Opta loosens the chains a bit

Look, it's late, you'll have to forgive the hack job JPEG above. I have no idea why I'm up besides the fact that I don't have to go to work in the morning. But with the upswing of free time, I'm just perusing the internet and generally reviewing information that I often don't find time to cruise through. While sifting through data and spending my time nodding off to sleep at my keyboard, I came across Opta's playground site where they are "opening up the database."

I'm not sure how new this is or if it is just something I missed. But I know it wasn't available the last time I was around. It's a basic request for people nerds like me (and possibly you...) to submit data requests.

An understatement would be to call this development "cool."

A lot of data within Soccer is closed off and generally leaves a lot to be desired. Being a guy that used to write a lot about baseball, it would be awful--strictly speaking from my perspective--to write about a player if the lack of overall information that was provide is akin to that of modern day soccer data.

It's safeguarded and looked after as if it was top secret defense information. To be fair, I actually think that some of that information is kept more secure than defense information. But that's not really the subject. Having the ability to submit an e-mail request for specific data is exciting. It's a marked improved over the current status quo.

Sure, you could complain about the fact that they only accept one application in all categories per email address, but who cares? It's an improvement, and here at ASA, that's what we're all about. Improvement. And soccer. And beer. So that's not what we're all about. But it's part of what we're about.