[ChrisE]

Obviously, this is something that I find interesting, and it's something that I think is very important to the future of the league.

Most obviously, because we all want MLS to contribute to the improvement of the national team. And, the more Americans that are playing in MLS, the more it will contribute to the team's improvement. Also, however, I think it's possible (at least, potentially) to measure the improvement of the league through its demographic changes. Although a lot of people like to claim that the league needs to import more foreigners (and spend more money) to improve the quality, I think the amount of foreigners willing to play in the league is a good indication of how good the league is; in 1996, there was no problem finding players who would be stars who were willing to play for $250,000. Now, it's much more difficult (cf. Darryl Powell, Andrzej Juskowiak, etc.); I'd argue that the reason it's harder to find these players, and the reason we see guys like Simon Elliott further becoming marginalized, is because the league has improved to a point where most non-Americans who are willing to play for cheap aren't good enough to play here.

Another reason that I find this kind of thing interesting is because it indicates what kind of foreign players MLS is acquiring - I didn't divide this into ages, but it's my opinion that MLS should be investing much more heavily in cheaper Central America and South America, and far less in old, 'experienced' Europeans. This kind of chart can indicate what kind of trends exist in MLS's player acquistion and playing choices. So, without further ado (ho ho), MLS's minutes played, divided into nine geographical categories:

MINUTES	1996.0	1997.0	1998.0	1999.0	2000.0	2001.0	2002.0	2003.0
?	0.4	0.2	0.1	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
USA	68.2	69.1	66.5	68.6	70.8	69.6	70.6	72.7
CONCACAF	8.5	9.1	10.3	10.7	9.7	10.5	11.2	10.3
CONMEBOL	5.2	4.7	8.5	7.2	7.1	7.4	5.6	4.0
UEFA	7.3	6.7	9.1	7.9	6.3	5.4	6.1	6.5
Africa	6.9	4.4	2.4	2.7	3.3	3.8	2.5	2.7
Asia	0.3	0.0	0.0	0.3	0.5	0.0	0.0	0.7
Oceania	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.4	0.6	1.5	2.0	2.0
Arg, Bzl	3.3	5.7	3.1	2.1	1.8	1.9	2.0	1.1

I'm not totally confident about the nationalities of all these players, and the question mark obviously represents players I don't have any evidence for. If anybody knows a place I can upload files to, I'd like to upload the nationalities file, or, if anybody really wants to check it for me (or wants it for their own purposes; it also includes ages, heights, and birthdays), I'd be happy to send it their way.

[ChrisE]

Another thing that I think is interesting is what kind of production we're getting from our various players. To look at this, first you've got to have the proportions by player, which I luckily do:

Players	1996.0	1997.0	1998.0	1999.0	2000.0	2001.0	2002.0	2003.0
?	4.2	1.7	0.7	0.4	0.4	0.4	0.0	0.0
USA	70.9	70.6	70.0	71.6	70.8	70.7	69.9	69.6
CONCACAF	6.3	8.1	8.8	8.3	8.9	9.9	10.6	11.3
CONMEBOL	5.5	3.4	6.4	6.1	7.1	7.2	6.2	3.9
UEFA	5.9	5.1	7.8	7.9	7.1	5.7	6.2	6.5
Africa	4.2	4.3	2.8	2.9	3.2	3.0	4.4	3.9
Asia	0.4	0.0	0.0	0.4	0.7	0.0	0.0	0.4
Oceania	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.4	0.4	1.1	1.3	1.3
Arg, Bzl	2.5	6.8	3.5	2.2	1.4	1.9	1.3	3.0

I'd like to think that the fact that the actual number of Americans playing in the league is falling, while their representation in minutes played, backs up my idea that the Americans are significantly improving, and this isn't a problem with the salary cap or something.

To calculate the the contributions of players, I think you ought to look at the ratio of minutes played per group to the number of players per group. If you get a number higher than one, players are playing more minutes than expected, and so are presumably better than average. To make things clearer, I subtracted this number from 1, and multiplied by a hundred. A positive number is good, a negative number is bad, 0 is average; empty spaces mean no players played from that region in that year:

Ratio	1996.0	1997.0	1998.0	1999.0	2000.0	2001.0	2002.0	2003.0
?	-90.8	-86.4	-88.6	-93.4	-99.3	-98.0		
USA	-3.8	-2.1	-4.9	-4.2	-0.1	-1.6	0.9	4.5
CONCACAF	35.0	12.9	16.6	29.7	8.6	5.7	5.5	-9.2
CONMEBOL	-5.5	37.5	33.5	17.2	0.1	1.8	-9.1	3.2
UEFA	22.7	31.6	17.1	-0.2	-11.6	-4.7	-0.9	-1.0
Africa	63.4	2.7	-15.8	-7.7	1.8	25.1	-43.6	-32.3
Asia	-36.1			-7.5	-30.0			72.1
Oceania				24.1	81.2	31.5	48.0	54.3
Arg, Bzl	28.5	-15.8	-11.4	-0.8	24.0	-2.7	51.7	-62.7

Some of the really large numbers, e.g. Asia this year, are caused by small samples (in this case, just Hong Myung-Bo). The most obvious general trend that I see is, of course, the fact that Americans have been making steady progress (though they were hurt a bit by expansion), and are now pretty clearly positive. Meanwhile, South Americans, Central Americans, and Europeans have all seen dramatic declines from the early years.