A Football Revolution

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/9471db52-97bb-11e0-9c37-00144feab49a.html##axzz1PsclEF47

The article is a bit long, but well worth your time. It is quite interesting and informative. The part about Makelele was the highlight for me.

Read this like 4 days ago man, get with the shit.

I am still not sure what stats are the most revealing in high level football, baseball has had much more time to figure this out, like what the fuck is that circular shit, come on man who wants to read that.

Dena is ahead of someone?

Statisticians, man. I was actually thinking of getting into it as well.

I bookmarked the article a couple of days ago, but I just got around to reading it tonight. It's all new to me as a guy who knows nothing about American sports.

Reading it now. Allardyce

SBSP wrote:Dena is ahead of someone?

I'm on top of everything, you just don't know it.

The guy who compared football to basketball had a point in the fluid motion of the game along with the stop - start, but basketball's stats are much simpler. All you care about are points, rebounds, assists, and shooting percentage, it's simple and everyone can contribute. What are the major stats for a defender that you look for? More specifically what about fullbacks and center-backs? And even then do they paint an effective picture, questions.

I agree with Dena, football is a game which involves so much more than hard facts, it is more similar to hockey in this respect.

At Arsenal, Wenger embraced the new match data. He has said that the morning after a game he’s like a junkie who needs his fix: he reaches for the spreadsheets. In about 2002 he began substituting his forward Dennis Bergkamp late in matches. Bergkamp would go to Wenger to complain. “Then he’d produce the stats,” Bergkamp later recalled. “‘Look Dennis, after 70 minutes you began running less. And your speed declined.’ Wenger is a football professor.”

dena wrote:

SBSP wrote:Dena is ahead of someone?

I'm on top of everything, you just don't know it.

The guy who compared football to basketball had a point in the fluid motion of the game along with the stop - start, but basketball's stats are much simpler. All you care about are points, rebounds, assists, and shooting percentage, it's simple and everyone can contribute. What are the major stats for a defender that you look for? More specifically what about fullbacks and center-backs? And even then do they paint an effective picture, questions.

third of all goals in football don’t come from fluid situations at all. They come from corners, free kicks, penalties and throw-ins – stop-start set-pieces that you can analyse much like a pitch in baseball.

It is useful because it will help to score more goals. Which is the point of football.

Good point NZG, but that still leaves two thirds to worry about. It seems that they're on the way to nailing down the attacking end, but as dena said, the defensive part is going to be a problem. It is something the article addressed by looking at Maldini.

In the end though, stats in football are there really to enhance evaluations and understanding, not to be 100% definitive.

NZG wrote:

dena wrote:

SBSP wrote:Dena is ahead of someone?

I'm on top of everything, you just don't know it.

The guy who compared football to basketball had a point in the fluid motion of the game along with the stop - start, but basketball's stats are much simpler. All you care about are points, rebounds, assists, and shooting percentage, it's simple and everyone can contribute. What are the major stats for a defender that you look for? More specifically what about fullbacks and center-backs? And even then do they paint an effective picture, questions.

third of all goals in football don’t come from fluid situations at all. They come from corners, free kicks, penalties and throw-ins – stop-start set-pieces that you can analyse much like a pitch in baseball.

It is useful because it will help to score more goals. Which is the point of football.

A third of all goals come from stop start situations but two thirds still come from fluid play, the question I'd like to know is since this statistical revolution how many teams have devised complex and planned set pieces for throw ins (which probably occurmore than your standard set piece) maybe Stoke, maybe Blackburn and Bolton of a few years ago... maybe. Someone needs to make a Moneyball for football because it'd be interesting as hell. Either someone is devising plays like the NFL for set pieces or most teams are just scrambling around doing simple "screens" and wrap around runs to score off set plays/throw ins.

Rei Andros wrote:Good point NZG, but that still leaves two thirds to worry about. It seems that they're on the way to nailing down the attacking end, but as dena said, the defensive part is going to be a problem. It is something the article addressed by looking at Maldini.

In the end though, stats in football are there really to enhance evaluations and understanding, not to be 100% definitive.

The funny thing about baseball is that's it's become like... 95% definitive. There are stats for everything, the newest stat is wins above replacement... defined as..

Wins Above Replacement (WAR) is an attempt by the sabermetric
community to summarize a player’s total contributions to their team in
one statistic. You should always use more than one metric at a time when
evaluating players, but WAR is pretty darn all-inclusive and provides a
handy reference point. WAR basically looks at a player and asks the
question, “If this player got injured and their team had to replace them
with a minor leaguer or someone from their bench, how much value would
the team be losing?” This value is expressed in a wins format, so we
could say that Player X is worth 6.3 wins to their team while Player Y
is only worth 3.5 wins.

Madness.

That is crazy.

stats are never wrong, but the way people utilize them and portray them to prove an arguement can often be wrong

like those people who use goals and assists to determine which player is better then the other, like saying lampard is better then iniesta because he score more goals and more assists

if u use a statistic in different manner like say, lampard is more productive in giving direct goals and assists then iniesta then that can be true, but he is not the better player

profesional teams usually have a person in charge of statistical evidence or whatever who usualy studies each game, and breaks down every touch, pass, and metre ran. u would be surprise how in depth those teams usualy go into exploring those things, football can be a very analytical sport with numbers

regard that makelele thing, it just shows how out of touch some football presidents are with football itself, they are businessmen, not footballmen, u should not expect them to understand every concept of football, even simple ones. same goes for guy like fluffy who beleives defensive midfielders are "slow, talentless, useless cunts'

Good points mauro, I also really want to know what a 'key pass' is, it's not an assist, and I'll probably know it when I see it, but does a statistician know it?

Rei Andros wrote:That is crazy.

Yeah, it's a weird stat too, if you lose the best player on your team of course you will win less, its more about evaluating the mid to lower players, think of the worst player on your starting XI, if his WAR was low then you'd say "he can be replaced" but wouldnt you know that based on his play anyway?

there used to be this real mathematician person on palermo message board who use to post all these crazy stats from each game, he posted everything with percentages and not just basic stuff, but things like

'difficult pass'
'mid-difficult pass'
'comfortable pass'
'attacking pass'
'defensive pass'

and all thse kind of things, he also counted tackles in 'successful, unsuccessful, standing duel, etc etc, i can not even list how many things he did but he had something for everything. people use to say he was relate to someone like that that work in palermo so hw knows this stuff, but he sounds more to me like someone with lots of time on his hand, but seriously, if a fan can break down the games like this, imagine what clubs do, i remember watching a show in australia that follow australian sports scientist and physios working into liverpool fc and they were talking about the statistical things and that hodgson(coach at time), like other coaches before and other clubs would always examine everything

even those times a player stops running because someone is about to take a throwin, or those times he is get ready to defend corner, they know about thsese...they see everythinG!!!!! like a FBI

Wouldn't they be able to use those stats to find a way to defend against the stop-plays better?

Also i'm not sure about the full backs but for centerbacks couldn't they see how many tackles he may that were from behind (as in he was tricked/out sped by the attacker) or how many times he drifted forward or went to close to one side leaving a gap?

mauro=beast wrote:there used to be this real mathematician person on palermo message board who use to post all these crazy stats from each game, he posted everything with percentages and not just basic stuff, but things like

'difficult pass'
'mid-difficult pass'
'comfortable pass'
'attacking pass'
'defensive pass'

and all thse kind of things, he also counted tackles in 'successful, unsuccessful, standing duel, etc etc, i can not even list how many things he did but he had something for everything. people use to say he was relate to someone like that that work in palermo so hw knows this stuff, but he sounds more to me like someone with lots of time on his hand, but seriously, if a fan can break down the games like this, imagine what clubs do, i remember watching a show in australia that follow australian sports scientist and physios working into liverpool fc and they were talking about the statistical things and that hodgson(coach at time), like other coaches before and other clubs would always examine everything

even those times a player stops running because someone is about to take a throwin, or those times he is get ready to defend corner, they know about thsese...they see everythinG!!!!! like a FBI

How would you define a comfortable or difficult pass?

NZG wrote:Wouldn't they be able to use those stats to find a way to defend against the stop-plays better?

Also i'm not sure about the full backs but for centerbacks couldn't they see how many tackles he may that were from behind (as in he was tricked/out sped by the attacker) or how many times he drifted forward or went to close to one side leaving a gap?

im they know allt his stuff, they would be counting all these and comparing to amount of times they successfully achieved other things

the guy i was talk about he use to compare our midfielders, many palermo fan use to complain about whatever whether is 2 defensive midfielder, or 1, or none at all so was always arguements on which player was effective. this guy then over a season makes a compilation of what each players doing, % of passes, % of diffuicult passes, metre per game, % of duels one, % of times found out of positions/having to back track, time in possession, and all kind of things that the normal person would think would be unnecessary

difficult = low percentage pass through a tight channel of defender or into attacking space or under high pressure eg: slide rule pass between 2 defenders in attacking half
comfortable = under no pressure, off the ball movement easily faciliated a passing option etc eg: 10 metres sideways pass in own half

long and short diagonals also have own catergory, if u want i can search for these things, old message board is not active anymore but im sure i can find these post and translate

That is what i'm going to do now. Better than studying accounting

I find statistical studies like these quite intriguing. I think it's really a matter of trying to understand more about the game, which is really just a very natural part of the human process and what we do with things. However, I think it's very easy to overcomplicate things and overlook some of the more magical parts of the game when you do this. For example, can you truly explain or define what Ronaldo did in his time through a statistical analysis? No, because he had something more, something special.