“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” - Brian Schmetzer, presumably.
I’m not here to be all sunshine and roses. Last year was bad. But, also, it was awesome. Being the first MLS team to win the CONCACAF Champions League has come with a purse bulging with bragging rights. It’s not a small thing. It was a remarkable accomplishment.
Read MoreHeading into Toronto on a snowy December day in past years may have had visitors buzzing about the state of BMO Field’s snowy pitch in preparation for an MLS Cup final. For now, there is just roster talk. Roster talk, and manager talk. Enter Bradley. Not the old Bradley we’ve come to know and love, but the even older Bradley who is new to us.
Read MoreWe’re publishing three team previews every weekday until MLS First Kick on April 16th (THAT’S TODAY!). You can find all of them here.
Today we’re looking at three teams which have all approached their roster construction and team-building in completely different ways.
Read MoreThis is the fifth article in a series of articles and videos in the Where Goals Come From project from Jamon Moore and Carl Carpenter.
By now, readers of the Where Goals Come From project will be very in tune with the benefits of progressive passing in soccer, both from a data and tactical perspective. Within these last few weeks you’ve probably noticed a trend about the scope of progressive passing and its effectiveness throughout all levels of men’s and women’s football, furthering its importance within the game as a means of scoring goals (you know...where goals come from).
However, as American Soccer Analysis, we would be remiss to not put one specific league under the microscope and take a deeper look: in this case, Major League Soccer. In doing so, I’m going to look at the various tactical schemes the “defining” teams of the past three seasons in MLS have used to find success. These teams are:
Read MoreWe have reached the conclusion of the 2020 MLS season, and it happens to coincide with the conclusion of the long, LONG 2020 US election. And the two things share a lot in common - first and foremost among them being the all-important question of “who won?” and “who lost?”
But when the contest is at its end, or a season is nearly over, hand-wringing and analysis is all that’s left - the ‘woulda-shoulda-couldas’ of the world that keep a veritable army of pundits employed in our country. The most important thing for these folks to look at is underperformance: how did we do this thing, expecting it would have a certain result, and not get the desired result? For the election, a few things obviously underperformed; namely, pollsters, who had predicted a robust blue wave that did not manifest; and Democrats, who faced a let down across the country, from the results of the presidential election in Florida to the Maine senate race between Sara Gideon and Susan Collins.
Read MoreEver since the first coach had the first microphone stuck in his or her face, or the first pundit expounded upon their local sports team, folks have opined that “we were better than the results” or “we should have won that game.” And for a long time, you would pretty much have to take their word on that.
But the new g+ metric, and the even-newer aggregate measure of g+ that ASA’s Mattias Kullowatz (twitter: @MattyAnselmo) and John Muller (@johnspacemuller) rolled out last week has given us a tool that lets us actually say with real certainty that a team is better, worse, or exactly what the win-loss results show. In other words, g+ is a giant neon sign that blinks “Regression Ahead” or “We wuz robbed, again.”
Read MoreIt’s hard to feel, well, anything really about how LAFC finished in 2019. You don’t exactly feel sorry for the MLS juggernaut that came to conquer all and lay claim to ‘greatest MLS team ever’, but didn’t. Carlos Vela and Bob Bradley seemed so cocksure and full of swagger that their inevitable comeuppance at the hands of the Seattle Sounders was almost satisfying for MLS neutrals. For LAFC fans, it would certainly be disappointing if they hadn’t be treated to so many other wonderful delights in the 2019 season. Ricky Bobby / Ron Burgundy / More Cowbell United earned Supporters Shield on the back of an outrageous record-setting 72 point season, and they did it with a record-shattering Goal Differential of +48. The previous mark of +41 had been set by the LA Galaxy way back in 1998. Their star player won the MVP award while breaking the goal scoring record, as Vela found the net an outrageous 34 times. And all that, in just their second year of existence. So if 3252 members are looking for tea and sympathy amongst other MLS fans, they ain’t gonna get it.
Read More2018 LAFC turned out to be just like 2017 Atlanta United, bowing out in the first round of the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs. In 2019, the comparisons with Atlanta United continue. Second-year club LAFC not only caught, but surpassed the 2018 MLS Cup winner’s marks in 2019. LAFC exceeded their points (72 to 69; 2018 RBNY had 71) and Carlos Vela surpassed Josef Martinez’ shiny new single-season goal scoring record by three goals (34). LAFC also tied the single season goals record (with the 1998 L.A. Galaxy) with 85, set the best goal differential with 48, bettering that same Galaxy team by seven. And Vela finished with 10 primary assists (the only ones we count at ASA). For comparison, the only other player with 10 or more assists and over 20 goals in our dataset was Sebastian Giovinco in 2015.
Read MoreTo say that the Seattle Sounders exist solely to confound me would simultaneously be both incredibly narcissistic and also accurate. I’ve been tasked with the preseason and postseason previews for the perennial contenders for the past few years, and every single time I’m more and more tempted to just submit this as my draft:
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
(Editor’s note: this would not be up to ASA’s stringent editorial standards, as we’re not Bleacher Report… yet.)
Read MoreLAFC aren’t just good. They are a force.
They have 1.43 Expected Goal (xG) differential per game. No team in MLS history has had more than 1 xGD/game since 2013. LAFC’s xGD is only 0.12 fewer than Atlanta United’s and Red York Red Bulls’ COMBINED. Granted, we haven’t finished even half of the schedule. Things may change comes the last part of the season when LAFC slow down to prepare for the playoffs. But for now, you are witnessing the best team MLS has ever produced. They don’t just beat you, they obliterate you.
The Supporter Shield is as good as gone; our prediction model gives LAFC 76% to win the league. But MLS is about the playoffs. In the new single game format, you only need to get lucky once. Every team has weaknesses. You just need to find those cracks.
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