November 19, 2021

Priors and Penalties: Finding the best penalty takers with Bayes

November 19, 2021/ Eliot McKinley

It’s MLS playoff time, and that means the possibility of penalties and shootouts. Rodrigo Schlegel led Orlando to victory after Pedro Gallese was sent off. Zack Steffen earned a move to Manchester City, in large part, due to leading Columbus to two penalty shootout victories. Portland named a bar in Providence Park after the famous double post shot in the marathon 2015 shootout against Sporting KC. Seattle won their first MLS Cup without registering a shot on goal by winning a shootout. Landon Donovan blasted his penalty over the bar to hand RSL the 2009 MLS Cup. Penalties and shootouts are remembered in ways that few other plays are.

May 11, 2020

Goals Added: How a Computer Watches Nicolas Lodeiro Play Soccer

May 11, 2020/ John Muller

There’s an old xkcd where a guy standing on top of a giant trash heap of math symbols explains how machine learning works: you dump your data into this junk pile here, see, and answers fall out the other end. And if the answers are wrong? “Just stir the pile until they start looking right,” he shrugs.

Models like goals added (g+) are great at answering wildly complex questions like “How much did this left back’s whiffed tackle at the halfway line change his team’s mathematical probability of scoring next time it gets the ball?” but terrible at telling you how they did it. In that sense the model is sort of like the athletes it’s trained on, guys who get a face full of microphones after every game but, as David Foster Wallace once wrote, “usually turn out to be stunningly inarticulate about just these qualities and experiences that constitute their fascination.” What were you thinking when you derived that bizarre possession value? Well, Sebi, it’s not the result we wanted but we’re just trying to take it one calculation at a time. Thanks to the fans for believing in us.

May 04, 2020

Goals Added: Introducing A New Way To Measure Soccer

May 04, 2020/ John Muller

Soccer analytics has always had a problem between the boxes. Thanks to expected goals, we’ve gotten good at valuing shots, but shots won’t tell you much about the ninety-plus-minute scramble that produces just 26 total chances over the course of your average MLS game and maybe three goals if you’re lucky. Shots make up about three seconds of action for every four minutes of soccer. Grading the sport on that alone is like assigning GPA based on how well students walk across the graduation stage.

February 24, 2020

2020 Season Preview: Seattle Sounders FC

February 24, 2020/ Ian L.

Sitting down to write one of these things about a team that succeeded in the previous campaign, and then did what at least SEEMS to be a very good job of addressing their areas of need, is a difficult proposition. It’s much easier to scorch the earth than it is to just speak in an entertaining way about how generally good things are going. All of that being said, the weather sure is nice in Seattle during most of the Major League Soccer campaign and last year’s champions are, well, looking every bit like the defending champions they are.

December 13, 2019

Offseason Outlook: Seattle Sounders

December 13, 2019/ Ian L.

"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" - The Red Queen

If I were a General Manager in Major League Soccer (and if my writing for this site has made anything clear, it’s that I definitely should not and will not be), I’d have that quote hanging above my door. Not only was Lewis Carroll the Bill James of the literary nonsense genre, but it’s a good reminder that in the world of professional sports even the king of the mountain needs to keep climbing if they want to stay on top. Yes. Seattle are entering the offseason as champions, but if they want to defend that title, they’ve got a lot of work to do between now and opening day

October 18, 2019

Seattle Sounders: Postseason Preview

October 18, 2019/ Ian L.

To 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.)

February 26, 2019

Seattle Sounders 2019 Season Preview

February 26, 2019/ Ian L.

I suppose that by Seattle’s lofty standards you could consider last season to be a bit of a disappointment. For the first time in three years, they weren’t contesting the MLS Cup final, having been knocked from the competition in heartbreaking fashion by Portland on penalties after 120 minutes of what can very reasonably be called the most exciting playoff match in team history. So how do you bounce back? Is there actually anything to bounce back from? Why don’t teams have long-sleeved jersey options all of a sudden? What’s actually going on with Adidas anyway? If the Seattle Sounders were a character in Game of Thrones which one would they be? We shall endeavor to answer some of these questions within.

October 26, 2018

Postseason Preview: Seattle Sounders FC

October 26, 2018/ Ian L.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. The start to the 2018 campaign was, at best, a complete and utter disaster. Expectations were high for a team that had just made its second consecutive MLS Cup final appearance. You don’t usually see trains derail without gaining any significant speed or momentum, but somehow that’s exactly what happened here.

Jordan Morris, coming off of an injury and a disappointing sophomore campaign looked primed to return to the form that saw him capture Rookie of the Year honors in 2016, instead he suffered another devastating season ending injury and Seattle went from dreams of CCL Glory to that one where you show up to class naked and have to take a final you didn’t study for.

October 05, 2018

Setting the Table Week 31: Lodeiro, RSL, And the Slow Fade of NYCFC

October 05, 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.

#5 Nicolas Lodeiro to Raul Ruidiaz, Seattle Sounders, 22nd minute, 0.318 expected goals
Passes in sequence: 2

August 15, 2018

Little Things from Week 24: Lodeiro's control, Machado about creating space, and Villa's intelligence

August 15, 2018/ Harrison Hamm

Nicolas Lodeiro doing Nicolas Lodeiro things

Nico Lodeiro is a Touch Percentage Superstar. His 14.4 percent leads MLS players with a significant sample size this season, and he was similarly among the league leaders in 2016 and 2017. Most of his competitors are deeper-lying midfielders who are more likely to get on the ball in safer positions, whereas Lodeiro’s touches are situated primarily in a more congested attacking third.

Lodeiro is everything for this Sounders team, the fulcrum through which they pass and create. As John Strong and Brian Dunseth relayed on the FS1 broadcast on Sunday, Garth Lagerwey and the higher-ups consider Seattle Lodeiro’s team. Only a player with the on-ball proficiency and volume of Lodeiro could deserve that lofty mantle.

Few players in MLS’ recent history have possessed Lodeiro’s willingness to control a game’s shape, and almost no one has been able to do so from the advanced positions that he has. The Uruguayan is everywhere, by design. He’s constantly moving and trying to make himself available for passes. That, his never-ending movement and incisive mobility, is what stood out in 2016 when he arrived midseason and dominated everyone.

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