So much has been written in the last 24 hours about Leicester City’s Premier League title, and yet it doesn’t seem to be enough. This is, plain and simply, the greatest and most amazing achievement that I have ever seen in more than two and a half decades of watching soccer. Not only that, it’s the greatest […]
Shmueli, G., “To Explain or To Predict?”, Statistical Science, 25(3): 289-310, 2010. [PDF][Research Page]Summary: This publication examines the fundamental and practical differences between the use of statistical and other empirical methods for prediction and causal explanation. The article’s thesis is that statistical modeling, from the early stages of study design and data collection, to choice of model […]
[This is the third and final part of my perspectives on Soccermetrics on its 5th anniversary.]As I said at the end of part two, football analytics haven’t stood still over the last two years. In fact, a lot of people have gotten involved from a variety of backgrounds and perspectives. I’ve heard about some of […]
[This is the second part of my perspectives on Soccermetrics on its 5th anniversary.]While I was expanding from writing about other people’s research in soccer analytics to conducting my own, events were occurring on a backdrop of a Soccermetrics’ transition from a blog to something more formal. I attended the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference […]
[This is the first of a three-part series on my perspectives on Soccermetrics on its 5th anniversary.]On 8 January 2009, I started Soccermetrics in order to “consider problems in applied mathematics and statistics that have applications toward a better understanding of soccer.” This month will mark not just the fifth anniversary of the site, but […]
Match tempo is an important metric in soccer and other field invasion sports because it provides the context for understanding other in-game actions such as possession and offensive and defensive output. Much of the pioneering work in tempo in sport started with people such as Dean Oliver, John Hollinger, and Ken Pomeroy in basketball and […]
When I first started the Soccermetrics blog, I wrote a long post on whether the concept of “Moneyball” could be applied to soccer. Two years after that, I wrote a follow-up. Now that we’re at the four-year mark of Soccermetrics, it’s time to revisit the subject. (more…)
The 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 […]
Football 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, […]
I need to make an admission: I dread doing team and player performance analysis for the European Championships. (more…)
