Almost 52k covered in 4 games, that's insane! Donovan is 2nd in the tournament, Bradley is slightly more than 4k more than the first non-american. He's also moved into the 5th rated MF in the tournament....Mr. Bradley I'd like you to meet this huge check.
On the one hand, thats extremely impressive. On the other hand, I can't help but wonder how much more effective he [and Demps and Landon] wouldve been had we had better tactics and not fallen behind early and had to chase the game. Even our exceedingly fit team ran out of gas yesterday.
Yeah thats a major reason why we lost to Ghana...just had to run and chase WAY too much over the course of the entire tournament. Telling statistic.
Bradley ran about the same rate he ran in the World Cup, including the game against Spain where the US took an early lead. I do not see a direct correlation between his work rate and the US gaining or conceding an early lead. In any case, he has a ferocious, world-class work rate.
unless you are running over them. Miles clocked is one of those "uh, ok" stats. If you run like crazy and it pays off, great. If you are a headless chicken, it don't mean much.
Here's a really impressive stat: Michael's national team career ratio of miles run to assists is infinity (actually undefined to be mathematically correct).
thanks for putting words in my mouth. I never said it's all about running but you cannot deny the amount of work Bradley does in the middle. He's been in the top 3 the entire tournament even when we weren't chasing the opposing team half the game.
Michael almost isn't human. I take my hat off to him. He was the US player of the tournament alongside Landon, with Clint a nearby third. Having said that, when he was into the box on a nicely played pass, he took a low, hard shot with this left foot that went too close to the keeper. It was a low percentage play. If he had a striker's instinct, he would have moved a bit closer to the keeper and picked a corner. If so, we would have likely won the game. Oh well, that's why he's a defensive midfielder and not a striker, I guess.
He didn't say that, he referred to the running stats as well as the castrol index, where he's the 5th ranked midfielder. He's had an excellent tournament and the running stats just show one part of what makes him so good.
Yes he has a ferocious workrate, but he was out of gas. In the CC, he ran the least in the Spain game, when we won 2-0. Of course he was sent off with three minutes to go so perhaps he wouldve run another thousand meters in that time. He ran more in the Brazil game when we played down a man and were behind and more in the Italy game when we were down a man and also in the Egypt game, when we had to score three goals to advance. I just think he would be a more effective player if he did not have to run as much. Pirlo ran a thousand less meters in the Italy game and while we were exhausted, had the energy in the 90 something minute to make that brilliant run that set up the third goal.
Not so. Dempsey, Edu, Feilhaber and some of the other mids all have assists to their credit. Even Logan Pause has one!
You are right...they do all have assist to their credit, my mistake. Sacha Kljestan and Stuart Holden have more assists than Edu and Feilhaber, pretty interesting. Most of our forwards also got more assists than the midfielders.
Running a lot means you're chasing the game. Which we always were. We led for only 3 minutes over all 4 games.
A striker's instinct? Yeah, I can only imagine what Jozy would have done with that opportunity. Watch the replay. Altidore took too long too pass it and when he did it was too slow and a bit behind Bradley. He had to slow down almost to a stop while defenders were coming from behind on him. If he would have taken a touch, he likely wouldn't have gotten a shot off.
One of the things that you face trying to implement statistical analysis of individual players in soccer is making sure the things you evaluate players by actually have a substantial effect on winning soccer games. In baseball the reason why stat geeks like me have been harping on OBP for over thirty years is not because we're very smart and know more than you and so you should listen to us. We're not. We harp on it because the objective evidence for it's importance in winning games (as opposed to say stolen bases) is overwhelming. So I guess the question becomes how does a statistic like this shape up when it comes to helping teams win games? As mentioned there's all sorts of difficulties in assessing that due to other factors, but it still would be nice to know if the best teams cover the most ground or whether the best teams don't have to.
And if you think of the traditional powers in the game and think about which of them _most_ emphasizes all the running and covering of ground, your answer would have to be England, and right now they seem to the traditional power most at sea. Not to say it isn't important, just that this isn't a distance track sport. The goal isn't to cover more ground than your opponent. The goal is to stick the white thing in the back of the net more than your opponent. And if the relationship between that and covering lots of ground isn't really all that strong (I don't actually know whether this is), then placing such a large emphasis on covering ground might not be such a good idea. More and more teams seem to be taking advantage of teams whose players try to cover lots of ground. The fastest player in the world can't be in two places at once, and if you can get a player to chase you to where you want him to be and away from where you don't want him, you can use his work rate against him.
No idea. And I'm too lazy to adjust for the fact that the US players rank so highly in part because they got an extra thirty minutes in which to cover ground. (But I do notice that a top ten or fifteen dominated by the US when you sort by distance covered suddenly becomes a lot more German when you sort by distance covered in possession. Which is interesting, though hardly strong evidence of anything.) Of course, even adjusting for minutes played is messy because guys who don't play as many minutes will be able to run harder. Good teams will be able to rest guys so that they can run harder when needed. Some teams will be able to include lethal finishers who don't run much, while other teams will succeed because a lot of their most effective players can run forever... I'm not sure there is a simple correlation (positive or negative) between running and success because I don't think there's a simple correlation between tactical approach and success, and the degree and kind of running are in large part dictated by tactical approach. (And of course tactical approach is in large part dictated by technical skill, and both of those have their own complicated correlations with level of aerobic fitness...) Glad it's not my job to try to figure that out. Totally random fact: as of today, the player who'd clocked the highest speed in the tournament is Javier Hernandez (Donovan's in 8th). Still not convinced those are especially accurate measurements, though. The CI speed data have always seemed off to me.
Well I think that good midfielders are active and cover a lot of ground. But movement in possession is considerably different than chasing the ball. Our team does too much chasing the ball because we can't retain possession.
http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/statistics/teams/distance.html Here's a ranking of all 32 teams in the World Cup by average distance covered per 90. I believe the US was higher up before the Ghana match. Australia Japan Mexico Portugal Switzerland USA England Germany Serbia South Africa Korea Republic Slovenia Italy Denmark Korea DPR Spain Algeria Slovakia Paraguay New Zealand Ghana Netherlands Uruguay Côte d'Ivoire Cameroon Brazil France Greece Honduras Chile Argentina Nigeria