami

Let’s get this out of the way before we start: Beckham Beckham Beckham Beckham Beckham, Beckham Beckham Beckham; Beckham.

Now, every expansion team that enters MLS is forced into one of two buckets. The Minnesota, FC Cincinnati, Orlando bucket, overpaying for domestic talent and throwing your allocation money around like James Harden on the second night of a back to back with the Heat, or the Atlanta, LAFC, NYCFC bucket, spending huge on designated players, grabbing smart domestic pieces in low budget positions. In the annals of MLS history, one has been much more successful than the other. Inter Miami have decidedly settled on the second bucket.

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FC Cincinnati 2019 Season Preview

FC Cincinnati 2019 Season Preview

To Minnesota, or to Atlanta, that is now the question for an MLS expansion team. The 2017 MLS expansion teams took divergent paths to roster building. Atlanta supplemented their young expensive South American signings with older proven MLS veterans. Minnesota relied on a corps of players brought up from their NASL squad and a more journeyman group of MLS players, sprinkled with some lower profile international imports and no Designated Players. FC Cincinnati has answered the question with an emphatic “Minnesota.”

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FC Dallas 2019 Season Preview

FC Dallas 2019 Season Preview

The 2018 season for FC Dallas feels like a lifetime ago, thanks in large part to massive changes the club undergone during the offseason. The face and heartbeat of the club, Oscar Pareja, left for a new challenge and after his departure the roster and coaching staff were overhauled in a matter of weeks. With the change comes a new wind of hope and optimism, especially when you hear the way newly minted head coach and former FCD Academy Director Luchi Gonzalez speaks so eloquently about his vision for Dallas in 2019, and how the newly formed North Texas Soccer Club will help bridge more FCD players from the Academy and the first team.

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