Comments on: Does Soccer Need More Stats?

By: wengerball

wengerball — Sat, 30 May 2009 21:00:57 +0000

Stats can have it uses in the beautiful game it’s just a matter on context. The guardian chalkboards ( http://bit.ly/1alsly ) is a great tool to compare players.

By: ish

ish — Sat, 30 May 2009 06:26:24 +0000

i think analyzing player stats can be useful such as passes completed, tackles won, headers won, distance dribbled and things like that. It wouldnt add to the game as analyzing which player is better(DM’s would have close to 90% pass accuracy but they are passing 2 metres to either side or back) but it would be useful just to know like thats interesting.

By: Kevin M.

Kevin M. — Fri, 29 May 2009 18:50:54 +0000

I’m of the belief that the stats we have in football right now are not good enough. For the purpose of broadcasting and watching a game, I partially agree with you that they can take away from the intangibles that are the reason this is called the beautiful game. But for the purpose of analyzing talent, some serious improvement is needed. I honestly think that teams depend too much on the gut feelings of a manager and the owner when spending big money on players. Simply put, they don’t put the same kind of analysis into their signings as Theo Epstein of the Boston Red Sox or Daryl Morey of the Houston Rockets does, which is asinine considering the transfer fees paid for some of these players.

By: Weston

Weston — Fri, 29 May 2009 18:28:25 +0000

the beautiful game doesnt need stats, us dumb americans need it.

By: alessio

alessio — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:56:33 +0000

http://italy.theoffside.com/serie-a/a-statistical-view-of-serie-a.html

Good thoughts from Francesco a bit earlier on this.

By: Colin

Colin — Fri, 29 May 2009 00:29:58 +0000

I think a lot of football fans are skeptical of statistics, and for good reason – most of the stats most quoted in the media are worthless. Clean sheets are like wins and losses for a pitcher, they depend more on the rest of the team than anything. Assists are bad because they depend on someone else to actually score the goal (assist attempts, on the other hand, are quite useful). Goals per game could mean completely different things for starters and for bench players. Passing rates are ok, but only in a large sample. And so on. There is good stuff out there, we just need people to recognize it.

Over the past couple years, I’ve been developing an all-encompassing stat for evaluating players, similar to the aforementioned VORP. My formulas actually borrow a lot from Bill James’ win shares, but have been adapted heavily to fit our game. My goals are to eliminate as much luck an reliance on teammates as possible, and to incorporate as many aspects of the game as possible. The result is a win share-type score that can be interpreted as “A team of 11 Player Xs will win Y games”. Unlike the ACTIM index, my system is based on a tangible unit – wins – instead of an arbitrary number, and unlike the ACTIM folks, I’m very happy to share details on my methods.

Shameless plug for my website:

http://championshipatbest.com

I’m a Fulham fan, so most of the content is specific to Fulham, but I’ve been trying to branch out and cover more.

By: Ian

Ian — Thu, 28 May 2009 22:22:50 +0000

I think stats can be useful, as long as they’re applied in the right way. Football will never be as stat-driven as baseball, because the constant motion makes quantifying it into simple numbers difficult and sometimes misleading, but statistics can still be a good tool, especially for managers. The statistics in a flowing game like football, though, will always be more complicated than in a stop-and-start game like baseball, and explaining some of these stats in a way that’s actually useful to the people that matter in the game won’t be an easy task.

By: Madridista

Madridista — Thu, 28 May 2009 20:41:03 +0000

I’m reminded of the match report of a NCAA D3 soccer match I once read: “University X had more shots on goal, but University Y led 9-4 on corners won”.

Do we really need this? We’ve been following this game for years, most of us, and it doesn’t take much to realize that while there are general indicators that suggest how well a team or a player is performing, almost none of them are consistently predictive of the final score. Even then, how are you ever going to work with the statistics? It’s difficult to isolate the value of a statistic from everything else that goes on in a game, and even harder when you’re comparing different styles of play. Barcelona’s style of play may inflate one statistic, Man Utd another, Aston Villa yet another, for instance.

In the end, no matter the statistics, the only thing that matters is the 90 minutes. And we’ve all seen games that turned all statistics leading up to that point on their heads. Stop thinking so much and just enjoy the game.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Thu, 28 May 2009 20:39:45 +0000

What about total # of touches on the ball in a game? This would seem to include defenders, midfielders & strikers. It does not necessarily quantify the effectiveness of those touches, but shows involvment in the game. Refine the stat to include touches that go to teammates or win possession and it becomes more meaningful.

Detailed stats are only useful for true fans of the game. As Adam says above, looking at baseball stats is not really for the casual fan, it’s for the already converted.

To use stats to entice casual fans they need to be simple, self-explanatary and comparable.

What about the stats that some of these fantasy sites use to judge points given to a player every week. Can any of those be used?

By: Daryl

Daryl — Thu, 28 May 2009 19:07:34 +0000

I can definitely see how passing stats can be misleading, so not going to argue with that. But how about for defenders?

I know I’ve banged on about this before, but defenders don’t always get the credit they deserve. Maybe some stats like number of tackles/blocks/headers would help highlights the top performers?