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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Archive for Seattle Sounders
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.
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 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).
Does Offensive Production Win Games
A few months ago I wrote about Offensive Production and the difference between creating chances and finishing. Friday night I saw one of the worst examples of finishing I’ve ever seen when I went to see Seattle Sounders-Houston Dynamo which got me thinking if I could build a model that uses offensive production to predict the number of points a team earns in a season.
Are the Seattle Sounders and Groupon a Good Fit?
Today’s Groupon deal in Seattle was a ticket to Friday’s game against the Houston Dynamo for $16 — a $21 savings off the $37 face value. Over the first two seasons that the Sounders have been in MLS, they have smashed all sorts of attendance records for the league and sold out every game, so this deal was a bit of a surprise to me. Other MLS teams have used Groupon to sell tickets, but they usually have loads of extra ticket inventory, a situation the Sounders haven’t found themselves in until now. Although large companies like The Gap and Amazon have used Groupon or other similar services to promote themselves, usually it is used by small companies looking to bring in new business. So does using Groupon make sense for the Sounders?
On the MLS Draft — Top Ten Picks
Here’s part 1 and part 2 of our series on analyzing what a team can expect given a certain pick in the draft. So far we’ve looked at picks 11-20 and 21+ so now it’s time to take a look at the cream of the crop.
Here’s what we found:
- Only 10% of players never started a game in MLS
- 16% of the class are no longer in the league. Of that, half moved on to play in Europe.
- 42% of picks were starters in their first season, with a further 22% growing into starters.
- Expected starts are 12.09 per season
So how does the Top Ten compare to the rest of the draft picks? Here’s a look at how our three segments compare to each other:
Not surprising, the top ten picks do extremely well in MLS. Up next is a look at the tradeoffs of combining picks to move up in the draft. Stay tuned…
On the MLS Draft — Picks 11-20
Previously we looked at what the Sounders could do with their 2nd round picks by examining picks greater than 21 from the last 5 years. You can find the results here. That gives us a good idea of what the Sounders could get if they keep all 3 picks, but not what they could get if they trade for higher spots in the draft. Today we’ll be looking at spots 11-20 in the draft. The Sounders currently have the 11th pick.
For picks 11-20 in the last 5 years:
- 32% have not started a game in MLS. However, unlike spots 21+, some of these guys drafted in 2009 and 2010 are still with the league and could see time this season
- 48% are no longer with the league, however, that figure includes Jozy Altidore who was sold to Villarreal and Dominic Cervi who opted for Europe instead of playing in MLS
- 26% see an increase in games started and “grow” into starters, 42% are starters for at least a season
- 2009 was the best performing class, in stark contrast to their performance in spots 21+
- All classes except 2006 saw growth year over year. 2006 was flat due to most players not surviving in the league for 5 years
- Expected starts is 6.80 games per season
If the Sounders were to trade all 3 of their second round picks for a pick in the 11-20 range, they would have a slightly better chance of getting a starter, but they also increase the probability that their pick will never play in MLS. The shotgun blast approach to the draft is akin to diversifying an investment portfolio and mitigating risk. However, there are other concerns such as roster size and salary cap that make diversification a less appealing strategy. In a later post we’ll look at different draft strategies to see which is the optimal approach the Sounders should take with their picks.
On the MLS Draft — Late Draft Picks
In a previous post, I examined the overall trends of the last 5 years of the MLS Superdraft and created a linear regression to estimate the expected number of minutes played a given draft selection would contribute. This worked reasonably well, but it didn’t tell you much about player growth. There is a myth that even though the later picks don’t contribute right away, a lot of them can grow into starters. Given that the Seattle Sounders currently hold the 21st, 27th and 29th picks of the 2011 MLS Super Draft, I decided to take a deeper look at 2nd round picks from spot 21 and lower to see how likely it is that the Sounders can find someone who can grow into a starter.
In order to normalize across the different drafts, I decided to look at the data based on number of years in the league, where t=1 is their rookie season, t=2 is their second season and so forth. What I found was:
- The expected number of games started for a player is 5.63 per season
- 52.5% of players never start a game in MLS and are out of the league within 3 years
- Of all the seasons played by all the players, only 19% of them had 15 or more games started (majority of games given MLS’s 30 game season)
- Players either contribute in their first season, or don’t contribute at all. Only 10% of the picks increased their number of games started over the 5 years. Those players are Corey Ashe, Marc Burch, Andrew Jacobson and Peter Lowry.
- On average, year over year growth is flat or negative across the draftees, with the exception of 2008
- Much like the 2011 draft class, the 2009 draft class was regarded as being loaded with talent, yet that talent doesn’t seem to be evenly distributed. The late 2nd round picks from 2009 performed the worst out of the last 5 years and only two players started games (5 and 3 games). Those same two players are also the only ones who are still under contract with the league.
Given the information above, if the Sounders were to keep their picks there is
- 14.5% chance that none of their 3 picks ever start a game in MLS
- 38.8% chance that at least one of their picks becomes a starter
- 46.7% chance that they end up with several role players
38.8% of drafting a starter might sound like decent odds, but the question is, can the Sounders improve those odds by trading up? Stay tuned as we take a look at the draft odds for spots 1-10 and 11-20. In the meantime, take a look at our previous draft posts.
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