July 16, 2020

MLS Is Back: Week One Highs And Lows

July 16, 2020/ Carl Carpenter

My excellent colleagues at ASA have done some terrific work in rolling out Goals Added (g+) the past couple months, putting out methodology articles, and finding new and creative ways to assess player performance on the pitch through this metric. We highly recommend you read the articles linked above, but g+ is the model we built to assign value to every single on-ball action that happens in a soccer game. The return of MLS has given us at ASA the first extended period of which to use this g+ data since the league’s restart, so through the medium of video analysis I will be looking at some of the major actions of g+ during the first week of action. I’ll be giving context to the numbers behind it: where the players did well, where they did poorly, and why g+ afforded them the values they were given!

February 27, 2020

2020 Season Preview: Sporting Kansas City

February 27, 2020/ Kevin Minkus

A common refrain of Sporting Kansas City season previews from offseasons past is “get a center forward.” Here are some quotes from past ASA and MLSsoccer.com previews to that effect:

“Up top, SKC again has depth, but are still lacking a proven MLS goal-scorer.”
“There are a few questions, though, with Kristzian Nemeth stepping into the club's starting center forward role.”
“However, the talk will almost always turn back to that No. 9 position. It's not that Sporting have been completely deficient there over the years, it's just that they've never really found a solution that stuck.”
“What Vermes hasn’t done (yet) is land the forward #SKCnation yearns for.”

December 16, 2019

Offseason Outlook: Sporting Kansas City

December 16, 2019/ Kevin Minkus

Since sending Dom Dwyer to Orlando halfway through 2017, Sporting Kansas City have been without an above average center forward. Dwyer’s 2016 season was the last year an SKC player finished in the top 10 in MLS in goals. Since then, Kansas City’s leading scorers have logged just 8, 11, and 12 goals. In MLS 3.0, lacking an elite striker up top is a little bit inexcusable.

September 06, 2019

Lowered Expectations: Katai is Fired Up

September 06, 2019/ Harrison Crow

You may or may not remember that I like to write about how shots from good locations don’t become goals. This was, once upon a time, a weekly feature here. Drew has begged me to come and start writing again, so here we are back again.

Those of you who may not be familiar with this column of mine, please, allow me to introduce to you the idea of expected goals. It’s the probability a given shot attempt would be scored, taking into account specific criteria captured at the time of the shot.

In this column we like to talk about what the expected goals model sees, and also what it doesn’t, when arriving with the xG number. The theme of this column is to take the five highest probability shots from open play (i.e. excluding free kicks and set pieces) of the previous week that didn’t end with the ball in the back of the net.

It also often turns into me decrying terrible crosses into the box that the model likes but are in actuality terrible chances that are awful and stupid and should be outlawed. Okay, well... let’s get started!

February 27, 2019

Sporting KC 2019 Season Preview

February 27, 2019/ Harrison Crow

In the Sporting Kansas City playoff preview last year I wrote that for SKC in 2018, the bottom didn’t fall out. That doesn’t sound particularly noteworthy, but it has been an ongoing theme through the years with Peter Vermes’ teams. His up tempo and high press style has often faced scrutiny due lack of rotation. It’s led some to question whether Vermes’ tactical approach is viable for 34 to 40 games per season.

But their late season volatility isn’t all that surprising when you consider how a lack of depth during an MLS season can cause issues. It’s even less surprising that SKC would have encountered it considering their organizational constraints over the years.

December 26, 2018

Our Favorite ASA Articles of 2018

December 26, 2018/ Drew Olsen

During a recent American Soccer Analysis shareholders meeting in the penthouse suite of the swanky hotel we built in Minecraft (it’s our Slack channel), we discussed our favorite ASA articles of the past year. Because it is the season of listicles and we relish every chance to talk about ourselves, we decided to put them all together in one official post. Also, our site traffic is essentially zero at this time of year, so it seemed like an easy way for us to remember where we put them.

It was a great year for MLS (though perhaps not American soccer overall) and the most successful in our five year life as a website. We added interactive tables, introduced xPG, rebooted the podcast (new episode coming out soon! …probably), and added a lot of great new writers to our existing ranks of stale old writers. They’re not all represented in the list below, but special shout out to our weekly contributors who put together content every week - Little Things (@harrisonhamm21), Lowered Expectations (@harrison_crow), Expected Narratives (@ahandleforian), and Setting the Table (@ericwsoccer) - showed us the individual plays each week that made up the whole of the MLS season. We’d also like to extend a special thank you to Neil Greenberg of the Washington Post, for including us as a part of the WaPo’s incredible World Cup coverage.

October 18, 2018

Expected Narratives Week 33: End of Year Awards 2018

October 18, 2018/ Ian L.

It was a pretty light weekend in Major League Soccer featuring a match seeking to answer that age old question “what happens when the opposite of an immovable object meets the opposite of an unstoppable force?” The answer? Colorado wins 2-0, I guess. That match will probably be remembered more for the altercation following the final whistle which featured two players being showed red cards FIFTEEN minutes into stoppage time so I guess Colorado and MInnesota aren't’ best friends now, which could be problematic as previously they seem to be the only destinations that would actually want some of the other’s lackluster players. I sure hope they work it out. I’ve got $5 on a Franz Pangop for Yannick Boli trade.

But also, Oh my god DC United are just so irresistible right now. It’s like watching Michael Jordan in that flu game but instead of Michael Jordan it’s more like BJ Armstrong and instead of the flu it had something vaguely to do with raccoons. I predicted a few weeks ago that this team would find its way to the postseason and I’m feeling more and more confident about this every week. Watching people eat their crow flavored Pot Noodle about Wayne Rooney has become appointment viewing during office hours. To say Rooney has been a revelation is only true if you’re one of these people who have apparently never once watched Wayne Rooney play soccer. You aren’t seeing some surprising late career renaissance version of a softer more reflective Rooney, you’re getting the same bullish kid in a dad’s body with an innate ability to grab a game by the scruff of its neck and drag it wherever he wants.

July 20, 2018

Setting the Table Week 20 - Steffen's Value, Quintero's Arrival, and Fagundez's Production

July 20, 2018/ Eric Walcott

Welcome to Setting the Table. Each week we take some time to focus on the best chance creators in MLS from the last weekend. If you want to see the best chances that were wasted check out Lowered Expectations. Here we focus on chances that ended with the ball in the back of the net.

July 19, 2018

Lowered Expectations: Week 20

July 19, 2018/ Drew Olsen

Welcome to Lowered Expectations, week 20 edition! Each week, we go about posting chalkboards and GIFs of the weekend’s best open-play shot attempts which did not quite live up to expectations (and rarely do we update this paragraph). We look at each one and not only evaluate the results, but also the process leading to them.

May 22, 2018

Peter Vermes' System and His Favorite Son

May 22, 2018/ Joseph Lowery

Peter Vermes has his Sporting Kansas City squad working together and playing a beautiful attacking style of soccer. Wanting to play a brand based on possessing the ball and working it creatively into the attacking third, Vermes has had to form a roster capable of carrying out his vision. Last season, with center backs Ike Opara, Matt Besler and mid-season acquisition CDM Ilie Sanchez, SKC was known for being defensively dominant. In 2017, they only allowed 0.79 goals per game and 0.93 expected goals per game. Both of those numbers were good for first place in all of Major League Soccer. This year, the defensive numbers have slipped slightly; while Kansas City is still in the top three in terms of goals against per game, their expected number has increased to 1.45. Those statistics illustrate the shift in Vermes’ system from a defensive focus to an offensive one. With the offseason additions of Felipe Gutierrez and Yohan Croizet in midfield and Johnny Russell at right wing, Kansas City now has the fire power to play the brand Vermes wants.