I was not aware of this course until I saw it mentioned on Ben Alamar’s Twitter feed, but there is a course at Georgia Tech – my undergraduate alma mater – on sports analytics. The scope of the course is wide-ranging and covers theory, development, and applications of analytics for in-game planning, team/player performance, business […]
It was inevitable that Opta would seek to establish themselves in the American soccer market as match data providers. There is an ad at the Major League Soccer website seeking live match analysts for the upcoming season. It's a part-time job and applicants must live within commuting distance of Opta's NYC offices.Here's a video that […]
There have been changes to the lineup for the Soccer Analytics forum at this year's Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. Landon Donovan and Sunil Gulati are no longer listed as panelists, but there are some other participants: Bruno Aziza (Microsoft) Gavin Flieg (Manchester City) Steven Houston (Chelsea) Blake Wooster (Prozone) Ian Graham (Decision Technology, University of […]
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 […]
Analytics work in soccer has tended to focus on the performance of teams and players, but it is inevitable that attention would turn to match referees. Assessment of referee performance — especially concerning specific referees — is extremely important not only to the leagues and the teams, but also (let's admit this) to gambling interests. […]
Football managers have few opportunities to directly influence a match — the starting lineup, the halftime team talk, and the substitutions available to him. Substitutions can be made for tactical reasons, or they can be forced through injury. If you consider only substitutions that are made for strategic reasons, when is the best time to […]
I was looking around for some open-source math software today, and stumbled across two packages that I want to share with those of you (both of you??) who might be interested.The first is a software tool called CVXMOD. It is a Python-based tool for setting up and solving convex optimization problems, and was developed by […]
I decided to update the Soccer Analytics blog with one important addition: Climbing the Ladder. Why I did not add this blog any sooner is beyond me, but I apologize (after all, he has a link to me!). If you have a blog that deals with some aspect of soccer analytics and you'd like a link, […]
It's taken a while to get a website set up for my business, which is just as well. I didn't want to get people's hopes up without making significant progress on the technical side of this venture. I'm happy to report that I've set up a company website. It's purely informational and doesn't have a […]
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 […]
