It’s been four years since I created the Soccermetrics blog to examine soccer analytics in a different way. I re-examine the initial question I raised and look at how the state of soccer analytics has changed since then.
Football is traditionally a sport of few statistics, and the bulk of the statistics that have been available, such as shots, fouls, and corner kicks, were neutral and summarizing in nature. (Aside from the obvious positive statistic of goals, of course.) Thanks to companies such as Opta, Prozone, and Match Analysis, football clubs, football leagues, [...]
The subject of this post is something that I’ve been thinking about for a while, but wasn’t motivated to write something until I read that Paul Gardner anti-analytics piece in Soccer America. (I referenced it in the SRC Newsletter, which you really should subscribe to if you haven’t already.) Here’s the final paragraph: ——- To sum up: [...]
My post in response to the Brian Phillips article in Slate touched a little on the issues of open source versus proprietary approaches to soccer analytics, but this blog post at Hot Time in Old Town (a Chicago Fire fan’s site) has motivated me to write more at length on the subject. It’s something that [...]
Eric Vormelker hijacked my celebratory post with an article from Brian Phillips in Slate that questioned the move toward analytics in soccer. (Quite all right, Eric!) The article hits on points that I’ve made in previous posts on soccer analytics. Being self-referential in blog posts is bad form, so I’ll just point you to the [...]
Two years ago I started Soccermetrics in order to write about statistical problems in soccer in a more technical and uninhibited way. My initial post was one that I had written on my HexagonalBlog website as a way to answer some questions in my mind about the viability of an analytical approach to soccer. Now [...]
I haven’t written anything about the recent goings-on at Liverpool, but some of the front-office selections — in particular Damien Comolli to the new Directorship of Football Strategy — have implications for the use of soccer analytics at a professional soccer club. It’s been thought that soccer analytics in general and “Moneyball” in particular might [...]
Brian Moore of the London Daily Telegraph has written a sharply critical article on the attitude of many within England’s football community toward fresh ideas regarding the sport. I’m going to use the article as a springboard to make a larger point about the future of soccer analytics and their impact on the game. Now, [...]
When I talk about statistics in soccer, I tend to group them into two different classes. I’ve even written posts where I have made such distinctions but without much definition. I’d like to take a step back and discuss what I feel are two important classes of data in soccer: macro-statistics and micro-statistics.
Back in November 2009 there was a discussion on the Sounders At Heart website on soccer statistics, and this site had been cited, among others. I had followed some of the thread, and it brought me back to something I probably mentioned briefly: what is a good statistic in soccer? Perhaps we can answer the [...]
