North American Soccer League and its 2013 First Half

The last 12 months have been rather eventful for the North American Soccer League (NASL). A league that once folded before some of us were born has begun to become some what relevant again. Even putting aside the excitement surrounding the return of the New York Cosmos to professional soccer---a team that is surrounded and entrenched in US Soccer history---one sees how well the league fared against some of the MLS clubs. NASL knocked out two of the big dogs in the LA Galaxy (2-0, Carolina RailHawks) and Seattle Sounders FC (1-0, Tampa Bay Rowdies) this past year.

Add that to the expansion plans of the league outside of New York. This past year they've added Indianapolis, Jacksonville and Oklahoma City to their growing portfolio. These were shrewd moves to get toe holds in two cities that have limited professional sports and strengthen their ties in Florida, what with three soccer cities in South Florida and four in the Southeastern region.

The league is obviously poised for a positive return.

Living in Tampa for the next few months, I plan on taking in at least one match (this weekend in their Derby game vs. Fort Lauderdale) and checking out the scene.

Okay, there is the narrative. Let's take a look at the table and some numbers:

Shot info

Advanced Shot Info

Table Data

Okay, my new friends here in Tampa won't like this very much but Fort Lauderdale should have finished much higher in the table. The disparity in the table between Minnesota and the Strikers is amazing considering the shot data. Though, between expected points and PDO, maybe United FC finished about where they should expect.

There is surprisingly a lot of data in these supplied match reports. I know it may not seem like it, but there is. The time stamped shots can give us a bit more insight to the context of the shots. While we still can't get to know some of the players (outside of the goal scorers) as well, it helps us get to know the teams as a whole within that league.

You can say what you want, but I love the idea of NASL growing and becoming legit competition with MLS. I love USL, NASL and MLS playing in the Open Cup, and I love seeing the sport grow in the country.

I'll continue to throw NASL data out as I collect it. With my new city having an NASL team and a derby game this weekend, I thought it a great time to put this stuff out there. Now talk among yourselves...

A few key games this week...

Since we now have playoff and Supporters' Shield chances on the site, it provides us with a means of weighting each upcoming game by its effect on playoff odds. What if, for instance, Montreal were to lose to New England at home this weekend? There's no doubt it would hurt Montreal and keep New England alive, but just how much would it matter? The same question can be asked of the San Jose and Colorado, who play tonight. Currently, our model gives Colorado and Montreal 90.4 and 82.8 percent chances,* respectively, to make the playoffs, while San Jose and New England sit at 6.0 and 14.1 percent. Remember that our playoff chances refer to earning at least fifth place in the conference, and they do not include probability associated with ties for fifth.

I re-ran our simulations three times, accounting for the three possible conclusions to each of those games. I allowed the simulator to pick winners as usual for the other matches this week and beyond. To the results!

A San Jose tie or loss at home tonight would effectively end its chances of a playoff berth. In just 11 of the 10,000 simulated seasons (0.11%) did San Jose recover from a loss to claim a playoff spot (not counting ties for fifth), and even a tie only doubled those chances to about 0.23 percent. A win boosted its playoff chances from 6.0 to 12.0 percent. Playoffs would still not be likely for the Earthquakes, but at least a win tonight would give them something to play for in the final two games.

Their opponent, Colorado, is the West's most likely team to give up its playoff spot, according to our model. That said, its playoff chances are still quite high. Even a loss to San Jose tonight would only lower the Rapids' playoff chances to about 78.4 percent. A tie or win for Colorado tonight essentially assures it a tie-breaker-free route to the playoffs with at least 98.7 percent probability (99.9% with a win tonight).

Moving over to the East, the game most likely to swing playoff percentage points around is the Montreal---New England matchup. New England could increase its playoff chances from 14.1 to nearly 39 percent with a road win. However, like San Jose, a tie or loss would hurt New England a lot. A tie would leave New England with only about a 5.6 percent shot at the playoffs, and a loss would render the Revs' situation quite hopeless at 1.6 percent.

Conversely, a win or tie for the Montreal Impact would have a mirrored result, boosting its playoff chances to 91.0 percent with a tie and 99.2 percent with win against the Revs. Like Colorado, a loss would not ruin Montreal, and their playoff chances would sit right around 63.3 percent.

A lot of playoff probability is waiting to swing---as much as 12 percent in San Jose's case and 38 percent in New England's case. In my opinion, this speaks as much to the weight resting on these final few weeks as it does to the weight that was on the games that led us to this point. Teams like Colorado and Montreal have performed well enough in the first 30 or 31 games to put themselves in a position where a loss still leaves them with better than 50 percent chances at a playoff spot.

Oh, in case your were curious, our model gives San Jose a 39-percent shot at a win tonight, 31-percent chances of a loss, and 30-percent chances of a tie. As for New England, those probabilities are 29 percent, 39 percent and 32 percent.

*The margins of error for 95% confidence are, at most, 1.0 percent for each playoff percentage calculation.

Analysis Evolved Epsiode XXIV: The One Where We Review The US Open Cup Final

This was a long one folks; the running time is roughly 75 minutes. We usually try to keep everything around an hour, but it's been a while since all three of us were together. There may have been some moments we got a little excited and went longer than normal. This week's first segment was an ode to Ben Olsen and the DC United game plan that not only produced a win on the road against a very tough opponent, but also won them the US Open Cup and a bid to the CONCACAF Champions League. Because the first segment went a bit long we used the second segment to cover the usual past week of matches, with emphasis on the following games: Sporting-Philly, New England-Houston, LA-Portland and Seattle-New York, all of which had significant impacts on the playoff outlook. The last segment saw us go into a bit of detail about Sporting Kansas City and a possible run at the MLS Cup. In our language, possible doesn't always mean probable, but in this case it just might. There is also a the a spot where I completely butcher Matthias' twitter handle, and I may have also made up a some words in there, too, only to have Drew coyly call me on it. All in all, this was was an especially fun episode to record, and I hope that you all enjoy it!

[audio http://americansocceranalysis.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/asa-episode-xxiv.mp3]

D.C. United and Waiting Until Next Year

"Wait until next year" is about to become the mantra for 9 clubs as the MLS playoffs will be kicking off soon. It will leave those clubs behind, along with two more after the play-in round between the 4 & 5 seeds from the East and West, respectively. DC United, despite their US Open Cup victory, are the first of these nine to consider life after the season. With their lack of success this season, much of the discussion following their Open Cup win has been about how good they can be next year, regardless of what they did this season. This seems like a good question, but I decided to open it up a bit. How good have teams been following a season with a bottom-3 finish in the table?

One thing that easily catches one's eye is that there are some repeats on here, which brings sustainability into question, but that's a question for another day. What is important to me now is how massive 8 points is when you are talking about a table that is rich in parity. Bottom dwellers tended to perform about 8 points better in the tables the following season. Right now, 8 points separates the Chicago Fire from being out of the playoffs with a bottom-three finish in the Eastern Conference and a second-place finish. 8 points means a lot!

While 8 points isn't enough to completely change the fortunes DCU this off-season, it's reasonable to expect a better-than-8-point improvement, due to some obvious roster turnover, health being restored to key figures in their best XI, and some added cap flexibility. You can point back to the 2009 New York Red Bulls or even the 2010 Philadelphia Union who both made substantial changes to put them in the playoff picture.

Bottom line: if you think that D.C. United will be terrible next year because they were terrible this year, then you are wrong and getting ahead of yourself.

Champions League: How Much is it Worth to an MLS Club?

The major talking point concerning the CONCACAF Champions League, and gaining entry into the tournament, is the payroll increase that MLS affords a club that qualifies. Now, this isn't the sizable increase for a club that we see for a team in Europe, but it has the potential to be a game-changer in MLS, depending on the team and its ownership. Most figures concerning team salary/payroll are generally guarded for obvious reasons. However, rather than using official numbers, I went through the data generously provided by the Players Union and calculated the accrued difference in pay between when the team won entry and the following year after the increase.

Now, as it happens, the Union only has data posted as far back as 2007, that's okay. Since the tournament underwent changes, adapting to it's current format back in 2008.

Obviously, this is still a small sample size, but it gives you a rough figure on how this could help DC United and the other Champion-League-bound clubs this season.  A big caveat to using the Unions' data is that its just a snap shot at a given point in the season. Not necessarily what they paid out in dues for the entire campaign.

An obvious tip-off to that is Seattle dropping payroll from 2009 to 2010. They didn't cut funds, but because late in the season they traded away Freddie Ljungberg to Chicago, his cost was associated with their club despite Seattle playing the majority of his contract for the season.

This is just one example among 20 unique situations. No season is the same. The LA Galaxy and their 16% cut in 2011 largely came from David Beckham's greatly reduced fee. 2013 comes and that fee is entirely off the book with his trip to PSG and the Galaxy not replacing his huge contract with another high paid designated player. Instead they signed Omar Gonzalez.

Still a team gaining access to the Champions League enjoys a nice 9% raise in their annual spending, and as is the case in other leagues, dollars spent correlate to points and position in the table to some degree.

MLS Playoff Chances

We are now including playoffs and Supporters' Shield probabilities on our MLS Tables, if you were unaware. These chances are calculated based on each team's current points and remaining schedule. The remaining game-by-game probabilities are specifically generated from the following:

• Which team is playing at home. Home teams have won nearly 50% of all MLS matches during the last three seasons. There is definitely an advantage to having a remaining schedule packed with home matches. 
• Total attempts generated and conceded. All season I have been studying the best predictive measures, and all season it's been SHOTS.
• Finishing rates for and against. Though finishing rates weren't very predictive at the season's midpoint, it turns out they're not completely worthless after at least 25 games.
• Past strength of schedule, as measured by past opponents' attempts data.
• Other variables, such as past possession percentage, were considered, but they did not help predict the outcome of the game better than those chosen above.

The above indicators were tested on the last 10 week's worth of games during the 2011, 2012 and 2013 seasons (well, up through the most recent week). Using a multinomial regression, I was able to calculate the influence of each indicator, and then the resulting probabilities of each of the three possible outcomes (home win, draw, away win). Once these probabilities were established, it was a matter of simulation.

My simulation was based on the game-by-game probabilities (above), and I let the computer simulate the games as though they were weighted coin flips (like how your PS3 simulates Fifa or Madden games) over and over again. So basically, I simulated the last 36 games of the season 10,000 times each, added up the total points for each team, and created 10,000 simulated tables. The POFF% probabilities is simply the proportion of times that each team earned a "clean" playoff berth---that is, ties for fifth were not included. The Shield% probability represents the proportion of times each team earned at least a share of the top position in MLS.

As an example, Portland made the playoffs 9,919 times out of the 10,000 simulated seasons, seeing its simulated probability of making the playoffs go up about 4.7% from last week after a win against the Galaxy. What might surprise you a little is that the Timbers have a very real chance (16.3%) at the Supporters' Shield, according to this model. That's up about 10% from last week.

To try to understand why Portland received such a favorable jump, consider that just about every possible thing that could have helped the Timbers' chances happened. Portland earned 3 points against a team that the model thought was pretty good (the Galaxy), Seattle and New York tied---the best possible outcome from Portland's perspective---and Sporting KC lost in a pretty big upset. Though RSL still won, that doesn't matter too much because Portland gets RSL at home, and that match will be the one that most likely determines a points winner between the two teams. Also consider that Portland has a home match against Seattle coming up. Because the model gives big boosts to home teams, the Timbers have a reasonable chance for 6-point swings against RSL and Seattle. Oh, and there's that away match at Chivas to end the season. The model thinks Portland will take three points in that one with about 50% probability,* which is quite high for any away team.

There is still a lot of fight left in the Eastern Conference playoff push, as four teams have less than 60% probability of making the playoffs. In the West, things are a little more straightforward, though San Jose has been sneaky of late, and it could potentially steal Colorado's playoff spot. The model seems to like the Galaxy's talent and schedule more than Colorado, enough to put the Rapids on the Western Conference's hot seat.

*That might seem low, but consider that Chivas has 5 wins, 7 losses and 4 draws at home this season. That means they have only lost 7/16 games at home, or about 44%. Portland's 50.3% makes more sense in that context.

ASA Podcast Episode XXIII: The One Where We Talk TFC Reconstruction and RSL Playoffs

Our most recent episode finds Drew and I doing a review of the MLS table, a US Open Cup preview and a short look at the weeks Champion League results. We transition to a discussion about the rebuilding of Toronto FC and then a playoff preview of Real Salt Lake. I hope you enjoy it.  

[audio http://americansocceranalysis.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/asa-episode-xxiii.mp3]

How Much Difference Did Kei Kamara Make To Sporting Kansas City?

I spent some time this week riding a few planes and doing my cross-country travel thing with the family. That means a lot of distractions, which in turn leads to time reading nerdy books and listening to podcasts. I'm not sure if it was just that the Sporting KC machine was on full crisis mode or what. I happened to catch 4 different podcasts (including our own...btw what a job Drew & Matty did without me, huh? Proves I'm expendable...)  talking about Sporting and their lack of ability to facilitate a goal in the Champions League at home. Obviously that's a big deal, in part because they look to be one of the teams that will proceed on to the quarter finals next spring and continue to represent MLS. But despite them sitting pretty in the CCL and third (using points per game) in the table for the Supporter Shield, a couple of podcasts basically forecasted that they would fall a part without a "proven scorer" now that Kei Kamara has departed. Now, I have to say that I've been mildly impressed with them as a team, and their pack of forwards---featuring Claudio Bieler, Soony Saad, CJ Sapong and the recently returned Dominic Dwyer---make for an interesting four-some. That isn't including Teal Bunbury who made his return to the club after being out for a year-long rehab with a torn ACL.

My immediate reaction two weeks ago was to question the transfer the deadline deal and transfer of Kamara three weeks ago. I spent a day putting some thoughts together and then second-guessed myself that I was maybe naive. They've got quite a few weapons, and the added play of Benny Feilhaber---who admittedly I've never been a fan of---stepping into the void left by the departure of a six-foot, three-inch winger from Sierra Leone has been big. Their string of results (9 points in 3 games) made me think I was being silly.

Then today, while on the road from Atlanta, a thought crossed my mind and I decided that I would take a closer look at the numbers. I collected shot data for the matches Kamara participated in (and to the minute he was subbed in) as well as the games Sporting played without him, and I built myself a nifty little spreadsheet.

Now, before I throw these numbers at you, there is the need for a little asterisk to all this work. I'm sure it's already understood, but if not, let me make it clear: these numbers are very vague and there is still quiet a bit of noise involved. How much, I'm not sure. It's just important to recognize the difficulty of trying to measure what a team does with and without a single player, and extract the difference. I would love to quantify everything, but everything is currently unavailable. This is a very simple method in a very small sample size of a context.

To the numbers!

With Kei Kamara...

Total Minutes	1026
SHOT RATIO	2.171
KP RATIO	1.940
Goals per 90	1.930
Goals Allowed per 90	1.316
Points Per Match	1.67

And then again... only without him.

without Kamara
Total Minutes	1584
SHOT RATIO	1.527
KP RATIO	1.793
Goals per 90	1.193
Goals Allowed per 90	0.739
Points Per Match	1.63

You can see pretty the numbers plainly that the are overwhelmingly in the favor of Sporting being a better team with Kamara. And I don't think anyone would argue against it. However, the difference between the two teams should be questioned as it's possible the numbers are a result of the different system in which coach Peter Vermes implements with Kamara opposed to how he configures the team without his former star forward. I think the big stat that stands out to me is the number of goals allowed per 90 without Kamara in the starting XI. Which is pretty crazy, considering that the club actually surrenders less shots with Kamara in the line-up: 6.7 with vs. 7.4 without. This is what leads me to believe that A) the team plays a different style without him and B) that it may not be sustainable.

I wasn't on the crazy train with thinking that Sporting has all these problems and is going to eventually fall apart. I'm still cautious enough that I'm still waiting to see if they'll make a move towards the Supporters Shield with their remaining 5 matches in the season. Their shot ratio, even without Kamara, would still be best in all of MLS. So it's hard to simply throw crazy statements that this team is that much worse without him.

The bigger issue at hand for me is that Sporting was a force with Kamara. Without him, they're simply another good team in league filled with good teams. Both are sets of clubs (with and without Kamara) that are capable of winning silverware. That said, this really leads you to question why Vermes would sell off such a significant difference-maker overseas with a real shot at making a run for multiple cups at this point in the season.

Analysis Evolved Podcast: Episode XXII A Treatise on Podcasting Casual Wear, RBNY, and MLS Playoffs

Matty and Drew cover CCL, the current state of MLS, give a preview of the Red Bulls' playoff chances, and choose the RBNY designated player with whom they would most like to engage in holy matrimony. [audio http://americansocceranalysis.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/episode-xxii.mp3]

Analysis Evolved Podcast: Episode XXI The One Where We Reflect On Costa Rica and Mexico

This was suppose to be a quick 15-to-20-minute podcast that turned into an almost 52-minute single segment ramble about all things US in the past week. It was just Drew and I, covering just about everything conceivable over the course of the loss to Costa Rica on the road to the win in Columbus against Mexico. No spoilers; just have a listen. [audio http://americansocceranalysis.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/asa-episode-xxi.mp3]

*Editors note:

Matthias to Drew by text after CR's second goal: [Howard didn't look ready for that one. I think he could have done more.]

Matthias to Drew by text after CR's third goal: [The defender definitely got beat, but the Costa Rican player didn't even get to the ball until it was 23 yards out. That's Howard's ball. 

Drew on Podcast: "...and Matthias was texting me...Matthias was like 'what's he doing in there? These goals are all his fault.' "

In a private interview with the Matthias, the editor was assured that Matthias never thought the goals were 100% Howard's fault, as Matthias---a student of probability---rarely believes anything is 100%.

Oh, and Drew is a poophead. 

**Editors note part 2:

Matthias edited is the editor of the site, just in case you didn't realize that.