I hate to use this thread just to pimp another thread, but I just started a discussion I want to call you guys' attention to: https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?p=3617458&posted=1 Since I made a specific recommendation for how the league should run its affairs, I put it in the MLS: General forum, but it'll need a hefty dose of statistical analysts, so I thought you guys should be aware of it. Basically, it starts out with the assumptions that scoring is down, fouling is up, and that these two things are related. Then I make a reccomendation for what to do about it: caution points for persistent fouling.
Someone was in here, maybe you, asking for numbers in regards to how fouls given and fouls recieved correlated to goals scored and winning. I did a studoy on this at the beginign of the year, or more accurately tried to. I basically found that there wasn't much of a correlation, or if there was it was a vague one. Whether I was not looking at the numbers correctly, or there just wasn't there is another story. Unfortunately, I had to reformat my computer recently and lost all the data I collected. As I've been a non-contributor to this board for a while, it's something I'm going to make another crack at. I hadn't looked at it on a league wide basis but when I do this again, I'll look at that and share my numbers with you and everyone else. The interesting thing was that the correlations on a leaguewide basis didn't seem to work. And there wasn't a consistent correlation from team to team. However, I did find though that as teams tended to foul less or foul more it tended to have an equal effect on their goals scored and wins. I think that tended to means that FS/FC indicates a change in play or change in form, but again I'll go back and do it again. This time around I think I'm going to try to do it on a game per game basis. Though I haven't been collecting box scores so that might be a challenge, again.
I ran a quick one team FC over the season related to wins for the last two years and found absolutely nothing. The shocking thing was, I then separated the two years and last year the line seemed to be going down (ie more fouls meant fewer wins), while this year it seemed to go up. Don't know what that means, since 10 data points each year is not enough to establish any real significance. Still in all, it's better to clean the play up even if fouling does not help winning, it's just more important if it does (or even if it helps "games not lost", which would be another question to pursue).
https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=95382&highlight=fouls That's the thread where I posted most of my data. It all started with me basically discovering that last year, Dallas who obviously was one of the worst teams in MLS history lead the league in FC/FS by a ton.
One problem is ther's an obvious suspect for causation in the other direction. We're wondering whether a strategic decision before the game to foul more often helps your chances to win, but it's easy to see why having a lower chance to win can, during the game, lead to more fouls. I don't know how in the world you'd ever isolate those two questions to see whetehr either (or both) is a true phenomenon. (I suppose you could look at fouls committed while you have a lead or while you are behind, but that would be both imperfect and hard to collect. You could also throw out all the victories by more than one goal, on the assumption that teams don't view one goal matches as hopeless. This would be still more imperfect but far easier to do).
Yeah what was Arena's quote before the Portugal game? 'We fould first, we shoot first, we score first, we win!?' BTW, in the thread I linked bienke or someone else game up with a list of fouls per game throughout MLS history by season.
I'm glad you guys are raising this discussion, although it may be necessary to assemble a fair bit of data before the true patterns come out. Here's one direction that could be fruitful: don't look just at the number of fouls ... look at who commits and suffers them. As an example, the 2003 Quakes committed 476 fouls and suffered 420; the 2004 Quakes committed 460 (roughly the same) and suffered 499. What changed? One factor is that Brian Ching played more minutes, but another is that teams discovered they could effectively disrupt San Jose's buildup by targeting Richard Mulrooney. He went from suffering 2.01 fouls/90 to suffering 2.97. Personally, I would nominate Mulrooney to be the poster child for Stan's crusade. He's a clean, hardworking player who has continually improved his offensive game. Due to negative MLS tactics, however, the reward hasn't been increased success so much as increased risk of injury. He get hatcheted down and all San Jose gets is a free kick in the middle third. As to what reforms might help, I think that Stan's proposal is interesting, but I also think that the referees need to make better use of the powers they are given. Tactical fouls should be cautioned regardless of where they occur on the field.
Well, you'd have to run that one all the way to FIFA, because the reality of the game today in every league (from youth amateur to the international game) is that tactical fouling is an acceptable part of the game. And by tactical fouling, I mean a non-injurious, non-reckless (and hence non-cautionable) foul that gives your team an advantage in terms of stopping a dangerous forward foray or allowing your team to regroup and/or get into a good shape and/or get numbers behind the ball. The center has it within his power to caution a player for "persistent infringement" -- in other words, if I am marked up on Richard Mulrooney and and whack him twice, then maybe the third time, the card is going to come out. But if me and two of my teammates take turns and foul him (getting to his average 3 FS a game) well, it's the specific foul, per se, that would merit the caution or not, rather than whether we had a tactical purpose, per se. In midfield, it is very trickly. It's clearer in the attacking third. I hack a guy down who is about to get around me to the bye line, well, that's a tactical foul, and may probably merit a card. I don't usually mention Chris Armas unprompted, but a few years back, KC visited Soldier Field, and I paid particular attention to the Armas-Preki matchup. Chris was all over him like a cheap Yugoslavian suit, at one point decking him more as a statement than as a particular tactical decision (Note: watch the famous Cypress Hill video of the US Mex 2001 qualifier to see what I mean). Exercising a physical presence in midfield is with us permanently.
Actually, that's not correct. A player can receive a PI caution for his/her first foul, if his/her team is collectively guilty of the offense. At the start of the season, MLS alluded to this fact in a press release: "Repeated fouling of key players will not be tolerated." In practice, however, I think I saw that rule applied once all season. http://www.mlsnet.com/content/02/datastore/mls0323persistent.html
Actually, that is a good point. A smarter team does it in the midfield. Davy Arnaud may have gotten it so often because KC doesn't exactly play through the midfield. The plain text of Law 12 refers to "a player" in the singular (several times), and the instructions to the referees go out of their way to point out that one player can be cautioned for several types of offenses but say nothing (as you'd think they might) about team fouling or possibly punishing one player mainly for the infractions of others. The implication is that the PI yellow is strictly a case of individual misbehavior. And certainly the prevailing environment is that you do not do this. Now, the ref can punish basically anything if he thinks it's "unsportsmanlike" (a lesson I was forced to learn on handballs, as a handball is customarily an ordinary foul or else a red card). But it's best not to go down that road, as I don't think it's going anywhere with most referees. (You can also call it a "professional foul" but the function of this to me is for when fouling players who've already beaten you). Given nine years of a league clearly preferring to focus on offensive play, and given that over the course of that time, fouls are actually up generally, I despair of instructing the refs to enlightenment.
Interesting, I didn't recall seeing this particular nuance in the USSF Advice to Referees (ATR) memordandums. I will re-check. Purely league specific, perhaps? Given your recollection, it's clear that the injunction on the part of the league didn't stick very well, probably because our officials think of PI as occuring from one player, and one player only -- the "traditional" sense of PI -- as opposed to the collective.
Afraid I'm not sure where to find the actual LOTG or its interpretations on-line, but here's a post from Alberto on the Referee forum which alludes to the interpretation we're discussing. https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showpost.php?p=528130&postcount=14
FIFA's LotG: http://www.fifa.com/en/regulations/regulation/0,1584,3,00.html MLS's version: http://www.mlsnet.com/MLS/about/league.jsp?section=rules&content=overview Even in the latter, we find no overt mention of carding one player for the offenses of another.
Note that the USSF and FIFA have both issued publications specific to Persistent Infringement. Curiously, they didn't choose Richard Mulrooney as their poster child, although the Earthquakes do appear to be the victims.