Stats must show that Michael Bradley is rarely within a Titanic turning circle of the player he's supposed to be marking and yet he still gets selected week-in, week-out.
But they made the playoffs all the time with tiny payrolls. its also not mls where half the league makes the playoffs.
This is true. And they were entertaining teams no doubt. But Money ball is the exact opposite of what the USA needs with the resources and the potential for growth we have.
Stats are a useful tool. Are you going to say that your eye test is so good that there's no point in using any other tool?
Sounds like the HR dept in most large companies. They have to create hoops for people to jump through in order to make their own jobs seem like they are doing something. I miss the days of having a "Personnel Dept". But I digress... The lack of 'stats' is one thing that makes soccer hard to discuss with people. Other sports you can use stats to make your point with. But soccer, there are only a couple (goals, assists, minutes??) which makes it hard to explain the importance of a DM with a good eye for open space upfield where there is a fleet footed winger in the wait. How do you quantify that? DeBoer to Bergkamp in WC 98. One pass, one shot, one goal. Sounds simple on paper, but watch it in action and its one fo the most amazing plays you'll ever see.
Of course stats work, but almost everyone in this thread has said that they are limited in their usefulness. Lets say player A normally runs 8k-10k during a full 90 minute match. However in the last 3 games he has run 5k-6k. That player may be fatigued or be carrying an injury that the coach is not aware of, or more likely will back up a coach's hunch. Another area where stats may come in handy may be virtual scouting. If you need a new d-mid you may look at someone who can tackle, with a high work-rate and good short passing accuracy. Using stats to identify players is now common across soccer. Head scouts will look at player ratings to identify promising players who they or one of their coaches should observe in person.
The philosophy is exactly what the us needs. They can't just say hey lets sit back and we'll be france in a few years its easy. they need to be proactive, scout from coast to coast to find talent(and a lot of that normally falls on the clubs but since they aren't run that way thats a problem), find a style of player and develop talent accordingly to fit that style and the guy with the most goals or the tallest or the fastest might not be the best fit for the team.
No one is advocating for them to sit back and do nothing. We are advocating to not rely too much on the contrived stats . Just use it as a tool.
you are completely falling into the trap that other fans fall into. Everyone tries to say that their sport can't be evaluated using data you need to have had played the game and understand the game like its brain surgery. Its really not that complicated and its also not like music in literally anyway at all. The eye test is great...but without data its not worth a whole lot. This is what causes people to watch a single pass by someone like Weah and decide that he should be the 10 because he is a creator...was one play relax. 'eye test' is also why guys like davey boy and fans wanted to see Green against Columbia at the 10. they got confused by the 'eye test' last match. They failed to understand that the mexico squad was their C level squad and if you looked at Green's stats for the season with his club you literally could've predicted his match against columbia. 607 league minutes he has three chances created 19 of 21 shots in league play came from outside the box against col....no chances created and one shot from outside the box...its almost like his stats tell you who he is and the 'eye test' against a mex c team was misleading.
The Federation's run by empty suits and bean counters who don't want to spend any money to fix anything. All they care about is themselves.
More and more baseball teams are using metrics to put together better teams. Why would baseball owners pay stats guys instead of John Smoltz to help their team win? If John Smoltz knows more about baseball than some nerdy stats guy, why aren't teams paying him for his expertise? Most sabremetrics is based around the teams' talent. So if the data shows their players are bad at bunting the stats guy will say don't bunt. Same for stealing bases, teams are using metrics to redlight/greenlight players for stealing bases, not nix stealing bases altogether.
How can you measure with numbers, how good is James Rodriguez? He is a very creative player that does thing based on pure talent and intuition. On the the first goal that James scored, he his has three players around him, he is spins with the ball and manages to put the ball right on the upper corner. Now tell, me, can you measure that with stats? If you are a defender, would that stats be able to help you defend that play? How can you measure intuition?
I am sorry but keeping stats on how many miles a player runs, is completey useless in soccer. I can I have a players that never gets tired but like Bobby Wood but he is not effective in the box. I can I have Romario that hardly runs 3 miles in a game and will score a lot of goals and will be very effective. Plus, I don't know need a stat to know when a player is tired. The same goes with good short passing accuracy. It is not only about how accurate a player can be when passing the call, is about DECISION MAKING. See, MD needs to be accurate when passing but most importantly, he has to be have great SOCCER IQ. The ability to READ the game, to know how your teammates move on the pitch and how to the opposite players move on the pitch, is more important than being accurate with a pass. Can you measure this?
Stats don't work for a simple reason: Soccer is about QUALITY AND something that we say in Spanish "JERARQUIA", whick in English I guess it would translate as Tier. Stats give you information about performance, but it does not tell you about the intelligence of a soccer player.
Zlatan probably run/walks 2 miles a game. Expecting players in different positions to have the same work-rate would be stupid. Not sure who suggested that. I used the example of a single player whose work-rate had fallen as an indicator of possible fatigue or injury. Reviewing his or her stats could lead to a quicker diagnosis or support a coach's hunch that a player was struggling.
The good thing about statistical analysis is that it allows for the creation of more life-like simulators. The more numbers you got, the more thorough the testing for your models, and the better the simulation software for that sport.
again nobody is saying just use data and only data and don't watch players..and again the word is data not stats. I totally get it everyone likes to think their favorite sport is the toughest its takes the best athletes, the most skills and the smartest players. Nobody can figure out the sport without dozens of years of experience or just an intellect that is top 1% in the world. data is useful all the best use it if you think you are the mozart of soccer...you wouldn't be on this message board you'd be out fixing real madrid's issues.
My biggest issue with stats is when they are being used as fun facts and talking points in games. "XYZ has never won in this stadium for the last 25 years......" (etc) Especially when covering a larger time span, more variables come into play that complicate comparisons. coaching changes, system changes, players entering/leaving the squad, injuries, run of form. And that's one team. Same goes for the other team. That is why I cringe when stuff like this gets tossed around.
I hate "Premier League" records that exclude a century of English football history. For instance Manchester City's run of 30 unbeaten top-flight league matches is dwarfed by a team that claims to have won the European Cup twice, based in Nottingham.
As I said, using it as a tool to help teams is fine. Having it hinder your common sense or creativity is a negative though. Especially here in the USA when one of the biggest criticisms is that kids do not have the creativity or the improvisational skills and techniques of other countries. There should be balance. And I do not want to see soccer go the way of baseball when it come to analytics.
I think you are confusing fun facts and data used by teams. Fun facts are just that I mean its interesting to know team xyz hasn't been relegated in 30 years or that team xyz hasn't won someplace for 25 years. Its just an entirely different type of facts/data. It also says a lot if someone plays in a stadium twice a year for 25 years and has never won there regardless of coaching/style changes. Its pretty solid evidence that the club that has won the matches i just a better run club.
Again, that's not what I was asking. I asked if there was no way you would ever find stats to be a good use of time. Your example of James is a microcosm of a single play. You seem to be implying that there's no scenario in any part of the sport where it would give you an advantage to employ statistics. The eye test is great and all, but most teams don't have the budget to watch every player in the whole world do that stuff. Imagine a player pulls off the exact same play James just did, but in the second division of France. How would a team like Augsburg find out? They could either rely upon word of mouth which would be incredibly unlikely to happen, or they could have a model that analyzes every game in the top 50 leagues in Europe for them that could tell them this James-clone pulled something remarkable off because it knows how much space he had and how unlikely the shot was to go in. They see that in the data, and they go take a look at this player themselves. That's why I find it hard to believe anyone could fully dismiss statistics. You can have scouts, but stats can help you put your scouts to better use. It's simply an obvious business advantage for most clubs' scouting departments. Youth development is a whole other thing. There are probably 50 things more important to have than the use of numbers in developing a youth player.
Doesn't performance reflect intelligence? Doesn't scoring show a player knows where to be (sometimes)? I like fun facts. Just because something is said on TV doesn't mean any of the players or coaches care. It is fair to criticize announcers for believing history that isn't relevant, but that doesn't impact how games are played. That's a good point. Would Leicester City have won maybe the most unlikely top league title in recent memory without Jamie Vardy? In the season before he came to Leicester City, Vardy scored 34 goals, but that was in the fifth and sixth levels.