Yes there are other sports where the advanced stats are more highly developed than in soccer. But what does that actually say about whether certain soccer stats are useful or not? Obviously outcomes are the most important thing in pro sports which is a results-oriented business and in the end winning is all that matters, but just saying that is meaningless as it's not like we can predict that the Yankees will win the World Series every year even with my grandma as their ace starting pitcher because they have won the most in the past... Given that outcomes are so important wouldn't soccer stats have value if they could provide information on what future results are likely to be, what if some advanced stat was better at predicting future outcomes than past results are?
Bundesliga final table Final Bundesliga table for Americans:• Brown/Chandler - 3rd, UCL• Reyna/Campbell - 4th, UCL• Maloney - 6th, UECL• Chase - 9th, in DFB Pokal final• Scally - 10th• Paredes - 11th• Banks - 12th• Sands - 14th• Tolkin - 17th, relegated— American Ultras Talk (@usmntaut) May 17, 2025 Richards Chris Richards in Crystal Palace's FA Cup final win over Man City:◉ 7.5 FotMob rating ✅◉ Clean sheet kept 🛡️◉ 3/5 (60%) accurate long balls 🎯◉ 4 blocks 💥◉ 12 clearances ⚔️◉ 5/7 (71%) duels won 🦾𝐅𝐀 𝐂𝐮𝐩 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐢𝐨𝐧.#usmnt pic.twitter.com/IbE3Cora4Y— USMNT Report 🇺🇸🇹🇷 (@USMNTReport) May 17, 2025
I agree there are so many crackpot tomes of posts on xG that perhaps some folks could pitch their services to Darwin Nunez. He could use help marketing his great xG to prospective new teams. Lost seasons for Reyna, Paredes, Turner, Cowell, and Balogun Banks and Chase showed potential.
Yes what matters is one random player you have decided to mention repeatedly, my bad... Also aren't you obsessed with Fotmob ratings from individual games, what makes some made-up number from a site no one cared about until a few years ago the holy grail while xG and other advanced stats are useless trash worthy of derision? Do you hate advanced stats because some stat professor flunked you for your single data point obsession and not understanding the concept of "small sample size"? Really for many things a full soccer season is just barely sufficient to begin drawing meaningful conclusions...
One disappointment this season is we really haven't had that "shooting star" breakout for a young, American-born player in Europe. We had that "young player breakout in Europe" thread for a while. We had a run there with Adams, McKennie, Pulisic, and Reyna winning the award. Who would it be this year? Not many choices, actually. Noahkai Banks. He didn't actually play that much and doesn't have a USMNT cap. Campbell appeared during an injury crisis at Dortmund, and then disappeared again. Damion Downs scored 10 goals in Bund2. That's not Adams, McKennie, Pulisic, Reyna, etc. type of breakout. Its good. But he's not a 17 year old playing in the Champions League that forced his way into USMNT callups. We were getting excited about Kochen, but he hasn't done anything. One would have to squint to call guys like Paxten Aaronson and Johnny Cardoso "young players." They're no longer eligible for USYNTs. Maybe next year somebody like Mathis Albert will shoot upwards to get us back on track. Knock our socks off. Get us back on that train. I guess this year it would be Noahkai Banks. I guess.
Nathaniel Brown had a breakout, but he's not a young player. He turns 22 in less than a month. Plus there's that pesky part of him not playing for USMNT/USYNTs. I want to see that teenager that breaks out in a big European league and busts into the national team. Maybe I'm living in a delusion. The delusion that we were going to have a Pulisic, Reyna type of breakout every year. Its possible that was too much to ask. Let's hope for Mathis Albert next year.
What’s Darwin’s FotMob, SofaScore, and WhoScored ratings? Those are real things that serious people in the game look at and not laughably made up bullshit for novices to point to.
It happens from time to time where it’s off, but usually over the course of a season it tends to line up pretty closely. Given those results Bournemouth would be the sort of team you’d rate to do even better next year except they may lose their coach and key players like Huijsen.
The annual best young player thread seems to have fallen by the wayside due to a lack of interest (which in turn is likely due to a lack of exciting options to discuss). I made a thread at the end of 2023 asking people to vote on the breakout young player that year, and hardly anyone bothered voting. Johnny Cardoso got the most votes, but he was already 22 at that point -- technically eligible under the criteria we'd been using all along (U22 at the start of the calendar year), but every previous winner was still a teenager at the end of the calendar year when they broke out. And then no one even bothered making a thread for 2024. By contrast, from 2016 to 2021 (and maybe 2022), we had at least one or two players each year who were still teenagers at the end of the calendar year and who had clearly broken into the starting rotation for the USMNT or a quality club, or both at that point: Pulisic, McKennie, Adams, Dest, arguably Sargent, Reyna, Musah, Pepi, and Scally -- and Tim Weah might have been in there too if he hadn't gotten injured immediately after his move to Lille in 2019.
And thats that.........PSV are somehow Dutch champions again. PSV gotta send Groningen a thank you package. And Cologne go up with Hamburg..........and Cologne are also 2BL champions. They were able to finish the job. Huge day in Serie A today for Venezia coming up in a few hours.
Probably not saying this enough: Earnie Stewart has done a helluva job at PSV. BACK-TO-BACK @EREDIVISIE CHAMPIONS! ❤️🤍#OnsEindje pic.twitter.com/OP8FvrMRdc— PSV (@PSV) May 18, 2025
Downs finishes his year with an assist as Koln win easily. As mentioned above, Koln promoted to Bund as champions! Damion Downs now up to 17 goal contributions in 23 starts this season!Gold Cup and Bundesliga ready 👀#usmnt https://t.co/FcfW5Fwi7k— USMNT Report 🇺🇸🇹🇷 (@USMNTReport) May 18, 2025 .@Bundesliga_DE: WE ARE BACK!!!!!!!!!____#effzeh #bundesliga pic.twitter.com/GlF6sNtK2I— 1. FC Köln (@fckoeln) May 18, 2025
There is no problem with the advanced stats as long as they are used correctly. This statement which you repped is not using them correctly. Those posters are producing Orange-Cheeto level math. but in terms of npXG+xA/90, Malik is 11th in the Eredivisie. More relevantly, perhaps, the top three in the Eredivisie are his PSV teammates. deJong, Til and Saibari, if you are curious. So what is wrong with that statement; Well xG and xA are probabilities, it is nonsensical to add two probabilities of different events together, you can multiply them for certain kinds of analysis. Second and more important player A having a higher xG or a higher xA does not mean the player a is better what you should be looking at is the variance between x and actual for each player. That is the true value of the x stats.
🇺🇸🌟| Malik Tillman (2002)→ 22 | AM | Right-footed→ PSV Eindhoven | EredivisiePlayer Profile:✅ Positionally flexible✅ Elite technique✅ Tight space genius✅ High work rate, 1v1 threat✅ Composed and tidy finisherPotential - 8.5/10 🌟 pic.twitter.com/qBLr6IgVkl— w/scout (@widescouting) May 18, 2025
Not true. In fact the value of the player x stats is in doing secondary analysis to understand why there is a variance between between expected and actual. Take PSV for example: You can see that LDJ significantly underperformed his xG while Tillman significantly overperformed his expected. PlayerMinutesxGGoalsxGDiffxG90Shots LDJ245319.0714-5.070.798 Saibari178711.8711-0.870.684 Til202611.7410-1.740.5264 Tillman19217.19124.810.3458 Pepi6837.13113.870.9434 Bakayoko15806.5992.410.3860 Lang19056.25114.750.363 Perisic18074.9494.060.2542
IMO the Bundesliga just got a lot more exciting, two real big clubs going back up should certainly help the competitiveness of it. Shame the FCKers couldnt keep the pace for at least that playoff spot. BL2 still gonna be a good one with plenty of large clubs in it........Dresden just came right back up from the third division.