Bumping this one, as qualifiers are back next week. I also updated our progress compared to previous cycles. A win on Friday finally takes us...
Totally agreed, and he's the best guy in our player pool at this connector skill set.
Best performance of the tournament thus far. Everything looked sharper in the first 15 minutes: good movement, good spacing, players actively...
I would love to see a 3-man central midfield of Bradley-Acosta-Nagbe for this one. If it's a 4-3-3, give me:...
The more I think about it, the more I believe that at the World Cup, we have to make the switch to a 3-man central midfield, be it a 4-3-3 or a...
Great post. Having watched the game a few times again, Spain was crying out for a healthy Iniesta to connect the lines alongside Xavi and unlock...
Davies and Altidore complemented each other well. Altidore, despite his size, was never an aerial outlet or back-to-goal striker. Though...
Totally agree on the ELO differential...just a brutal lineup. [IMG] Egypt showed well, too, obviously beating Italy, and nearly drawing 3-3...
Thanks man - it was a blast listening to the old commentary, too.
I haven't seen that before...that's great!
With the Confederations Cup in action, I took a look back at arguably the US' best victory in international competition (head's up - this is a...
Thanks again for picking up on this...looks like Transfermarkt didn't capture any Liga MX games after Feb 26:...
Let me double-check...with all the roster drops/adds, I updated that graphic like 4 times
I took a look at the impact of pre-season/early-season MLS on the early Hex games here:...
A quick contextual chart - the roster broken out by WCQ and all other caps: [IMG] I need to look at this with Gold Cup appearances as well, but...
After reading Arena's comments about the early-season MLS warm-up period, I took a look at last cycle's player mix in the early qualifiers...
Yes. I don't see performance against the B/C team of Serbia and Jamaica outweighing previous performance or club form. Building from here, I see...
I think a few different things are at play with Giovinco: 1) He tends to drop back a little deeper to receive the ball than other high-volume...
I did a data analysis across multiple leagues here, trying to put stats in a global context:...
On the college point...here's some old research I did on that topic. This is each player on a World Cup roster, and underneath is the number of...
The ClubELO methodology rates clubs in all Euro leagues, from Spain to San Marino. I like using this site, because I find the date/sorting...
Indeed, though I suppose it's fair to include him as potential WC 2018 at this point! Anderlecht were on a tear when Kljestan transferred there:...
On a tangent (and an idea I'm toying with for the next research project/article), but I think the interest is there. Scaling profitably to the...
Not sure...it's definitely lower than Liga MX, as Garber himself admitted, but MLS teams play so few intercontinental games that it's difficult to...
I believe there's much to be gained from a more stable D2 and below, particularly if the focus is on 16-22 year old players. I think back, and...