Last year I created a draft value card for the 2018 MLS SuperDraft that purported to give a rough estimate of the relative value of each draft slot. With the SuperDraft approaching on Friday, it’s time to update that card, so here it is: Relative values of draft position in the 2019 MLS SuperDraft. With […]
It’s now 2019 and the opening stages of the 2019 Copa Libertadores start in three weeks, but let’s take a look back at the 2018 competition, which didn’t end that long ago. It started with 47 teams, developed into a two-country race, and ended in a mouthwatering and compelling but ultimately depressing and farcical Superclásico […]
The 2018 Major League Soccer regular season ended five weeks ago, and the MLS Cup final is here in Atlanta this weekend! It’s time for a new edition of the Front-Office Efficiency table.The efficiency metric is version 4.0 which was developed in 2015. You can read more about the process here, but I’ll give a brief […]
Any match between Boca Juniors and River Plate will capture the full attention of a country and the rest of the football-watching world like no other club match with the exception of Real Madrid and Barcelona. That this match happens to be the opening match of the final of this year’s Copa Libertadores makes it […]
The 2018 CONMEBOL Copa Libertadores has reached its semifinal stage featuring traditional powers from the two biggest football countries in South America. River Plate will host defending champions Grêmio in the first leg of the first semifinal on Tuesday night; Boca Juniors will open the second semifinal at home to Palmeiras on Wednesday. Even though […]
Argentina’s Superliga competition enters the October international break at one-third distance, with a fair number of matches pending due to weather or lack of groundskeeping. Here is the league table after the most recent matchday:For the first time in almost two years, there is a new leader of the top flight in Argentina. Boca Juniors […]
Before the World Cup I posted expected goal maps of all of this season’s Copa Libertadores matches, from the preliminary rounds to the group stage, to the Soccermetrics Pictures Twitter feed. Now that the World Cup is over and Libertadores is set to resume next week, it’s time to take a statistical look at the […]
In a previous post, I wrote about match management by referees at the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Effective match time is part of that analysis, and it is possible to infer the average amount of effective time during the tournament. This post will break down effective match time over all 64 matches played.As is the […]
Passing network analysis has become part of the standard output in advanced soccer analytics. In this post, I show which players were most influential to their national team’s passing networks at the 2018 FIFA World Cup.During the World Cup I posted passing networks for most matches, and almost all of the knockout phase matches. If […]
Four years ago I used the occasion of the 2014 FIFA World Cup to write my first articles on referee performance analytics. In the absence of tracking data these analytics have focused more on the management of matches by the 25 center officials than the veracity of in-match decisions or proximity to major events. I’ve […]
