Brazil are the clear-cut favorite to win the World Cup. There is a time and a place for it. Ryan O'Hanlon is the author of "Net Gains: Inside the Beautiful Game's Analytics Revolution." You can get a copy of the book from your local bookstore. There are ongoing efforts to quantify the value of play in the middle of the field. Tim said it was new to him. I was purchased because of data and statistics. It would make sense to call him theSergio Busquets. He is a year older and two inches taller than the Spaniard, but they played the same role in the middle of the field. He has gangly arms and legs, intense eyes, and an intimidating dense beard. He moved to England at the age of 16 to join the academy of Saints, where he was teammates with some of the best players in the world. The two teams became the same team.
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He didn't think he was good enough to play for the Saints' first team. Since leaving in 2007, he has played in many countries.
You may have seen him playing for the Finns. You can't miss the bearded beanstalk with the neon colored armband. He led the country to its first-ever major tournament as the captain of the national team.
At Euro 2020, the greatest moment in Finns' footballing history was a 1-0 win in their first match, which happened to coincide with the near tragedy of Christian Eriksen collapsing on the field. Sparv spoke about the shock that everyone else had experienced, not just about the difficulty of finishing the game and his concern for Eriksen's health, but also about the shock that everyone else had experienced.
He told the Guardian that he starts to think about his family when he starts to think about his girlfriend. I told them how we were feeling after hearing about the incident with Eriksen. It can be traumatic to see it up close and watch it on TV. I hope the people who need it get the help they need.
Greuther Frth was a small club in northern Bavaria. Henry II, the 15th emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, wrote about Frth in 1001. The club won three German titles in a row.
The German soccer landscape was thrown into disarray by the rise of Hitler and World War II. Before the war ended, everything had been built up. Greuther Frth didn't make it back to the first division until 2012 after being demoted the year before.
Greuther Frth placed third in the German second division. The final spot in the first division the following year was earned with a two-game playoff with the 16th place team from the first division. The first match ended in a draw. The second game ended in a tie and the match was in Frth. The result of the tiebreaking was away goals, so the result kept Hamburger in the top flight. Greuther Frth's season ended in failure and no one outside of Nrnberg cared. That's what he thought.
The people at Midtjylland paid attention. Greuther Frth were thought to be better than the third-best team in the German second division by Matthew Benham's in-house model. It saw them as similar to a lower level side.
There was enough cross-pollination between countries that the model could make estimates of the club's confidence in the competition. They decided to go for another jump. The club wanted to acquire a central player, and they saw that Sparv played more minutes than any other central player, and they thought he was better.
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"They were looking for a player who could play in the middle of the field." They felt like they could find some gems in the league because it was under-valued. Back then, we were doing well. I was doing well. When I was a member of the team, we were winning more than when I wasn't playing.
That's it.
There is a type of player who is more valuable than others because of their position or role in the game. A quarterback is more valuable than a punt in football. Wing players who can create their own shots are more valuable than big men.
Baseball has this all figured out. The biggest boost is given to catchers in WAR calculations. The second basemen, third basemen, and center fielders all get positive feedback. Corner outfielders, first basemen, and designated hitters all suffer because of the ease of occupying those roles.
The Chief Intelligence Officer at the Twenty First Group wondered if the same idea should apply to soccer. It is easy. The players who can score and create goals should have an advantage over the other players on the field. Execution in the final third requires a higher degree of precision than any other part of the field.
It goes against soccer lore. The best youth players play in the middle of the field because they touch the ball the most. The man who pulls the strings is his favorite position. There is a theory that says that the best managers are those who are aware of everything on the field.
The theory is still valid despite the fact that the most successful coach of the 21st century was a defensive player. The best quotes are usually given by Midfielders. I'm always on the lookout. Xavi told the Guardian that it would be all day. What's here? It is not possible to say yes. Do you mean there? It is not possible to say yes. People who don't play don't realize how hard it is. It's called space, space, space. It's similar to being on the Sony console. The defender should play it there. I saw the space and moved on. I do that.
I have struggled to come to terms with the idea. My ability to get out of pressure, receive passes away from the pressure, and make the pass before the pass that leads to a shot are some of the things I pride myself on. I enjoy watching an elegant center mid, gliding through traffic and playing pass after pass, just a microsecond before the 21 other players even realize its possibility. When I shut off my romantic brain and try to dial into sporting efficiency, I'm left with the nagging possibility of this: Sure, it might be hard and it might look cool, but players are secondary actors. They are too close to the goal.
The better players should be playing in more dangerous areas. The market usually agrees with this idea. Barcelona's Frenkie de Jong and Real Madrid's Aurelien Tchouameni are two of the most expensive players in the world. According to Chaudhuri, the idea is verified by coaches as well.
It seems like coaches agree with our hypothesis even if you only look at the way players are selected. When attacking players move to better clubs, they tend to move back on the field. The best example of this is Victor Moses, who was a winger for a number of mid-table clubs and then became a starter for Chelsea when they won the premier league in 2016-17, only after he started playing as a wing defender Chaudhuri said that playing a more defensive role made sense because he would maximize his earnings at the club.
I told Chaudhuri that it might be a data issue. It's possible that we don't have a good way to measure how much of an effect attackers have on a team. "I think there are things we don't quantify in the middle of the field," he said, "but I'm not sure if we could quantify them."
That's it.
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Midtjylland decided to simplify things rather than try to solve the mystery of the position. Greuther Frth were good. Tim plays for Greuther Frth. Tim must be doing things to make Greuther Frth a great team.
The day before the World Cup began, Midtjylland purchased Sparv from Greuther Frth. Statistics for me back then were goals, assists, possession and things like that. I didn't know what they were talking about. The approach is very inspiring.
It was clear that it was the right decision for both sides. Midtjylland won their first title in the country. In his second season, he played every minute of the team's eight Europa League matches, and in February of 2016 he captained the team to a famous victory against Manchester United.
He played more than 10,000 minutes and appeared in 140 games during his time in the country. He was signed for no reason other than that he makes his team more likely to win. It's difficult to argue against the results. Midtjylland won the league title in three of the six seasons Tim was there.
The way Midtjylland tried to measure everything caught the attention of the man. Most of the other people in this book have entered soccer from the outside, beyond the confines of traditional thought. If a team signs you from out of nowhere and they tell you it's because of the statistics, then you're more likely to listen.
He said that in meetings we could see how we'd been performing. It wasn't just a coach's opinion. We had seen the tape from the previous game. Statistics were also included in the message. That was cool to me. I thought it was a good way of making their message clear. The objective factor was also what we were seeing with our eyes.
Most of the data was hidden from the players. Deeper data was available for the players who wanted it. The numbers just told the players what to do. Don't shoot from there, that's the most important thing.
He said that they started talking about taking shots from good positions instead of shooting from range. If your teammate is in a better position, the chances of scoring go up. The chart we were shown showed where the goals were scored. When players went out to train, they had a picture in their heads.
"Maybe someone at the edge of the corner of the box is trying to take a shot and then he gets this image in his head, "No, oh yeah, this is stupid shooting from here." I'm going to try and get a pass. When I saw it, I thought. When I watch TV, I always think to myself, "That is not how we score." I love long-range efforts that end up with a goal. It doesn't make sense to have a sweeter goal.
There is a type of player who sacrifice their personal success for the sake of the team: players who do the things that make their team more likely to win. You will hear an announcement at a loss for words. He's a victor. This is an indictment of what we are counting.
We're counting the wrong things if a player is better off doing things that aren't counted. A way to quantify a player's true contribution to winning is what the people who are using analytical thinking in the right way are looking for. When I asked how he assesses his performance, he gave the same kind of answer you get from athletes.
He said he wasn't worried about having good statistics after the game. Even if my team won, and I had a bad game, I was still disappointed. My mood is the same as the team's, if we win. I would be sad if we lost. I don't pay attention to my personal statistics. It is more about how we are progressing as a team.
This was one of the reasons he was signed by the most successful soccer club on the planet. He's probably playing well if the team is playing well and he's playing a lot of minutes. All of it is still very theoretical. Is there a way to find out what makes his teams better? Maybe in the future we'll be able to measure a person's organizational skills or someone's communication skills.
Ryan O'Hanlon wrote NET GAINS: Inside the Beautiful Game'sAnalytics Revolution. Ryan O'Hanlon has the rights to this work All rights belong to the person.
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