Just a quick question - what statistics do you believe are worth tracking in soccer? Here are a couple I would like to see, but haven't: - When a team/player has possession, in what 3rd of the field do most of their touches occur? For example, what % of the time does Claudio Reyna get the ball in the defensive 3rd vs. the middle and offensive 3rd. Tough to track, but it would be interesting to chart to see how often outside backs really get forward, how often forwards really track back, etc. - "Dangerous opportunity (DO)" sequences. Who is involved, how the play develops, etc. Again, this is tough to track because it comes into the question of making a subjective assertion as to what is or isn't "dangerous," but any attempt to track this in my opinion would be a step in the right direction. If tracked consistently, soon you would be able to see which players are most often involved in the DO sequences of a team. Pretty interesting stuff if you ask me. - This goes hand in hand with tracking dangerous opportunities, but I would like to see, over a series of games, what is the average # of touches before a goal or a "DO" is created. How often does possession lead to a DO, how much counterattack is too much? Somehow it would be interesting to track these statistics. - Adjustment in style of play. This I think would be the toughest to track and wouldn't be a statistic by itself, but it could be understood better by tracking a variety of stats. For example - how the ball is being played (is boomball in effect), substitution patterns, average # of touches in a possession sequence, etc. The cumulation of those stats can give a more accurate description of how a coach adjusts the style of play of a team during the course of a game. Over the long term, it might be interesting to see what is working, and what isn't. So what other stats would you guys like to see tracked?
Player peformance charting can easily do the first. The second I think can be deduced from player performance charting. However, the difference between a great through ball and one that a keeper scoops up just as the front runner gets there can be slim. I bet, though, that most DOs will be apparent. Is a DO ALWAYS the result of the last pass before the shot?? For the third, if you assign the sequence a DO status, then it's should be straightforward to backtrack when the event sequence begins. The fourth I think is a very hard nut to crack. Other stats. --On the ground passes, completed and not completed, vs. balls in the air, completed or not completed. That should be straightforward to track. --Length of on the groundpasses -- under 10 yards over 10 yards I said in my monster post on he the big thread, I beleive, but have zero evidence to back this up, that teams who complete a good percentage of longer (+10 yards) on the ground passes are teams that advance the ball dangerously and under control, and are likely to be more successful over the long run. --Turnovers, turnovers, turnovers. Won vs lost, especially by area of the field.
From a quick glance through my Opta Stats Yearbooks, some of what you guys are proposing is already covered, specifically stat #1 from Nutmeg and the last 3 stats requested by Karl. Some of the others seem a bit more sublime in nature and might be tough to track and report. Andy
I would be interested in "first pass after a ball is won." As in, which direction does the ball go. Because to me, what distinguishes DMs is what they do with the ball after they win it.
You can't keep track of everything, and who wants to. I keep track of what is important to me. I do keep track of certain things. Some things can be kept by one person other things you need a nother person. The amount of corner kicks your team gets is a telling statistic. A lot of corner kicks means your team is putting a lot of offensive pressure on the oppononet. Which doe not have a lot to do with how many goals you scored off corners. The amount of shots a player takes is misleading. Could mean he is great or it could mean he is a bad decision maker. Take his total shot attempts that includes the ones not on goal against his number of goals scored. If it is a pretty high percentage he is a very dangerous player. A player you want on the field. The number of saves a keeper makes is misleading. Saves are on shots on goal. it does not include how many plays the keeper actually makes. Like the ones when he leaves his goal to get balls just before they become shots on goal. Superdave and I don't get along politically, but I agree with him about winning the ball and the first pass after they win the ball. A player in general who wins a lot of balls is the first step and then can make the completed first pass is a good player when his team is defending. Teams that can do that are on their way to becomming a very good team. I actually don't keep that statistic because when it happens you can see it, and when it doesn't happen you can see it and the player doing it good or bad. A lot of statistic just gives you get the feel of the game. I will put his name in my notes good or bad. Then fix the bad one way or the other preferbly on the practice field. Like you can see the under 17 US National team is lacking in that part of their game. For that I blame their coach more then the players. I think blaming the player when things are not going right is a cop out by the coach for not doing his job on the practice field. Richie PS Reelect George W Bush. That's for Super Dave haha
That's a great point. You know what would be interesting? To track the number of times a GK "wins" the ball. All you'd have to do is count the number of times he gets the ball, when the last team to have possession was the opposition, and it's *NOT* a shot. In one or two games, I don't think it would mean that much, because some teams like to play long ball, which will give the GK alot of chances to win the ball. But over the course of a season, I think that would tell us aLOT about a GKs style. Is he a pure shotstopper, or a keeper/sweeper?
I think that's what the MLS catch/punch stat attempts to do. Peter Hirdt claimed in one of his columns that it had a strong correlation with winning.
Perhaps this stat falls into the "duh" category... what about: scoring off of set pieces (corner kicks, direct and indirect kicks) in either the offensive half or the offensive third of the field. To track quality of player decision-making, you could also break that down by quick kicks or not. I also think someone mentioned (in the mothership thread) tracking the success rate of short corner kicks.
One of the interesting things about corners is, of course, that they should be considered "dangerous opportunities." I think corners are absolutely ripe for the kind of rigorous methodolgy in the category I called "Multi-Game Metrics." Here is what you would need to have/do in order to make this study interesting and valuable. --First, you need to have a dataset of successful/unsuccessful corner kicks that is of a statistically valid sample type and size. Perhaps that means X number of corners over X number of MLS seasons. --Second, you need to run the standard suite of stastical tests on this dataset. Are outcomes random? --Third, you need to assign a goal scoring probability/value to every corner kick event. In other words, what are the odds that a corner turns into a goal? --Fourth, now you can delve into the interesting stuff. What is the level of scoring off of corners kicks for, say, Team A, that shows that team A is a succeeding (or failing) at a rate that is statistically significantly different from merely the random/average Team? How much is that worth? And just as important, for teams who want to be successful at PREVENTING corners turning into goals, what is the rate that their opponents fail to do so, and is THAT statisticlaly signficant? --Fifth, and finally, given the "value" of scoring from or preventing scoring via corner kicks relative to scoring OVERALL, how much time and energy should be spent rehearsing them? If a corner is worth some fraction of a goal, and could represent some statitscally significant fraction of your overall scoring, should you spend MORE training time than "usual" working on them? Should you make the creation of corners a key objective of your run of play offense? These are very interesting questions, it seems to me, and certainly worth answering with the kind of methodological exactitude common in statistics and OR, but not so common in the world of soccer.
Well stated, Karl. Another implication is the potential to adjust defensive tactics, too. For example, if your opponent is shown to be well below average on converting corner kicks, then defenders should be less concerned about giving up a corner than they might otherwise be.
Do you know of any good sites explaining what Opta Stats are, or even better where to find them. I haven't been able to find much of anything on the web. Any sites?
Since it is a pay service, I think only a small amount can be found online. The following site has some explanation of the system. http://www.planetfootball.com/optamizer/about.asp?article=54974 Andy
yeah i'd seen that before, was hoping for a little bit more. Why do they insist on adding up a point total?
basically it allows them to have a statistical way to rank players at every position and create a multitude of "best of lists". It is uncanny how good the "best of" lineup looks which they create with the highest point totals at each position, which I think gives some serious credence to how they track stats. Get your hands on a yearbook if you can. Andy
I have a theory. I am willing to bet $10 that the best team in MLS over the course of a year has the fewest amount of turnovers. By "turnovers," I do not mean giveaways by a forward going at goal. I mean a player who is dispossessed of the ball, or who makes an errant pass, when the only thing between that player and the goal he is defending are the defenders and/or the GoalKeeper. Modern soccer is a game of constant pressure on the ball, and it is my theory that those teams who make the least amount of errors on the ball in critical - "turnover" - situations, win the most often. It would also be worthwhile to compare the percentage of goal sequences that begin with a "turnover" against the total number of goals scored. Maybe I'll check that out on MLSNET's media archive when I finally get home.
The converse of your assertion--that the best teams have the fewest turnovers--is that the best teams force the most turnovers. That seems to be Bruce Arena's philosophy in that he clearly favors forwards that apply strong defense pressure--not by tracking back deep to play defense (though that does sometimes happen), but by pressuring the other team's defenders. Do you think it would be as simple as tracking a completed pass % for the five-most defensive players?
I believe that the study by Egil Olsen that beineke has referred to in the past, and and also the studies by Charles Reep (whose work led to the promotion of the long-ball game by the English FA) showed that most goals came from the sort of turnovers you describe--not sure of the actual number though. Olsen on Norway's style of play before the '98 WC: "...if you don't play the ball through the midfield, you won't lose it there. Many goals are conceded by losing it there. It's simple!"
I've been browsing the MLS archive a bit, but I don't remember many situations that match this description very well. My impression is that the leading causes of goals are: (1) Poor defending of crosses (2) Failure to close down a shooter's space (3) Missed chances to clear I do think #3 is related to turnovers ... to elaborate, I can think of (A) A goal that resulted from a botched trap (Regan against LA). (B) A goal that resulted from a defensive header that was directed to the wrong place (Behncke against Colorado this past weekend). (C) Situations (none specifically) where a defender got a poke or a touch on the ball, but a firmer tackle would have gotten it away. (D) A goal that resulted from a situation where a defender had a ball ricochet off his legs. A more agile defender might've been able to redirect it away (Agoos against Columbus). Due to subjectivity, this a hard topic to quantify. Still, from looking at the archive (with no strong prior belief), my impression is that a lot of this season's goals have resulted from poor defensive play. I don't remember many that resulted directly from offensive mistakes (i.e. when a team had clear possession). Another possible way to give away goals is through poor transition play. Saturday, when Mathis got his breakaway against KC, the Wizards midfield had pushed forward and made very little effort to get back. I don't think there was a bad giveaway (can't remember), but Wolyniec should never have received the ball in so much space. With better transition D, he could never have served that ball forward. Not to pick on the Wizards, but they didn't appear to have gotten into position for the corner that led to Mathis's other goal. (Did Guevara take that corner quickly?) Anyway, this is all impressionistic, and I'd be interested to see a more systematic study (even if it only has a small sample of goals).