I’ve been thinking about writing a blog entry for football (yes, I’m going to call it football for the purposes of this blog) for some time now. Previous to 2006 I never, ever watched soccer. I know that my high school had a soccer team, but it was during track season (and prom season) and I just didn’t pay that much attention to it. I also attended the gold medal match during the 1996 Olympic games, but I was really just there for the party (and it WAS a lot of fun). But before 2006 I just really didn’t pay too much attention to football. Why 2006? That’s the year my son turned 5 and started playing. Yes Virginia, you may have heard of “soccer moms”, but in 2006 I became a fully fledged “soccer dad”.
Even though I would go to the weekend soccer games and cheer on my son I still didn’t consider myself a “fan” and certainly not a student of the game. That all changed a couple of years ago during a Saturday with nothing to look forward except yard work and a “honey do” list a mile long. The Super Bowl was two weeks in the past and the doldrums of spring and summer were upon me with the prospect of no football.
While sulking and channel surfing past the bowling, figure skating, basket weaving, etc I ran across an EPL match. I don’t even recall what the match was, but it was riveting. That 110 minutes or so was enlightening, a football fan was born…. Finally! A sport that I could watch in the long (American) football off-season that was just as intense and just as intriguing to follow! My wife was overjoyed that I had found a sport that glued myself to the TV for the remaining 6 months of the year.
The “long and short of it” is really that even though I didn’t grow up around the sport I have become a great fan of the game.
So today I would like to discuss two of the metrics that I see that seem to be at the heart of most discussions for football. Just as Kirwin pointed out in his book (“Take Your Eye Off The Ball”) I’d like to ask soccer fans everywhere to pull their attention away from these useless stats that they’ve always been fed and ask the most important question of all (So WHAT?!?!).
First, distance run. Well, where to start? For those of you that aren’t familiar with the concept, several companies in the past few years have developed technology that allows the physical tracking of players as they move around the field. This feeds x/y coordinates of the players on the field, their average speed and the total distance (typically reported in kilometers or meters) that the player has covered during the course of the game. It’s really fascinating stuff.
So what?
What does distance covered really tell you about the performance of a player during the game? Absolutely nothing. A couple of years ago at the sports analytics conference in Boston one of the EPL staff members using this technology actually lamented the meaningless data it produced. In this particular case a keeper was augmenting his “distance run” metric (after being cajoled by some coaches) by running back and forth across the box while the ball was on the other end of the pitch. Not making any plays, not doing anything productive for the outcome of the game and certainly not doing anything to help his team (aside from some extra conditioning), just trying to get that particular STAT better and get the coaches off his back.
I won’t even go into why I think average speed is idiotic. Based on what I’ve just said I think it’s obvious…
#2, passing %. Basically Player A passes the ball to Player B X number of times. Y number of times the pass was successfully received by Player B, therefore the percentage is simply Y divided by X. Now you ask, what fault could I find in a perfectly good statistic that represents teamwork between two players on the same team? Well, football is definitely a team sport. It’s definitely helpful to have your players working together. But, it’s also a sport of speed and continuity. If Player A passes to Player B while in a full run about to blow by a flat-footed defender and Player B has to completely halt all of his momentum to go back and get the ball (because bone head Player A didn’t lead him enough) then it is considered a successful pass and counts in the Y column.
Really? There was an opportunity for a breakthrough on the defense, possibly a good, quality shot on goal, but the pass was poor. But wait! Even though the pass was poor and completely killed the opportunity, the pass was “received” and therefore it counts in this statistic.
(One of the many reasons I hate dumb, automated statistics like these.)
Neither of these pass the “So What?” test.
Look at statistics like this and ask yourself “So What?”. Who cares how much distance a guy ran? Maybe he was having a horrible day and giving up the ball every chance he got and spent his 8 km chasing the guy who just stole the ball from him? As an example, Messi’s distance stat during a game is not impressive – have you ever watched a game and really focused on him? He puts himself in the right place at the right time and he’s fresh for the entire 90 minutes. (see this article from a couple of years ago, sorry Bleacher Report, but you guys were WAY off on this one). You don’t get that running 10 or 12 km per game, you get that by playing SMART. The same can be said for Rooney – who’s always back there heckling the keeper to hurry up his kicks? Why is he back there? He typically sets himself up just onside - you hardly ever see this guy on the defensive half of the pitch…
The same for passing accuracy. If the pass isn’t a quality pass and actually prevents the receiving player from doing something “good” then it shouldn’t be counted as a positive event in the course of the game!
Those x/y coordinates produced by these technologies are good for one thing though. You can “virtualize” the game where all of the players on the field are represented by circles and squares. It’s really cool to watch all of those little shapes move around the field, it’s almost like WATCHING THE GAME. A huge amount of money is spent on these technologies and all they’re getting for that money is something that I spend $12/month to receive (no, this isn’t a DirecTV commercial).
The bottom line? You are smart, you’re on the internet and you’re reading a blog. Question these stats and demand more. Ask the “So What?” question as often as possible and don’t stop until you’re satisfied with the answer. If you want to know more about what I think are “real” metrics that measure the “real” performance of these fantastic athletes, let me know.
No comments:
Post a Comment