

Posted by

Sam Gregory ,

January 31, 2014 Email

Sam Gregory

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Statistical analysis in football seems to be getting more prevalent with every passing week of matches. Clubs are employing statistical analysts, journalists are starting to use concepts like shot dominance to back up their claims and fans are becoming more aware of what statistical techniques are being used to evaluate underlying talent. Despite this growth process one area of soccer that has been left relatively untouched in terms of statistical analysis is the international game. Richard Whittall of the Counter Attack blog, wrote a thought provoking article on why using analytics at the international level is difficult. He cites the small sample size of games, perpetual player changes and the inability to draw a direct line from a player's club performances to international performances. In my work here at RedNation Online so far, I've struggled with several of these challenges. In looking at Canada's shot dominance and quality under Floro, it was difficult to extrapolate too much from a small sample of matches. Comparing the goal scoring records of Canadian strikers I had to ignore the relative quality of opposition and leave it fairly open ended as to how these club performances might correspond to national team performances. So with these major roadblocks, what is the point of writing analytics-based articles about Canada's national teams? The most simplistic argument is simply now that we as fans have access to these numbers something should be done with them. We have shot location information from every Canada game that is just sitting on mlssoccer.com without any context.



Why not try and understand what this information can tell us? Why not try and figure out if Canada is over or under achieving relative to it's shot dominance? This comes down to the difference between analytics and numbers. For the first time in the history of the Canadian national team, these numbers are publicly available. How to apply and use these numbers is a subject for debate (one that seems to be mostly taking place over twitter these days), but if there is no attempt to turn these numbers into some sort of meaningful analysis there really isn't much point in even having them. The second reason I believe that analytics is particularly important in the Canadian case is a consequence of our national team make up. Canada is one of the few countries in the world that doesn't have its own domestic league, which means our national team players end up playing all over the world in different leagues of varying caliber. This makes it very difficult for fans (or even the Canadian coaching staff) to watch a large number of our players in action on a weekly basis. This leaves analytics as an important tool to properly evaluate players' club performances abroad. Reading a match report that may make one or two mentions of a Canadian player is often the best many supporters have to go off of, whereas using analytics can help to get a better understanding of how a player really is performing. For example, not a whole lot of FC Edmonton fans will have had a chance to watch Frank Jonke play in Finland, but looking at his NPG/90 or other metrics gives a better idea of what type of forward Edmonton can expect. A great case study of how player analytics can be used to evaluate players who fans and team officials may have seen very little of is MLS's NCAA draft. Red Nation Online's own statistician, Aaron Nielsen, based lots of his pre-draft projections off statistical work and it is no surprise that many of the prospects he singled out were the same ones chosen by the MLS clubs themselves. This being said, obviously the best way to evaluate a player is through a healthy mix of actually watching the player and analytics. The most important reason to delve deeper into Canadian soccer analytics is quite simply to gain a better understanding of a sport and a team that we care about. People often complain about statistics in sports claiming that they take out the subjective nature of competition. On the contrary, using numbers, statistics and data can often improve the quality of arguments and be useful to tell compelling narratives. Fans will always find a way to argue about sports, and using analytics doesn't take anything away from that. Understanding soccer through different lenses, and taking different approaches will help build a more constructive dialogue around our national teams and soccer in general in this country. I think it is important to point out, that yes there are weakness to using a numbers-driven approach while looking at the Canadian national teams and international soccer as a whole, but there are many insights to be gained that are only possible using this type of analysis. As Canadian soccer continues to make progress on all fronts, it is only natural that statistical analysis is part of the journey.