

Posted by

Sam Gregory ,

January 23, 2014 Email

Sam Gregory

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It is more than an understatement to say that the Canadian Men’s National Team has been plagued by its inability to score. Marcus Haber was the only forward to find the back of the net for Canada in 2013 when he headed in a corner against Japan back in March. Despite the bleak record at a national team level some of Canada’s forwards have had some success at club level over the past few seasons. Looking at these strikers’ scoring records gives a better picture of which players may be in Floro’s plans moving forward. Since the end of the last World Cup Qualifying Cycle Canada has given opportunities up front to: Dwayne De Rosario, Simeon Jackson, Iain Hume, Tosaint Ricketts, Caleb Clarke, Marcus Haber, Daniel Haber, Kyle Porter and Frank Jonke. Others like Olivier Occean and Rob Friend who have dropped out of the national team picture, at least temporarily, are left out of this analysis. Statsbomb recently started looking at scoring records in Europe and made two key adjustments to scoring statistics in order to make them more indicative of a player’s actual scoring ability. The first is to normalize everything to per 90 minutes. Lots of scoring statistics are given per game, but this undervalues players who play fewer minutes per match and might overvalue those who are playing the full 90 minutes every game. By normalizing for goals per 90 each player is evaluated based on how many goals they’ve scored for the time they’ve been on the pitch. The second adjustment is removing penalty goals. Penalties are converted at about a rate of 76% across the board, and scoring a lot of penalty goals is not necessarily indicative of a better striker. So for the purpose of this analysis the key metric on which Canada’s forwards are evaluated is non-penalty goals per 90 minutes (NPG/90). The data is from league matches only and ignores any cup competitions. The first interesting thing to note when looking at this data, is that De Rosario is the only Canadian forward who takes penalties for his club team. Patrice Bernier and Will Johnson are both the penalty takers for their clubs as well, but neither is a forward. Three penalty takers are probably enough for a national team, but it is still a somewhat disheartening piece of trivia (made even more so by De Rosario’s penalty miss against the Czech Republic in November). Starting with De Rosario it is clear that his performances have dropped off significantly since his MVP season in 2011. De Rosario’s scoring numbers from that 2011 season also look slightly less impressive once his four penalty goals are taken out of the equation. Simeon Jackson’s numbers were slightly below average for a striker during his first two years at Norwich, but still acceptable at a high level of play in the Premier League. What is worrying is that he has yet to find the back of the net for his new club, Eintract Braunschweig. Iain Hume’s numbers were quite good in 2011-12, but have tailed off since, which might just be a sign of the player’s age (now thirty-years-old). However, 0.33 NPG/90 over the last three years matches up favourably with most of the other Canadian strikers. Tosaint Rickett’s scoring record over the past three years pretty accurately reflects his performances for the national team during that time. He was very effective in 2011-12 scoring more than half a goal every ninety minutes, much like he was knocking in goals playing for Canada in 2011. In 2012-13 he was completely held off the score sheet and was much maligned for his national team performances during this period. This year he’s had a resurgence playing in Turkey bringing his NPG/90 back to 0.33. Caleb Clarke has been playing for Ausburg’s second team in the fourth tier of German football, and has a decent scoring record in his first season there, albeit at a lower level than most of the other players featured. Despite scoring Canada’s only goal in 2013, Marcus Haber’s scoring record at club level does not exactly inspire confidence. It seems that wherever he has played over the past three seasons he has been unable to consistently find the back of the net. Event this season’s slightly improved 0.27 NPG/90 is more attributable to a lack of playing time than being more prolific in front of goal. Ironically, Daniel Haber (of no relation to Marcus) currently has the highest NPG/90 of any Canadian striker. That being said he has had very little playing with Apollon Limassol who currently sit second in the Cypriot top flight. Last year Dwayne De Rosario’s Canadian teammate at D.C. United, Kyle Porter, actually had a slightly higher NPG/90 than De Rosario. All of this was while playing on one of the worst MLS teams in recent memory (even worse than Toronto FC!). Frank Jonke, the recent FC Edmonton acquisition, had a respectable scoring record during his time playing in Finland, with a 0.30 NPG/90 over two seasons. The obvious problem with comparing strikers like this is that it fails to take into account the different levels of competition against which these players are scoring. It is still important to be aware of who is scoring for the club and at what frequency beyond just simple goal tallies. Hopefully using the metric of NPG/90 highlights some of the successes players like Caleb Clark, Daniel Haber, Tosaint Ricketts and Iain Hume have had over recent years while casting further doubts on the ability of players like Marcus Haber and Simeon Jackson to score consistently. There are many different statistics to compare players, but for strikers the game really comes down to the ability to score and if players aren’t doing this consistently for their clubs there is reason to question whether they will be able to do so for the national team.