

Posted by

Sam Gregory ,

January 8, 2014 Email

Sam Gregory

Twitter

@GregorydSam Read this on your iPhone/iPad or Android device





2013 was a tumultuous year for the Canadian Men’s National Team with thirteen matches, three different head coaches, one goal and zero wins. The only real source of optimism came from the appointment of former Real Madrid coach, Benito Floro. Floro has had five games with the team so far with matches against Australia, Czech Republic, Slovenia and Mauritania twice. The consensus among Canadian supporters has been to give Floro time before scrutinizing the results. This leeway afforded to Floro has left observers of the team looking for moral victories: calling up younger players, experimenting with new styles, playing matches against quality opposition. The performances still beg the question, have Canada been any better under Floro than they were under Fonseca and Miller earlier in the year? Without any changes in the results we have to look at some of the other indicators from these matches. Canada’s two games against Mauritania were played far away from media attention, and there is little meaningful data from them. So for the purpose of this analysis there are only three matches from Floro’s regime to go off of, and seven from the Miller/Fonseca era (the Belarus game has been excluded from this analysis for similar reasons of incomplete data). This is a very small sample size to draw any sweeping conclusions from, but it is still a useful exercise to examine how Canada has done under Floro. Most of the work done in soccer analytics has focused on shots whether it be shot ratios, scoring percentages, save percentages, or shot locations. One of the most useful statistics in determining long-term dominance is the total shot ratio or TSR. Teams that win games tend to consistently take more shots than they allow, a phenomenon that it is not at all surprising. TSR is a ratio of the number of shots a team takes to the number shots their opponents take. For example a TSR of 0.5 means that the team has taken the same number of shots as their opponents, anything above 0.5 means the team has taken more shots than their opponents and vice versa. TSR takes into account all shots directed at goal, not just shots on target. The reason for this being that shots on target tend to fluctuate much more game to game than shots directed at goal. In comparing Canada’s TSR under Miller/Fonseca and Floro it is important to keep two things in mind. Firstly, that the quality of competition has not been taken into account (although anecdotally there doesn’t appear to be any glaring difference between the teams Canada faced in the first and second halves of 2013). Secondly, the sample size is larger for the Miller/Fonseca era so that TSR number is more reliable than Floro’s. Canada’s TSR for the full year was a dismal 0.316. Meaning Canada typically only took about 3 out of every 10 shots in 2013. During the first half of the year under Miller/Fonseca Canada’s TSR was 0.302, under Floro it improved to 0.354. This is not a huge improvement, and the team will have to work on that ratio significantly if they are to be a serious competitor over the coming years, but at least it indicates a move in the right direction. The graph below outlines Canada’s shot ratio from each game this year, which makes it evident that Canada’s shot ratios improved slightly after Floro’s appointment. As a note of interest the only game in which Canada were not out shot was the Costa Rica match in Edmonton where both Canada and Costa Rica had nine shots. On the other end of the spectrum Canada’s worst shot ratio of the year came against Panama in the Gold Cup where the team was outshot 11-2.







It is also worth looking at the quality or locations of the shots Canada has taken in the Floro era. The data from mlssoccer.com gives shot locations, which can be sorted into four categories: inside the six yard box, the central zone of the penalty area, the sides of the penalty area, and outside the penalty area. Colin Trainor, a soccer analyst at StatsBomb, has looked at the scoring percentages from each of these four locations across the top five leagues in Europe (Spain, England, Italy, Germany, France). Using these scoring percentages along with the shots taken by a team, an average ‘goal expectancy’ from these shooting locations can be calculated. Applying this technique to the three games under Benito Floro the average team would have scored 1.726 goals in these three games. This is not an astoundingly good tally, but still looks a lot better than 0. This suggests that even though Canada haven’t scored yet under Floro the quality opportunities have been there and with a little better finishing Canada’s goal drought may soon come to an end. All in all there is not a whole lot of data to draw conclusions from, but Canada has made some small progress under Benito Floro. These are trends worth watching as Canada goes into the new year looking for a higher goal tally and that elusive win that has been evading the team since the debacle in San Pedro Sula.