Soccermetrics Interview #3: Gavin Fleig (Part II)
Soccermetrics InterviewsContinuing the Soccermetrics interview with Gavin Fleig, head of Performance Analysis at Manchester City Football Club. Part I of the interview is here. (more…)
Goal-line technology comes to soccer – what’s next?
High-Level Discussions, Match Data Collection, Real-time Video AnalysisThe approval of the use of goal-line technology by FIFA’s International Football Association Board is a historic event in the evolution of the sport whose consequences may not be apparent over the near- or medium-term.First, the facts of the matter: the IFAB, which approves all changes to the Laws of the Game, unanimously approved the […]
Substitutions and their impact at Euro 2012
Player Performance, Team PerformanceI continue my statistical review of UEFA Euro 2012 with a look at the substitution patterns over the duration of the tournament. The analysis is similar to what I did for the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations. (more…)
Rotation practices at UEFA Euro 2012
Team PerformanceBack in February I started a multi-part statistical retrospective of the Africa Cup of Nations which served two purposes: it shed light on the practices of managers of the national teams in the competition, and it provided me with an opportunity to further develop and test the software library for the Football Match Result Database. […]
Capturing context and space in football match analysis
Analytics Perspectives, High-Level DiscussionsFootball 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 problem with Euro Cup analysis
High-Level Discussions, Player Performance, Team PerformanceI need to make an admission: I dread doing team and player performance analysis for the European Championships. (more…)
Soccermetrics Interview #3: Gavin Fleig (Part I)
Soccermetrics InterviewsGavin Fleig is the head of the Performance Analysis Department at Manchester City Football Club, the newest champions of the English Premier League. I’ve known Gavin since we met at the 2011 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, and he was always a natural choice for an interview, but City’s league triumph was the perfect moment. […]
Soccermetrics Interview #2: Nathaniel Boyden
Soccermetrics InterviewsNathaniel Boyden is part of a select group of people who have played professional sport and conducted high quality academic research. (more…)
Soccermetrics Interview #1: Erik van den Berg
Soccermetrics InterviewsErik van den Berg is a recently graduated Economics student from Rotterdam who wrote a fantastic thesis on transfer leagues in soccer. I read the paper at around the same time that I was thinking about publishing a newsletter, and I knew right then that Erik would be a perfect first interview. (more…)
Introducing the Soccermetrics Interviews
Soccermetrics InterviewsThe centerpiece of the Soccermetrics Newsletter is an in-depth interview with researchers, thought leaders, and practitioners in soccer analytics. The interviews have been a great experience as they provide a view of the current state of analytics from a variety of perspectives, and they have given me an opportunity to get to know some really […]