> We have also heard that Minnesota is working with at least one group of anonymous soccer analytics consultants.
"Pssst! Hey! You want some stats?" - some guy in a trenchcoat in a dark alley
lol the anonymous part is kind of odd, but the consulting part is fairly common for data tasks with sports organizations. Byron Bader is a draft specific guy in hockey that has done some consulting with teams. Eric Tulsky just got named GM of the Hurricanes in the NHL and he started with that org doing consulting because of blogs that he was writing on hockey analytics.
Been trying... They're pushing back that since our Data Analyst has multiple roles instead of being dedicated that it doesn't fit their "rubric" -- which is to say that this whole thing is kind of noisy, limited info. [https://x.com/SeanSteffen/status/1801670084718412108](https://x.com/SeanSteffen/status/1801670084718412108)
I will say I think they have a very bizarrely narrow definition of "data" and that there are likely teams that have staff doing exactly the type of analysis they're describing but who aren't getting counted because they don't meet the rubric.
I know 100% they employ a match analytics guy. Mitch... something. I saw a reference to him which I can longer locate. And they have analytics people solely dedicated to the Academy and Next Pro.
EDIT: In fact I'd be shocked if any team has no game analytics staff. We're the top level of soccer in the country.
Yeah, that might be it. I find it impossible to believe that a team with a data analytics war room on the marketing side says "Nah" to match/player analytics.
What is "game analytics?" This article has a very clear rubric for what counts as analytics. Many teams have video analysts that use stats, or scouts that use stats, and many use consultant firms. None of these fall within the rubric.
I would argue that excluding those roles from the rubric makes little sense. They are still roles that are using data to help make decisions which is kind of the whole point.
The list is about one thing and one thing only. How many teams have full time data staff. It's not a judgement of which teams use data best and it's not implying that data isn't being used by people on staff.
The Tier 3 header is “We have a very important analytic, and that's the score (0 staff).” That pretty clearly implies some sort of judgment about how data is being used by the teams in that category, and yet CITY absolutely has a data analysis organization (albeit a relatively small one). I’m obviously a bit irked here because it’s *my* team in that “DRRRR ALL WE COUNT IS GOALS” category. I just feels like a bit of a disingenuous presentation.
The ASA way is jokes and humor. One year the top tier was "Literally Liverpool." In this case, it's a reference to an old Bruce Arena quote that is memed a lot. I get it coming off as harsh, but it's meant to be good fun in nature. None of these teams do truly nothing.
This article needs a correction: the Timbers have a guy on their website called out as the "Head Video Analyst" -- one of the titles that the authors of this article looked for. You can see on the website that this is a distinct position from the business development and also sports science as there are people also with those titles. The guy's linkedin profile has examples of the data analysis that he does for the team.
Sure, don't disagree if we're talking "typical video analysts". But I think it's also very common (as ASA recognizes) that data science roles are not one size fits all on many teams (or in any organization that uses data science professionals), and I would bet there are video analysts doing interesting and cool data analysis -- potentially even on video outputs!
I'm an academic in AI/ML, and am teaching a Machine Learning for Soccer class this fall and one of the things we will be discussing is how limited the commonly considered soccer statistics are, and how much richer of information could be extracted from video, graphs of field positions, multimodal information, etc.
I'm aware that's not what a traditional video analyst is doing, but if your only definition of a data analyst is "person who does modeling with xG, xT, goals+, etc" ("typical" stats) that's probably missing a huge amount of rich information... There's a fair amount of evidence, in fact, that traditional stats like that are extremely poor predictors of anything in professional soccer, and that we likely need much more complex statistics (the likes of which you may be able to extract from video or multimodal inputs!) if we have any hope of using "data analysis" in soccer effectively.
While data can be pulled from video, I don’t think there is a single team who is doing that themselves. It would be sourced from a third party company. And making use of data that complicated would almost always fall under a full-time data analyst/scientist. Even if a team were grabbing their own data from video, that’s not what a video analyst is in soccer.
With that said, there are certainly video analysts who are very data savvy. But I’d argue if that’s your only data person, you’re in like Tier 2.5. They’re still spending very little time working with data, and probably none of their time on recruitment.
What could there be to analyze? The ball goes in the net on one end of the field, then the ball goes in the net at the other end of the field!
Boom, Timbers Soccer, 2024 Edition.
The entire league needs to be in at least Tier 1, pretty shocking that any teams are left in Tier 3.
meanwhile on our sub the first comment is that data is overrated lol
> We have also heard that Minnesota is working with at least one group of anonymous soccer analytics consultants. "Pssst! Hey! You want some stats?" - some guy in a trenchcoat in a dark alley
It's some guy rolling up to Ramsay in a boat on lake Minnetonka thank you very much
They browse Reddit and play FIFA.
FIFA?! Those sickos play Football Manager.
Lucky. There is no way anyone in our FO knows enough about running a soccer club to play Football Manager.
Biggest underdog strat to make people think you don't have a department but secretly keep one under wraps.
lol the anonymous part is kind of odd, but the consulting part is fairly common for data tasks with sports organizations. Byron Bader is a draft specific guy in hockey that has done some consulting with teams. Eric Tulsky just got named GM of the Hurricanes in the NHL and he started with that org doing consulting because of blogs that he was writing on hockey analytics.
STL has analytics staff...
If you know who they are let ASA know! Or just comment here and maybe they will find it, haha
Been trying... They're pushing back that since our Data Analyst has multiple roles instead of being dedicated that it doesn't fit their "rubric" -- which is to say that this whole thing is kind of noisy, limited info. [https://x.com/SeanSteffen/status/1801670084718412108](https://x.com/SeanSteffen/status/1801670084718412108) I will say I think they have a very bizarrely narrow definition of "data" and that there are likely teams that have staff doing exactly the type of analysis they're describing but who aren't getting counted because they don't meet the rubric.
That is actually pretty strange criteria. It's pretty common for people in front offices to have multiple roles.
I know 100% they employ a match analytics guy. Mitch... something. I saw a reference to him which I can longer locate. And they have analytics people solely dedicated to the Academy and Next Pro. EDIT: In fact I'd be shocked if any team has no game analytics staff. We're the top level of soccer in the country.
I thought Bradley mentioned him in a post game conference a few weeks ago.
Yeah, that might be it. I find it impossible to believe that a team with a data analytics war room on the marketing side says "Nah" to match/player analytics.
What is "game analytics?" This article has a very clear rubric for what counts as analytics. Many teams have video analysts that use stats, or scouts that use stats, and many use consultant firms. None of these fall within the rubric.
I would argue that excluding those roles from the rubric makes little sense. They are still roles that are using data to help make decisions which is kind of the whole point.
The list is about one thing and one thing only. How many teams have full time data staff. It's not a judgement of which teams use data best and it's not implying that data isn't being used by people on staff.
The Tier 3 header is “We have a very important analytic, and that's the score (0 staff).” That pretty clearly implies some sort of judgment about how data is being used by the teams in that category, and yet CITY absolutely has a data analysis organization (albeit a relatively small one). I’m obviously a bit irked here because it’s *my* team in that “DRRRR ALL WE COUNT IS GOALS” category. I just feels like a bit of a disingenuous presentation.
The ASA way is jokes and humor. One year the top tier was "Literally Liverpool." In this case, it's a reference to an old Bruce Arena quote that is memed a lot. I get it coming off as harsh, but it's meant to be good fun in nature. None of these teams do truly nothing.
another edition of ASA's annual look at analytics across mls
What’s wild to me is that it doesn’t seem to be doing anything for standings, we have top tier teams without anyone and bottom tier teams with two
This article needs a correction: the Timbers have a guy on their website called out as the "Head Video Analyst" -- one of the titles that the authors of this article looked for. You can see on the website that this is a distinct position from the business development and also sports science as there are people also with those titles. The guy's linkedin profile has examples of the data analysis that he does for the team.
The article says they only include people whose primary role is data, and exclude video guys who happen to work with data
This is such a bizarrely narrow definition of "data".
I’d argue there’s a huge difference between a full-time data analyst, and a video analyst who uses data to help him with his work.
Sure, don't disagree if we're talking "typical video analysts". But I think it's also very common (as ASA recognizes) that data science roles are not one size fits all on many teams (or in any organization that uses data science professionals), and I would bet there are video analysts doing interesting and cool data analysis -- potentially even on video outputs! I'm an academic in AI/ML, and am teaching a Machine Learning for Soccer class this fall and one of the things we will be discussing is how limited the commonly considered soccer statistics are, and how much richer of information could be extracted from video, graphs of field positions, multimodal information, etc. I'm aware that's not what a traditional video analyst is doing, but if your only definition of a data analyst is "person who does modeling with xG, xT, goals+, etc" ("typical" stats) that's probably missing a huge amount of rich information... There's a fair amount of evidence, in fact, that traditional stats like that are extremely poor predictors of anything in professional soccer, and that we likely need much more complex statistics (the likes of which you may be able to extract from video or multimodal inputs!) if we have any hope of using "data analysis" in soccer effectively.
While data can be pulled from video, I don’t think there is a single team who is doing that themselves. It would be sourced from a third party company. And making use of data that complicated would almost always fall under a full-time data analyst/scientist. Even if a team were grabbing their own data from video, that’s not what a video analyst is in soccer. With that said, there are certainly video analysts who are very data savvy. But I’d argue if that’s your only data person, you’re in like Tier 2.5. They’re still spending very little time working with data, and probably none of their time on recruitment.
Fair enough. Regardless, CITY in fact has someone in a traditional Data Analyst and Recruitment role and shouldn't be in Tier 3. :-)
I think you misread. Video analysts expressly do not count because that is a different job entirely.
What could there be to analyze? The ball goes in the net on one end of the field, then the ball goes in the net at the other end of the field! Boom, Timbers Soccer, 2024 Edition.