A few days ago the following tweet was funneled my way:

There has to be some sort of metric(s) for ranking #USMNT club play, which helps rank them in NT Depth Chart



-League/Division/Opponent

-Starter/On Bench

-MP/G/A/Etc?

-Pass%/Key Passes/Etc. — USKeeper 🇺🇸 (@USKeeper) February 23, 2020

After some internal debate and thinking out loud on Twitter…this is the formula that emerged:

Please feel free to suggest improvements/changes/etc. I’m certainly no mathematician.

Team SPI

The level of competition matters. It’s not the be all end all, but playing every game for Wolfsburg should carry more weight than playing every game for the Chicago Fire (no offense Fire fans, but your team blows). The question is how does one measure this?

I would have preferred to use Elo rankings instead of SPI. I’m more familiar with those having used them for the adjusted player grades (also having received a table tennis Elo rating in my nerdy past🤓), and I understand how they work a little better. I did read the SPI rating explanation, but I won’t pretend to comprehend exactly how they work. Whether you agree or disagree with them (and they really hate Nashville for some reason) – they at least give some numerical way to compare relative team strength.

Percent of Available Minutes

How important a player is to their team is another important factor. If a player is an every game starter in the Bundesliga I felt they should be rewarded for that. The percent of available minutes puts a number on what portion of minutes that player plays when the coach has the option of using them. Being out injured or away on international duty is not counted against them.

Composite Player Grade Score

This is my least favorite part of the formula because I don’t really trust any of these ratings. WhoScored, FotMob, and SofaScore are all websites/apps that use some sort of algorithm to generate a player grade based on data collected during the match. (You can read about how they arrive at those ratings here, here, and here) There needed to be some sort of performance metric though so I averaged the three grades into a composite score (h/t to Tyler Schmidt for that idea).

So what did we end up with? Take a look.

I actually wasn’t really expecting this to produce anything worthwhile. I’m still not sure it is, but I was pleasantly surprised. The players generally fall in line with how I would rate them. There are a couple obvious exceptions to that (see below), but for the most part I’m not unhappy with this list (you like that double negative?😂).

NOTE – Before anyone gets too excited…Leo Messi has not filed a one time switch. I just wanted to throw the best player in the world in there for a reference point.

Away Days

Away Days is still advertising with me. Guess I haven’t screwed up too badly so far. Give em’ a click if you haven’t yet. Cool product.

Away Days is a soccer clothing startup based in Boston, MA that offers unique/cool soccer stuff. It’s a one person operation, but Martin will make sure you are taken care of no matter what. The company is known for the Mystery Kit, which for $25, Martin will send you a brand new jersey from a “lesser known” team. Away Days also has their own branded clothing line (hoodies, t-shirts, hats, etc), partners with US clubs to sell their jerseys, and offers a host of other mystery products. If you are looking for awesome soccer gear and customer service, look no further than http://awaydaysfootball.com.

Outliers

My laptop when I try to disagree with the formula

Tim Ream – I like Ream. I think there’s a chance he might even be better than Brooks, but he’s a little high up this list for my taste. He does play 90 minutes every game for the 4th best team in the English Championship though. We probably don’t give it enough credit over here in the US and according to all three rating services he’s playing well. I think he’s overrated, but it looks like the formula disagrees with me.

Gio Reyna – This was always going to happen given the way it’s set up. On talent, Gio is in the top 5-7 of players in the men’s pool right now. However, he hasn’t started a game for BVB yet. This isn’t going to rate him appropriately until he’s getting consistent minutes.

Sergino Dest – I’d rather have seen Dest higher up this list, but he has to contend with Noussair Mazraoui. You know? The guy that started at right back for Ajax against Tottenham in the semi-finals of the Champion’s League last year. Getting 60% of the minutes available while competing with that dude is pretty impressive.

Miles Robinson – I’ve thought for a while that Miles was going to overtake Aaron Long after the Olympics. I know there are people that think he’s already there and this “data” would support that opinion. Robinson had better match ratings and played for a better team. Maybe he’s already better?

What about Pulisic?

He should be higher, right? The beginning part of the season when he wasn’t making the starting lineup hurts his score by knocking his percentage of minutes played down to 60%. If you exclude the beginning of the season and start keeping track with his Burnley start then his score shoots up to 499.6 which would be right behind Tyler Adams. That seems more in line to me.

Final Caveat

I’ve already mentioned one – I don’ trust the match rating scores, but another big one for me is the young players. Any system of ranking players that doesn’t leave room for Richie Ledezma, Uly Llanez, etc. is obviously missing a piece. If the US were Spain and all of our players were starters in quality leagues then maybe it wouldn’t be a concern…but we certainly aren’t there yet. Maybe one day.

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*If anyone noticed that Alvarado’s WhoScored rating was in red – that’s because there was no WhoScored rating. Apparently they don’t score Liga MX so I used the lower of the other two scores a second time.