Yesterday I wrote a piece about Max Kruse’s transfer, which to me encompasses the entire reason why player analytics are important. In that piece, I was harsh on basically every major team in football, mostly for comic effect. I still find it a bit ridiculous that Kruse was bought so cheaply when the statistical case is obvious (well done, Gladbach), but mostly I wanted to show that when people like Arsene Wenger say there are no more values to be found on the market, they are either lying to you or are wrong.
Crowdsourcing Historic Some Player Ratings – Need Your Help
I need to crowdsource something. In general I am trying to get the correct historic perspective on some older players.
Rate the players coming up from 1-5.
5=World Class, starter on a top CL team.
4=Very good.
3=League Regular
2=Backup in a major league
1=Lower League talent only
Examples:
Messi is a 5 (and would be higher if the scale went there).
Frank Lampard is a 5
Robert Pires is a 5.
Nani is a 4 .
Gareth Barry is a 4.
Damien Duff is a 3.
Now give me your ratings for the following:
Brett Emerton.
Muzzy Izzet.
Morten Gamst Pedersen.
David Bentley.
Carlton Cole
Stephane Sessegnon
Sal Kalou
Thomas Hitzsperger
Jermaine Pennant
Steed Malbranque
Nobby Solano
Eyal Berkovic
Geremi
Wayne Routledge
Simon Davies
Danny Murphy
El-Hadji Diouf
Opening the Door to Player Analytics in Football or The Max Kruse Problem
Scene: The board room of one of the top football clubs in England. The club Owner and Director of Football are sitting down to do an end of season recap.
The director’s assistant knocks on the door.
PA: Excuse me sir, there’s a package for you. It’s marked urgent.
DoF: Thank you, Anne.
The director opens the package. It contains a photo and four pieces of paper.
Owner: Who’s that in the photo?
DoF: Some guy named Max Kruse.
Slivers In M14: What The Fuck Is This Fucking Shit?
by Guess Who!
“[Giger] mandated that the creature have no eyes, because he felt that it made them much more frightening if you could not tell they were looking at you.“ - Alien Evolution, Alien Quadrilogy Box Set
“The Newborn’s eyes and nose were added to improve its expressions to make it a character, rather than just a “killing machine”, and give it depth as a character.” - Unnatural Mutation – Creature Design, Alien Quadrilogy, 2003, 20th Century Fox
So, now this is happening.
Did Mourinho Fail at Real Madrid?
In case you missed it, yesterday Richard Whittall had a mindblowing conversation with Raphael Honigstein, Gabriel Marcotti, and Miguel Delaney about Mourinho’s Real Madrid legacy, the bulk of which can be found here. This prompted me to spend some time considering what we should have expected from Jose’s Madrid reign from a statistical perspective. Given Jose’s past performance and/or the recent performance of the best managers in the world, what sort of expectations would have been “fair”?
Let me start by saying that those guys are all outstanding journalists. They are part of a very small group of writers whose work I read every week because it is both valuable and because I enjoy the experience. That said, some of their tweets show such a dramatic lack of perspective that I was shocked. If you can’t count on great journalists to have realistic football expectations, what hope can we possibly have for normal, everyday fans?
First let’s take a look at Mourinho’s past performance, starting since he left Porto. How does Mourinho typically perform in isolation when he takes over a new team?
| Team | League | Cup | CL | |
| Year 1 | Chelsea | Win | 5R | SF |
| Year 2 | Chelsea | Win | SF | R16 |
| Year 3 | Chelsea | RU | Win | SF |
| Year 1 | Inter | Win | SF | R16 |
| Year 2 | Inter | Win | Win | Win |
| Year 1 | Real Madrid | RU | Win | SF |
| Year 2 | Real Madrid | Win | QF | SF |
| Year 3 | Real Madrid | RU | Win? | SF |
So historically you can expect Jose’s teams to always make it out of the Champions’ League group stage, and usually to the semifinal. Before Madrid, he was winning the league nearly every season, and taking home domestic cups about every other year.
Madrid’s league performance under Jose is a win below his personal standards. If they win the Copa del Rey this year, two wins in three years would be slightly above expectations, and three CL semifinals in a row is basically exactly as expected.
Honigstein: What were they up against? One team, that’s all.
I’m pretty sure Raph was talking about La Liga here, so let’s run with that. Assuming we buy his logic, it kind of helps to know that the “one team” in this case is the one that was widely dubbed as the greatest team of the modern era – Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona. This is part of that key perspective thing I mentioned above. It’s not just one team, it’s the team. Either Barcelona were absolutely amazing like everyone generally agrees, or Honigstein is out on a limb here saying they weren’t. If they were amazing, then give Jose credit for beating them in year 2? This year, Real let off the gas early and haven’t been as good as they were the first two years, and Barcelona ran away with things. It happens, even to the best managers.
The first year where Mourinho and Madrid finished second? They did it with 92 points. A points total that would have demolished the league every single year for a decade before Guardiola started managing Barcelona. So yes, not winning La Liga in two of the three years is slightly below Mourinho’s historic performance, but what they were up against does matter.
[Note: Mourinho deserves credit for finally solving Barcelona. His teams haven’t lost to Barce in a competitive match in 18 months and likely provided the blueprint for Bayern’s domination as well.]
Now take a look at the three teams Madrid lost to in the Champions League (all semifinals).
Year 1: Barcelona
Year 2: Bayern Munich on penalties
Year 3: Borussia Dortmund
Miguel Delaney: Real define themselves by the European Cup. Simple as that. He’s had three awful semis.
So they lost to eventual champions Barcelona year 1, when Barce were at their peak, losing 2-0 at home and then drawing at the Camp Nou. The second year, Madrid lost to Bayern on penalties. Honestly, that doesn’t seem awful. Talk all you want about bottle and mental toughness and whatever, penalties are a crap shoot every single time. Well, except maybe when England are involved.
In this year’s Champions’ League, it’s fair to say Klopp totally dominated him from a coaching perspective. And yet if Madrid manage to convert one more of the many, many great chances they created at home, they would go through to the Final almost despite themselves. Dortmund deserved to win that matchup, but they very nearly didn’t.
So maybe we can nod toward Miguel and call it two awful semis, plus one pretty good one against the team everyone is already calling “the next Barcelona.” During that time, the best club team ever had the same number of semifinals appearances(3) and won the CL trophy once. They also lost to Bayern Munich 7-0 on aggregate. When it comes to perception, however, a win changes everything.
Honigstein: Is this year’s Barca the best team ever and thus untouchable in the league for RM? Were Dortmund & Bayern impossible to beat as well? But at least he failed playing great football. Oh, hold on…
Marcotti: But he also finished way behind, failed to beat other teams in La Liga as often as Barca did and, most of all, generally played pretty uninspired football (with some exceptions). Fair to expect more, no?
Here’s the thing I really don’t get about that whole conversation… how can you possibly think Real failed to play great football? In what world is that the case? Jose didn’t rock up to Madrid and make them play hoof ball when I wasn’t looking, did he? Well, no. Maybe they are thinking historical Mourinho teams and judging by that. Chelsea and Inter both had a habit of getting the lead, then holding the ball and simply squeezing the life out of the game. Effective stuff, but not very pretty. That’s not what Mourinho’s Madrid did. I watch a lot of Real Madrid matches due to my work, and they were scintillating. It’s not tiki-taka – Madrid played a more traditional style than Barcelona – but it was beautiful nonetheless.
Under Mourinho, Real Madrid destroyed opponents. They scored tons of goals! Fine, they didn’t have possession of the ball more than 60% of the time like Barcelona, but who cares? Seriously, look at the numbers!
|
2011 |
Team | GF | GA | GD | Pts |
|
1 |
Barcelona |
95 |
21 |
74 |
96 |
|
2 |
Real Madrid |
102 |
33 |
69 |
92 |
|
2012 |
|||||
|
1 |
Real Madrid |
121 |
32 |
89 |
100 |
|
2 |
Barcelona |
114 |
29 |
85 |
91 |
|
2013 |
|||||
|
1 |
Barcelona |
101 |
35 |
66 |
85 |
|
2 |
Real Madrid |
85 |
31 |
54 |
74 |
| Totals | |||||
| Barcelona |
310 |
85 |
225 |
||
| Real Madrid |
308 |
96 |
212 |
310 goals in the league vs. 308 over three seasons!
Maybe at this point you are sick of numbers, so let’s look beyond them for a moment…
Ignore Ronaldo’s Michael-Flatley-Meets-Football magic – if you don’t find what Ozil and Alonso do on a weekly basis aesthetically pleasing football, the problem is with your definition, not with how they play.
The Greatest Managers In the World…
Who are they? Who can you compare Jose to and see if he is failing? Alex Ferguson. Guardiola. Klopp? Heynckes? Wenger? Absolutely no one in Italy any more? (Okay, maybe Conte, but the suspension throws off any potential analysis.)
Pep is hard to compare because he’s only had the four years, but his four years were probably the greatest run of all time. It amuses me that he could match that when he takes over Bayern next year, but the truth of the matter is that they didn’t really need him – they’ve already been in three finals over the last five years. At that point will Bayern be winning because of Pep or will Pep be winning because of what he took over at Bayern? [It doesn’t matter, because everyone will be super happy if they just win all the trophies.]
Klopp is tough too but he’s undeniably great, having won the Bundesliga two of the last three years, and now hitting the Finals of the CL. That said, Dortmund finished last in their CL group last season, coming behind Arsenal, Marseille, and Olympiakos. I am a huge fan, but it’s too early in his career to really compare.
Heynckes. Three total Bundesliga trophies in a long managerial career. A CL win with Real Madrid of all places, but he was fired for not succeeding there in the league. A CL final with Bayern last year and possibly another CL trophy with Bayern coming up. You’d gladly take him as a manager, but his career has had a ton of peaks and valleys.
Wenger has been mired in the Arsenal financial morass for eight years now. Eight years ago, he would have compared very favourably. Now? Does 4th count as a trophy?
Fergie might be the greatest manager I have ever seen. In the last twenty years, Fergie has made the semifinals of the Champions League seven times, winning twice and finishing runner up twice. In the last eight years (the same period as Mourinho above), he’s won the league five times.
And what of Jose? Europa League and Champions League titles with Porto (which may forever boggle the mind). In the eight years since, he has five league titles across England, Italy, and Spain. His Spanish title came at the expense of Pep’s Barcelona. Six more Champions League semifinals in those eight years, and one win. He basically has the same Champions League resume as Fergie in half the time. Paisley is the only manager ever to have more European titles, and Jose still has a chance to tie and surpass him.
At the end of the day, no one is doing better than Jose, except maybe Guardiola, while Fergie is at the same level. You can’t even make the vaguest argument that anyone else is close. Even in the three years at Madrid, with only one league win, two (probable) cup wins, and three straight CL semifinals, he’s performing as well as any of his compatriots, all of whom are regarded as the greatest football managers in the world.
Maybe it’s not Jose’s performance that’s the problem, it’s the superhuman expectations that everyone – even some of the brightest journalists in the world – seem to place on him.
He’s not Superman.
He’s only the Special One.
Corrections: This blog originally stated it was Shankly that had the most wins in Europe, it was Paisley. It also had the locations of the scores for the semifinal against Barcelona switched.
Introduction to Soccer Analytics – The Guys I Follow
The soccer analytics community is currently growing by leaps and bounds, which means that there’s new information being processed almost every single day. It also means that there are tons of new people interested in the topic, and figuring out who to read or where to go can be a bit daunting at first.
Initially I wanted to synthesize the current literature and add links to all of the major work thus far in one spot. Unfortunately things are moving so fast right now (most topics are very much in the discovery phase), that instead I think it’s probably easier and more useful to provide a short profile of people I have found to be interesting and valuable in my exploration of the topic. Consider this sort of a Follow Friday outside of 140 characters for anyone who is interested in getting up to speed on soccer analytics.
The Most Dominant Team in Europe 2012-2013
Who is the most dominant team in Europe this season?
Schweini knows…
If you said Barcelona, you have been brainwashed by popular opinion and past success. By just about any statistical measure, Bayern Munich are the best team in Europe this year. They have a higher goal differential than Barcelona (75 vs. 66), shoot more times a game than Barcelona (17.4 vs. 13.8), allow fewer shots per game than Barcelona (8.2 vs 9.5), and have the lowest goals per game against average (.46) of any team in Europe. The only area Barcelona pip Bayern is in how many goals they average per game, with Barcelona scoring 3.09 and Bayern driving home 2.96 per game.
This is all true before Pep Guardiola takes charge this summer, and before – as announced this morning – Mario Gotze transfers from Dortmund to Munich.
To recap, Bayern are the best (and deepest) team in Europe right now. They replaced their retiring manager (Jupp Heynckes) with the man who managed what is widely considered to be the best team in modern football, depriving all potential rivals of his services in the process. They just signed the best player from their closest league rivals for 37 million Euros. And not only are they FFP compliant, they allegedly have a mountain of cash for transfers Guardiola wants and keep making a profit.
Bayern destroyed a very good Juventus team 4-0 on aggregate. Barcelona drew with a very good PSG team 3-3 on aggregate, but went through on away goals. Yet even with a gimpy Leo Messi, Barcelona are still favoured to win the Champions League matchup between the two that starts tonight? Missing Kroos and Mandzukic for the first leg will hurt, but I’m still not sure that line makes sense.
Anyway, I wrote this just so that I could make a point that I think will hold true for the next 4-5 seasons of European football. At Bayern Munich, Pep Guardiola has a very strong chance of matching or eclipsing his incredible record with Barcelona.
Bayern Munich are that good right now, and they have more financial muscle and flexibility than anyone else in Europe to fill needs as they arise. They have as much talent as any other club in Europe, they are deeper than just about anybody, and they have an amazing academy. They also seem to have a ridiculous knack of finding talent for cheap prices (with Mandzukic and Dante the latest examples. Real Madrid bought Modric this past summer for £26.4M. Meanwhile, Bayern bought Mandzukic for £11.4M and Dante for £4.1M, both of whom slotted directly into their starting 11. Even Javi Martinez, who was outrageously expensive at £35M, seems to be worth every pound of his transfer fee.) Bayern’s revenues are also some of the best in Europe, and unlike the Spanish clubs or Manchester United, they have almost no debt.
Mark it down: Bayern are the team to beat right now and for the foreseeable future.
