Simon Kuper, the co-writer of Soccernomics, has written a comprehensive piece in this weekend's Financial Times on the growth of the use of statistical analysis in football. The article focuses on English soccer, primarily because it is the one soccer league that has demonstrated a willingness to use numbers in their match planning and player […]
Rob Carroll has come down from the lush green hills of Ireland with his Ten Commandments for performance analysis in sports, and you can read them at his Video Analyst site. I agree with just about all of them, especially #4 and #5. You can measure a lot in sport, but there are some things […]
This isn't really an analytics kind of post, but it's relevant because we as analysts often have to communicate our ideas and results to people who don't have the same level of expertise, and it's important that we present information so that we don't lose decision-makers or lose credibility. Ben Alamar wrote a post to […]
I had promised myself that I wouldn't write more big-picture posts about soccer analytics, but I can't help myself this time.On the drive home, I was listening to the Brian Kenny show on ESPN Radio and the substitute host John Kincaide was discussing the ongoing NFL lockout talks. Kincaide voiced his doubts that either the […]
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, this […]
"Statistics are extremely meaningful, if you know how to analyze them."-John Wooden (RIP)
