Over the last few years, analytics in MLS has been turned on its head. Whereas ten years ago if a team had one person “doing analytics” it was a big deal. Now, questions are asked if a club doesn’t and it is not uncommon for clubs to have multiple people on staff. The Tiers of MLS Analytics are now based upon the number of full time analytics staff members a club employs.
Read MoreOver the last few years, analytics in MLS has been turned on its head. Five years ago, if a team had one person “doing analytics,” it was a big deal. Now, questions are asked if a club doesn’t - and it is not uncommon for clubs to have multiple people on staff. The Tiers of MLS Analytics are now based upon the number of full time analytics staff members a club employs.
Read MoreOver the last few years, analytics in MLS has been turned on its head. Whereas five years ago if a team had one person “doing analytics” it was a big deal. Now, questions are asked if a club doesn’t and it is not uncommon for clubs to have multiple people on staff. With the hiring of the league’s first general manager that came up through analytics, DC United’s Lucy Rushton, a new system was needed to grade MLS teams. This system is not based on how well teams utilize analytics like previous editions, in part because that can be very hard to know from the outside, but on the number of people, a team employs to do it.
Read MoreThis is an update to last Summer’s article on the state of analytics at MLS clubs. The last few months have been a big one for MLS analytics signings. Harvard’s Laurie Shaw was hired by City Football Group, former Opta and SportLogiq employee Sam Gregory took his talents to Ft. Lauderdale, Cory Jez transferred from the Utah Jazz to Austin FC, Nikos Overheul moved to Vancouver after working for StatsBomb and Smartodds, and American Soccer Analysis’ own Sam Goldberg and Kevin Minkus were hired by New York Red Bulls and the Chicago Fire, respectively. Given this, teams are polarizing into the haves and have nots. In this update I’ve dropped the Tier 1.5 “Definitely Know What xG Is“ as teams in that tier moved up.
Last year, Kevin Minkus wrote Soccer Analytics 101 over at MLSsoccer.com where he defined analytics as “using data and statistics to better understand something.” For the purposes of deciding what MLS teams have an analytics staff member the “something” is player recruitment and tactical analysis. I’m talking about using numbers and mathematical models (e.g. xG, xA, g+) to help evaluate transfer targets and team and player performance.
Read MoreA couple weeks back, I tweeted a list of MLS teams that employed someone on staff focused on analytics. Unexpectedly, the tweet got a lot of feedback, mostly people urging their favorite team to hire someone, some saying that their club had one that I didn’t include (hello, RBNY twitter), and some critical feedback or concerns. This is great! People caring about analytics in soccer is an unquestioned good from my perspective. However, I did want to be a bit more nuanced about what I mean by analytics and what staff may be considered primarily focused on analytics.
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