Effective today, the Football Match Result Database (FMRD) will now be known as Marcotti.

I tend not to put much imagination into naming software packages.  I find it difficult to think of a clever name on demand, and at any rate, I prefer to channel that imagination into writing better software code. (That famous saying about two hard things in Computer Science is so very true.)

There is an exception to be made for the FMRD family of database schemas.  “Football Match Result Database” — and “Football Match Event Database” — are accurate titles of the database.  You know exactly what you’re getting when you see that repository on GitHub.  But let’s be honest, “Football Match Result Database” is a mouthful, and FMRD really sucks as a name.

So why Marcotti?  Yes, the schemas are named in honor of football columnist Gabriele Marcotti.  Gabriele is perhaps my favorite journalist writing about football, and I always look forward to his columns and panel discussions on ESPN, SI, the Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere.  In particular, I like his sober, logical, and organized approach to football writing that draws from his considerable factual knowledge about a wide range of competitions around the world.

At the risk of going off into hyperbole, these are the same qualities that I want Soccermetrics’ database schemas to have.  Applications and analyses depend on databases built from these schemas, so I want them to be logical, organized, comprehensive, and able to handle all types of football competitions around the world at all levels of detail, from domestic league and cup competitions to international friendlies and the World Cup.  I’ve learned and continue to learn a lot about football data modeling, and those lessons learned inform future revisions to the schema descriptions.

Over the next few days, the repository names will change to the following:

All of the data schemas are publicly available on GitHub with the exception of Marcotti-Events.

If you have forked our repositories on GitHub, please change your remote repository settings to reflect these change.  You’ll also need to change repository and documentation URLs.

Thanks for your continued support of Soccermetrics.