I’m always on the lookout for new ways to visualize data in the hopes that it might lead to a better understanding of the data. In the first leg of the tie between Real Salt Lake and Seattle Sounders FC, the Sounders midfield was completely MIA for large portions of the game while RSL enjoyed large periods of maintaining possession. I wanted to come up with a generic way to visualize similar situations. I decided to use a stacked time series, broken down by position. In the examples below I looked at completed passes by position. Any metric could be used and you could also use different variables to slice the data. Another thing to look at could be which third of the pitch the event occurs in. I like the idea of the stacked time series because it allows you to look at the team total as well as some finer detail at the same time.
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Visualizing Completed Passes by Position
Statistical Breakdown of Real Salt Lake – Seattle Sounders
It was rough being a Sounder’s fan last night. Amidst discussions of a CONCACAF Champions League curse, playing at altitude and missing one of their best players of the season in Mauro Rosales, the Sounders had a tough playoff matchup against Real Salt Lake. While most fans would have been surprised if the Sounders had come away with a first leg lead, going down 3-0 was a bit of a shock. Not only did they concede 3 goals for only the third time all season, but they just looked awful. Using Opta’s chalkboards, let’s take a look at what went wrong.
If you chat with me about the statistical analysis of soccer, one of the first phrases out of my mouth is probably “I hate passing percentage”. I still do (because often the numbers are quoted without context and used to “prove” one team is superior to another), but I am going to use some passing stats here to illustrate some points.
Passing Momentum
Total Attempted Passes for each team over time
For the first 30 minutes, Seattle clearly struggled to control the ball and allowed Real Salt Lake to maintain possession and pass the ball around. Why is this important? Seattle is a team that has been competing in 3 tournaments and is playing at altitude that it isn’t accustomed to. Chasing the ball for 30 minutes to start the game is sure to be taxing on already tired legs. It wasn’t until around the75th minute that Seattle started to see a sustained advantage in passes completed, however, that wasn’t so much because of their improved play but because RSL shut it down and tried to protect their two goal lead.
Total Attempted Passes in the final third
Looking at passes just in the final third, again Seattle was the inferior team, failing to get much penetration early on while having to absorb lots of pressure from Real Salt Lake. Seattle had some opportunities towards the end of the first half, but failed to capitalize. Towards the end of the match, Seattle was again getting opportunities in the final third, but their inability to complete a pass really let them down.
Passing Distance
Distribution of passing distances for Seattle Sounders and Real Salt Lake
Why did Seattle have such a hard time completing passes? Whether it was that Real Salt Lake did a good job of closing down the passing channels or Seattle failing to move off the ball and provide options for their teammates is hard to say without going back and rewatching (something I can’t stomach). What is apparent, is that Seattle had to revert to attempting much longer passes than Real Salt Lake. The above graph shows the quartiles of attempted pass distances for each team in 15 minute increments. Throughout the game, but in particular early on, Seattle’s passes were much longer than Real Salt Lake’s. Seattle definitely struggled playing out of the back, with defenders often trying to play the ball down field to alleviate pressure, but failing to connect with a teammate.
Passing Out of the Back
Passing completion in the defensive third. Weight of the line is the average distance of the passes.
There’s a lot going on in the graph above, but basically for the defensive third it shows passing completion and the average distance of complete/incomplete passes. Seattle’s passing completion out of the back is very low with the incomplete passes tending to be much longer than the completed passes.
Midfield Battle
Pass selection for Seattle midfielders
Pass selection for Real Salt Lake midfield
Not surprisingly, RSL’s midfielders were able to complete a high number of short passes while Seattle’s midfield attempted longer passes with little success. Of particular note is that there were long stretches of time where Alvaro Fernandez, Brad Evans and Lamar Neagle failed to complete a pass (hard to tell in the graph, but if there isn’t a dot on the line, there is no pass attempted for that time period and the software just connects points where there where there was data. It’s not just that the Sounders midfield didn’t complete as many passes as Real Salt Lake, it’s that they didn’t see enough of the ball.
Shots
Shot Distances by Type of Shot
While Seattle only managed 5 Shots On Target, they were pretty even with Real Salt Lake in terms of shots taken from 18 yards or less. RSL’s dominance in Shots On Target comes mostly from long distance shots. Seattle was a little unlucky with the goals they conceded and had they been a little more clinical, the scoreline could have been a little more favorable. I like that Seattle was selective in the shots they took and waited for good opportunities while (for the most part) restricting RSL to shooting from the outside.
Summary
The passing stats for the Sounders are atrocious. They allowed Real Salt Lake to dominate possession early on, causing themselves to chase the ball and wear themselves out. Long passes out of the back caused them to bypass the midfield and more often than not return the ball back to Real Salt Lake. Seattle was able to absorb a lot of the RSL pressure and keep them shooting from the outside. The abscence of the two first-choice center backs for RSL plus the possible return of Mauro Rosales bodes well for Seattle. The Sounders are no strangers to scoring three but will find it tough since Real Salt Lake can put 11 behind the ball and protect their 3 goal lead.
The Curse of CONCACAF Champions League and Squad Management
During tonight’s MLS Playoff match between the New York Red Bulls and FC Dallas, the “Curse of CONCACAF Champions League” was brought up. FC Dallas has had to play more matches than NYRB this season and came into the match looking a bit fatigued. Since the CONCACAF version isn’t as lucrative as the European version, it is getting the reputation as being a drain on teams. This begs the question, are teams that participate in the Concachampions at a disadvantage when it comes to the MLS playoffs? A Beautiful Numbers Game has a post on the correlation between factors that contribute to winning play-off series. Not surprisingly, number of matches played is important. What hasn’t been discussed is how manager’s deal with squad rotations and what effect does that play on success. Major League Soccer is a parity league, so unlike in Europe where more successful teams can go out and buy new players if they qualify for additional tournaments, MLS teams have similar resources. There is some unknown quantity of allocation money that teams get when they qualify for CCL, but the number of roster spots is fixed. Are teams using their resources differently?
Can You Win in MLS without a Big Man?
Major League Soccer has a reputation for being a tough, physical league. What it lacks in talent and technique it makes up for with speed and strength. Often heard in discussions of the league is the belief that teams need a target forward to win — someone to launch crosses at, get physical with center backs and hopefully score off of set pieces. Conor Casey, Kenny Cooper, Nate Jaqua — these are the types of players that allegedly lead to success. The question is, do these types of players help teams win?
Comparing the Top 100 Salaries from MLS and Europe
I recently added an interactive graph of MLS salary info to the site but I haven’t done much with the data since then. With the summer transfer window opening and fans debating whether or not it is worth it for their MLS club to import expensive Designated Players, I decided to take a look at how the top earners in MLS compare to their European counterparts. 
- David Beckham, Thierry Henry and Rafael Marquez still earn a salary that would be competitive with the biggest stars in Europe.
- Only 7 players in MLS earn more than $1million a season, while the majority of the top 100 earn $250,000 or less.
- Cristiano Ronaldo earns roughly $340,000 a week, which is more than all but 21 MLS players earn in an entire season.
- David Beckham earns $250,000 in two weeks, more than all but 38 MLS players earn in an entire season,
Not surprisingly, European players earn considerably more than their MLS counterparts (excluding Beckham, Henry and Marquez). When you compare the weekly wage of a European player with the annual wage of an MLS player, parity starts to emerge.
The top 100 European salaries can be found at Futebol Finance and the top MLS Salaries can be found at MLS Players Union.
Do you think MLS clubs are smart to shell out that sort of cash for veterans like Beckham and Henry or do you think the money is better spent elsewhere? Does wage disparity cause problems within the club?
Good or Lucky? Evaluating MLS’s Top Managers
There’s been discussion on some of the Sounders FC boards lately about whether or not Sigi Schmid should be fired. One of the common defenses that comes up is that he’s won 2 MLS Cups so therefore he is a good manager. The question is, in a league based on parity with a playoff system that almost everyone qualifies for, how hard is it to win an MLS Cup? Is Sigi Schmid, or other top MLS managers, statistically different from the rest of the league?
To answer these questions I looked at both playoff and regular season performance of Sigi Schmid, Bruce Arena, Frank Yallop, Dominic Kinnear, and Steve Nicol. All of these guys have won the MLS Coach of the Year award, coached in the league for more than 8 seasons and, with the exception of Steve Nicol, who has lost the cup final a remarkable 4 times, won multiple MLS Cups. They are the best that MLS has to offer.
MLS Defensive Production Week 7
Similar to the graph showing the offensive production of teams, this graph shows their defensive production. I’ve reversed the direction of the axes so that the upper right quadrant in both graphs is the preferred location for teams. A key difference between the two is that I haven’t generated a model to determine estimated points based on defensive production, so both color and bubble size indicate a team’s actual points. Again, we see the top teams congregating in the upper right corner and Toronto seems to be the only team that is somewhat out of place based on the number of points they’ve earned so far this season. NY and Philadelphia have both had their offenses stuttering this season but they’ve been able to pick up points thanks to their ability to keep clean sheets in most matches.
An interesting match up this week is DC United hosting the Seattle Sounders. Seattle is second in the league in Shots Per Game while DC has the worst opposing conversion rate. New York recently put 4 past DC (including this nice one from Juan Agudelo). Can Seattle do something similar?
MLS Offensive Production Week 7
Most teams have now played 7 matches and should be settling into what their offensive production will look like for the rest of the season. What is odd is that there are very few teams in the magic quadrant. Previously we had seen the best teams in the upper right quadrant, but currently only Sporting KC is firmly established there, with Chicago, Vancouver and the NY Red Bulls on the border. Is this going to be a season of extreme parity in MLS? 
The Timing of Cards Across Leagues
This weekend saw MLS lose two of its most talented players to broken legs that were the results of two awful challenges. As someone who watches a lot of Arsenal matches, this is an all too familiar story. My initial reaction was that the refs let too much go both in the EPL and MLS. In MLS I’ve seen players get away with some awful tackles without a booking and often times without a foul even being called. Contrast this with La Liga where the slightest bit of contact will draw a foul, to the point where the game becomes agonizingly slow because of the constant whistles. I wanted to look at the timing of cards across the major European Leagues and MLS to see if there were any obvious patterns. I was expecting to see noticeably lower cards in MLS compared to other leagues as well as fewer cards handed out in MLS early on in the match due to refs letting things go in lieu of taking control of the match.
MLS Draft Social Graph
Previously we’ve looked at which teams tend to do well in the MLS Superdraft so I thought it would be fun to look at the relation between managers and the universities that are developing the players. I’m using percentage minutes played as a proxy for the quality of the draft pick. I’ve restricted the data to draft picks from the first two rounds from the last 5 years. There isn’t enough data yet for the 2011 season (rookies tend to see more playing time later in the season) so I have excluded that from the set. Also, to facilitate displaying the graph, I’ve restricted the set down to the current set of managers, not all of whom have draft picks from the first two rounds prior to 2011. I used to previous linear regression to set a baseline for whether or not a draft pick is under-performing based on their selection number. The color and size of the nodes indicates on average if draft picks for that entity under or over perform (red=under, white=average, blue=over perform). The color and size of the edge represents a single draft pick (for example, the thick line between Hans Backe and St. Louis University is Tim Ream).
