Under the new leadership of CEO Garth Lagerway, Atlanta United returned to the playoffs in 2023, shaking off the previous season's disappointments. While Atlanta was ousted in the first round at the hands of the eventual champs, the team gave fans plenty of reasons to have hope for the future.
Read MoreA 2024 Sporting Kansas City preview can only begin with the acknowledgement of an ending. Two club legends, Graham Zusi and Roger Espinoza, won’t be lacing up their blue boots this season. One of those two has been in a Sporting KC jersey every year since 2008. The duo combined for nearly 700 games played and oversaw the collection of four trophies. They will be sorely missed by the fans and in the clubhouse. The fact that Zusi spent his entire 15-year career with one club is just a marvelous feat. What a career.
Read MoreThe prince that was promised finally arrived.
After years of fans clamoring for a bonafide star to take the pitch for the home team at Red Bull Arena, the New York Red Bulls finally went out and acquired such a player. Emil Forsberg, who’s been in the Red Bull soccer-sphere since 2015 with Leipzig, is the sort of player that can be an immediate gamechanger in MLS.
Read MoreComing off the highs of the 2022 season, CF Montreal felt like they had some real momentum… then they let their best in league coach walk, sold their eight (maybe) best players, hired a maniac, and decided we’ll play 180 degrees different from our very successful previous tactical identity and now with mostly bad players. That went predictably badly, with Montreal undergoing a humongous -30 xGD swing from +18 to -12, as they just missed the playoffs in a weak Eastern conference. Also at some point they had to cut one of their few good players for fighting a guy in a men's league game. Truthfully, the less said about 2023 the better.
Read MoreDC United wasn’t terrible in 2023, finishing 12th in the Eastern Conference though racking up 40 points and a +5.99 expected goals difference pre American Soccer Analysis data. But it was an uninspiring season nonetheless and a major offseason overhaul followed. So the Black and Red enter the 2024 season with what looks to be real change for the first time in a long time. Wayne Rooney is out. Same, too, with Dave Kasper. Ally Mackay (and Caleb Shreve!) are in. So is Troy Lesesne.
Read MoreAustin FC's 2023 season was a stark departure from their 2022 success, marred by injury woes and underperforming signings from the departed and controversial Claudio Reyna. The defensive line sorely missed Ruben Gabrielsen as the injury bug hit the backline, forcing Alex Ring into an impromptu center back role for a majority of the season. The attacking front struggled as well, with Emiliano Rigoni and Gyasi Zardes often having underwhelming performances. On the brighter side of things, Jon Gallagher’s early season nose for the net earned him an All-Star selection, and Brad Stuver continued to be a shot-stopping savant.
Read MoreMiami. City of … something. I don’t know, beaches, presumably. It's’ a town that loves sports, when LeBron is on the team, or the Heat are inexplicably in the finals. But last year, Miami sports fans had something new to excite them, and the city became known worldwide for something else: its proximity to Fort Lauderdale.
Read MoreThe data used in this project can be found and played with in a Tableau workbook at the bottom.
4500+ words on the MLS Superdraft, which will see at most 10 players earn 1000 minutes in the league? The same week that teams report to preseason, a month after the draft?
Read MoreOnce again, it’s time for the Major League Soccer playoffs and penalty shootout season. Changes in the playoff format to a best of three-game first round where tie games after regulation go straight to a shootout mean that a player’s penalty taking skill may be more important than ever.
To quantitatively determine the best penalty takers in the 2023 playoffs, I again turn to empirical Bayes estimation. If you want the full explanation of how this works, go read my 2021 article on this topic, or, better yet, Tuan Nguyen Doan’s work that I based this work on. In short, I gathered penalty kick information via FBRef for 863 players that have attempted more than 4 penalties in their club careers (international matches are excluded here). This was used to calculate what is known as the prior distribution - basically what you would expect a normal player’s penalty taking ability to be if you know nothing about them. As a player takes penalties, the number and conversion rate give you more information about each player that updates your prior distribution to a posterior distribution. The more penalties that a player attempts gives more confidence in our ability to determine how good they actually are at taking penalties.
Read MoreA hectic decision day has come and gone and the NWSL playoffs are soon upon us, as such it’s probably a good time to look at the Best XI by g+ in NWSL in 2023.
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