7 ms·

Liverpool Football Club’s reliance on analytics

56 points by sbuk 7y ago

chrisseaton 7y ago
> The Liverpool Football Club’s reliance on analytics British sports team names are usually not written with a definite article like that. Maybe someone who knows more about grammar than me knows a proper term to describe why. Is it something to do with British English tending to treat companies, teams, etc as plurals rather than singulars ('Liverpool are' more often than 'Liverpool is')? Anyway, that 'the' shouldn't be there, and it isn't in the article.
- petercooper 7y ago
  Is it something to do with British English tending to treat companies, teams, etc as plurals rather than singulars Yes. Far more information than is perhaps healthy on this topic: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001874.html http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001874.h...
- dylan604 7y ago
  I loved the line from "The Good Shepard" when they ask why the article 'the' is never used when discussing CIA. Richard Hayes: I remember a Senator once asked me 'when we talk about CIA why we never use the word the in front of it.' And I asked him 'do you put the word the in front of God? [0] [0]https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Good_Shepherd_(film) https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Good_Shepherd_(film)
pbhjpbhj 7y ago
Meta: it's a weird use of "The" in the title, it's about "Liverpool Football Club" and the definite-article is unnecessary. Indeed the "The Liverpool Football Club" makes it wrong as Liverpool is one of two [major league] Liverpool based football clubs [Liverpool, Everton], at least. Being a pedant is annoying sometimes.
- chrxr 7y ago
  In the article itself, Liverpool are correctly referenced throughout, without "The".
- petercooper 7y ago
  I think this is a US/British English distinction, since saying "The New York Mets" or "The Dallas Cowboys" is the norm, but never "The Manchester United" or "The Rangers" (despite being a plural). Come to think of it, does any NFL team not end in a plural?
  - Benjammer 7y ago
    My favorite sports trivia question: Name the 7 NCAA FBS (Div 1 college football) teams whose name is not a plural and also does not contain a color (i.e. Crimson Tide doesn't count). Hint: Two of them are the same team name at different schools
    - eej71 7y ago
      Fighting Illini.
      - Benjammer 7y ago
        There's 1
    - heartbreak 7y ago
      Stanford Cardinal, Norte Dame Fighting Irish, Illinois Illini, Syracuse Orange, the two Wolf Pack (NC State and Nevada), and I cannot think of a seventh school. If I can’t use colors then I guess Syracuse doesn’t count.
      - smeyer 7y ago
        >Stanford Cardinal Stanford Cardinal is also a color.
      - 7y ago
petercooper 7y ago
My company's data analyst got his degree in soccer data analysis (and is a Liverpool fan!) It's been an interesting sector to learn about and ripe to learn from, too, as they seem to operate rather separately from what we might call "data science" here. Sport tech seems to be ripe for learning from and to cross over into more traditional tech scenarios.
- lukewrites 7y ago
  Where did he study for that?
NTDF9 7y ago
Anyone who's been watch European football for a decade knows how much disparity exists between teams that can afford data science and teams that can't. Sports are filled with numbers and any teams/players who can afford it has such a leg up, its not even a joke
- rchaud 7y ago
  There's much more at play than just analytics. Formations, club culture and coaching styles factor heavily into player performance. Manchester United for example have spent VERY heavily on new players since 2013, and the ROI has been awful almost across the board. They acquired Alexis Sanchez in 2017, who was joint top scorer in the 2016/17 season with 24 goals. At United, he has scored only 5 goals in 18 months. Chelsea FC are scoring one duck after another by signing Morata, Giroud and Higuain, all of whom have flopped as strikers despite doing well in their previous teams. Arsenal are an example of a team that uses analytics to suss out bargains in the transfer market. And yet, two of their most expensive analytics-driven signings, defender Shokrodan Mustafi and Granit Xhaka, have fared poorly while cheaper buys like Sokratis Papasthopulous have thrived.
  - hubridnoxx 7y ago
    How do you know that Mustafi and Xhaka were data-driven signings?
    - rchaud 7y ago
      From a 2016 article,. Quotes from a Premier League agent "This summer had a familiar feel in many respects as Arsenal faltered in the transfer window (...) yet it concluded with Granit Xhaka, Rob Holding, Skhodran Mustafi and Lucas Perez arriving for a combined fee approaching £90million. “Four years ago, they bought a company called StatDNA in Chicago,(..)They will take a player and collate data based on every pass, sprint, shot, assist, goal – you name it – he has ever made. These stats are fed into a computer that assesses strengths and weaknesses against every professional in the game before producing an overall value of that player. Arsenal tend to use statistics to raise questions or confirm observations on possible targets and sometimes unearth players for scouting. " https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/the-deal-arsene-wengers-moneyball-works-but-next-arsenal-boss-needs-super-agents-like-manchester-a3339776.html https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/the-deal-arsene-we...
guelo 7y ago
Soccer would be a much better sport if it didn't have such restrictive substitution rules. Freer substitution would open up a new dimension to the game and give coaches and data analysts more room to strategize both during the game and when hiring players.
- safog 7y ago
  It would then become American football where offense and defense get swapped out as soon as there's a possession change. No thank you. I like soccer just the way it is now.
  - jnordwick 7y ago
    Hockey manages to keep the action going while substituting half of the team at once. I think soccer could manage a couple guys at a time.
    - animal531 7y ago
      Rugby used to be the same with 3 subs, but these days you can pretty much sub half the team. It really destroys finding value in superior fitness, tactical planning of the starting side etc.
- sim0n 7y ago
  > Soccer would be a much better sport Very subjective. I personally think having a limited set of substitutions helps keep the game more interesting as every change can be hugely impactful to the team's tactics and the result of the game.
- gordon_freeman 7y ago
  Freer substitutions would ruin the game. I believe that restricting substitutions to just 3 forces the managers to strategize their gameplan (especially in the event of a reduced team size due to player(s) getting Red Card) and in turn make the game more interesting.
- TheRealWatson 7y ago
safog 7y ago
Are there any good soccer data collections (free / reasonably priced) for an individual programmer to build something like this?
- hubridnoxx 7y ago
  If I recall correctly, Opta is one (https://www.optasports.com/ https://www.optasports.com/), but I'm not sure if it reasonably priced.
- marconey 7y ago
  https://statsbomb.com/ https://statsbomb.com/
- gricardo99 7y ago
  Detailed per play/player stats involve quite a bit of effort to collect, and thus are not typically free. Sports stats in general is a fairly closely guarded and proprietary area. Here an interesting article about it from 2014: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-people-tracking-every-touch-pass-and-tackle-in-the-world-cup/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-people-tracking-eve... I have to assume computer vision will largely automate the process of collecting sports stats, even in real-time, if that hasn't already happened. For that I think you would need access (and licensing rights) to a quality video feed of the matches, different than what is broadcast for human consumption (i.e. shows the entire field of play the whole time).
  - lovemenot 7y ago
    Why not aggregate the uploaded videos from hundreds of fans? Sure it would very noisy, but synchronised feeds from many angles seems valuable.
  - bmiller2 7y ago
    It does exist: https://www.hudl.com/ https://www.hudl.com/ Lots of your local and state tax money for high school / university sports programs gets dumped into it
golemiprague 7y ago
This article is just fluff, there is almost no details about the actual stats they are measuring, the only info is about Keita and they say this is stuff that scouters could not see, I doubt it. Effective passing and opening the field for opportunities is something almost every soccer fan learn to identify easily. It's not without reason everybody adored Paul Scholes even though he was not such a big star like some of his team mates. At the end of the day it is all about money to buy good players and then a coach who know how to integrate the team, even too much tactics is not necessary when you got really good players. The intuition and skill component is much more important in soccer, the muscle memory and the vision, it's like being a quarterback, but without a play book combined with a basketball player dribbling skills and a safety ability to read where the ball is going to go to. All that in a continues game that doesn't stop. You can measure some of this stuff but the combination is too elusive. That's why people look at "aesthetics", in some way soccer is like art, when you see everything falling into place in a player you just know it, the same way you can identify something beautiful without measuring proportions and colours.
hijinks 7y ago
So I didn't read the article but 25 years ago I was part of a group of 100 15-17 year olds in the US recruited by Liverpool to see if we were good enough to go over seas to their academy to finish up school. So I've been following them ever since. What I remember reading in their 2nd game against Barcelona is the data team told the coaches about how Barcelona was slow to setup for set pieces mostly corner kicks. The ball boys are all academy players and the coaches told the ball boys on corner kicks to get the ball to the Liverpool player as quickly as possible. I believe it went as far as them having more ball boys then usually to just have 4 of them sit with a ball in each corner.
- OscarCunningham 7y ago
  That's an amazing level of attention-to-detail. Liverpool seem very interested in perfecting every aspect of the game. Another example is that they have the world's only throw-in coach. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/45405476 https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/45405476
  - NTDF9 7y ago
    This liverpool and Manchester City teams are setting the bar very high for what sports is going to be in the future. There is no way teams would go entire seasons with just one defeat (against each other) without paying attention to every tiny opportunities of success. Case in point, in preparation of next weeks champions league final, Liverpool are at a camp simulating Madrid weather and pitch surface. Even if they don't win, the knowledge they gain and the precision data they obtain for next season is crazy!
- save_ferris 7y ago
  Given that's exactly how Liverpool just beat Barcelona to reach the Champion's League Final, I believe it. https://youtu.be/4NhlXGMDNq4?t=250 https://youtu.be/4NhlXGMDNq4?t=250
actuator 7y ago
This season makes all these decisions look better in hindsight; but as mentioned in the article it didn't work at first. Liverpool tried to Moneyball their way into Top 4 and failed often. Classic examples being when they needed strength in positions like DM, CB or FB. They ended up going for players which made sense stat/pound. It led to LFC signing up players like Sakho or Moreno who had good stats for their value at that time but never worked out. Like in case of Sakho, he doesn't have the presence and leadership needed in the back and LFC needed it badly at that time.
Stay_frostJebel 7y ago
As a Liverpool supporter of almost 11 years (beginning from one of the clubs lowest points), I find this is absolutely fascinating. Curious to know how the research team was involved in the signing of Andy Robertson – perhaps the best value signing in recent memory.

56 points by sbuk 7y ago

> The Liverpool Football Club’s reliance on analytics British sports team names are usually not written with a definite article like that. Maybe someone who knows more about grammar than me knows a proper term to describe why. Is it something to do with British English tending to treat companies, teams, etc as plurals rather than singulars ('Liverpool are' more often than 'Liverpool is')? Anyway, that 'the' shouldn't be there, and it isn't in the article.

petercooper 7y ago
Is it something to do with British English tending to treat companies, teams, etc as plurals rather than singulars Yes. Far more information than is perhaps healthy on this topic: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001874.html http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001874.h...
dylan604 7y ago
I loved the line from "The Good Shepard" when they ask why the article 'the' is never used when discussing CIA. Richard Hayes: I remember a Senator once asked me 'when we talk about CIA why we never use the word the in front of it.' And I asked him 'do you put the word the in front of God? [0] [0]https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Good_Shepherd_(film) https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Good_Shepherd_(film)

pbhjpbhj 7y ago

Meta: it's a weird use of "The" in the title, it's about "Liverpool Football Club" and the definite-article is unnecessary. Indeed the "The Liverpool Football Club" makes it wrong as Liverpool is one of two [major league] Liverpool based football clubs [Liverpool, Everton], at least. Being a pedant is annoying sometimes.

chrxr 7y ago
In the article itself, Liverpool are correctly referenced throughout, without "The".
petercooper 7y ago
I think this is a US/British English distinction, since saying "The New York Mets" or "The Dallas Cowboys" is the norm, but never "The Manchester United" or "The Rangers" (despite being a plural). Come to think of it, does any NFL team not end in a plural?
- Benjammer 7y ago
  My favorite sports trivia question: Name the 7 NCAA FBS (Div 1 college football) teams whose name is not a plural and also does not contain a color (i.e. Crimson Tide doesn't count). Hint: Two of them are the same team name at different schools
  - eej71 7y ago
    Fighting Illini.
    - Benjammer 7y ago
      There's 1
  - heartbreak 7y ago
    Stanford Cardinal, Norte Dame Fighting Irish, Illinois Illini, Syracuse Orange, the two Wolf Pack (NC State and Nevada), and I cannot think of a seventh school. If I can’t use colors then I guess Syracuse doesn’t count.
    - smeyer 7y ago
      >Stanford Cardinal Stanford Cardinal is also a color.
    - 7y ago

petercooper 7y ago

My company's data analyst got his degree in soccer data analysis (and is a Liverpool fan!) It's been an interesting sector to learn about and ripe to learn from, too, as they seem to operate rather separately from what we might call "data science" here. Sport tech seems to be ripe for learning from and to cross over into more traditional tech scenarios.

lukewrites 7y ago
Where did he study for that?

NTDF9 7y ago

Anyone who's been watch European football for a decade knows how much disparity exists between teams that can afford data science and teams that can't. Sports are filled with numbers and any teams/players who can afford it has such a leg up, its not even a joke

rchaud 7y ago
There's much more at play than just analytics. Formations, club culture and coaching styles factor heavily into player performance. Manchester United for example have spent VERY heavily on new players since 2013, and the ROI has been awful almost across the board. They acquired Alexis Sanchez in 2017, who was joint top scorer in the 2016/17 season with 24 goals. At United, he has scored only 5 goals in 18 months. Chelsea FC are scoring one duck after another by signing Morata, Giroud and Higuain, all of whom have flopped as strikers despite doing well in their previous teams. Arsenal are an example of a team that uses analytics to suss out bargains in the transfer market. And yet, two of their most expensive analytics-driven signings, defender Shokrodan Mustafi and Granit Xhaka, have fared poorly while cheaper buys like Sokratis Papasthopulous have thrived.
- hubridnoxx 7y ago
  How do you know that Mustafi and Xhaka were data-driven signings?
  - rchaud 7y ago
    From a 2016 article,. Quotes from a Premier League agent "This summer had a familiar feel in many respects as Arsenal faltered in the transfer window (...) yet it concluded with Granit Xhaka, Rob Holding, Skhodran Mustafi and Lucas Perez arriving for a combined fee approaching £90million. “Four years ago, they bought a company called StatDNA in Chicago,(..)They will take a player and collate data based on every pass, sprint, shot, assist, goal – you name it – he has ever made. These stats are fed into a computer that assesses strengths and weaknesses against every professional in the game before producing an overall value of that player. Arsenal tend to use statistics to raise questions or confirm observations on possible targets and sometimes unearth players for scouting. " https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/the-deal-arsene-wengers-moneyball-works-but-next-arsenal-boss-needs-super-agents-like-manchester-a3339776.html https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/the-deal-arsene-we...

guelo 7y ago

Soccer would be a much better sport if it didn't have such restrictive substitution rules. Freer substitution would open up a new dimension to the game and give coaches and data analysts more room to strategize both during the game and when hiring players.

safog 7y ago
It would then become American football where offense and defense get swapped out as soon as there's a possession change. No thank you. I like soccer just the way it is now.
- jnordwick 7y ago
  Hockey manages to keep the action going while substituting half of the team at once. I think soccer could manage a couple guys at a time.
  - animal531 7y ago
    Rugby used to be the same with 3 subs, but these days you can pretty much sub half the team. It really destroys finding value in superior fitness, tactical planning of the starting side etc.
sim0n 7y ago
> Soccer would be a much better sport Very subjective. I personally think having a limited set of substitutions helps keep the game more interesting as every change can be hugely impactful to the team's tactics and the result of the game.
gordon_freeman 7y ago
Freer substitutions would ruin the game. I believe that restricting substitutions to just 3 forces the managers to strategize their gameplan (especially in the event of a reduced team size due to player(s) getting Red Card) and in turn make the game more interesting.
TheRealWatson 7y ago

safog 7y ago

Are there any good soccer data collections (free / reasonably priced) for an individual programmer to build something like this?

hubridnoxx 7y ago
If I recall correctly, Opta is one (https://www.optasports.com/ https://www.optasports.com/), but I'm not sure if it reasonably priced.
marconey 7y ago
https://statsbomb.com/ https://statsbomb.com/
gricardo99 7y ago
Detailed per play/player stats involve quite a bit of effort to collect, and thus are not typically free. Sports stats in general is a fairly closely guarded and proprietary area. Here an interesting article about it from 2014: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-people-tracking-every-touch-pass-and-tackle-in-the-world-cup/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-people-tracking-eve... I have to assume computer vision will largely automate the process of collecting sports stats, even in real-time, if that hasn't already happened. For that I think you would need access (and licensing rights) to a quality video feed of the matches, different than what is broadcast for human consumption (i.e. shows the entire field of play the whole time).
- lovemenot 7y ago
  Why not aggregate the uploaded videos from hundreds of fans? Sure it would very noisy, but synchronised feeds from many angles seems valuable.
- bmiller2 7y ago
  It does exist: https://www.hudl.com/ https://www.hudl.com/ Lots of your local and state tax money for high school / university sports programs gets dumped into it

golemiprague 7y ago

This article is just fluff, there is almost no details about the actual stats they are measuring, the only info is about Keita and they say this is stuff that scouters could not see, I doubt it. Effective passing and opening the field for opportunities is something almost every soccer fan learn to identify easily. It's not without reason everybody adored Paul Scholes even though he was not such a big star like some of his team mates. At the end of the day it is all about money to buy good players and then a coach who know how to integrate the team, even too much tactics is not necessary when you got really good players. The intuition and skill component is much more important in soccer, the muscle memory and the vision, it's like being a quarterback, but without a play book combined with a basketball player dribbling skills and a safety ability to read where the ball is going to go to. All that in a continues game that doesn't stop. You can measure some of this stuff but the combination is too elusive. That's why people look at "aesthetics", in some way soccer is like art, when you see everything falling into place in a player you just know it, the same way you can identify something beautiful without measuring proportions and colours.

hijinks 7y ago

So I didn't read the article but 25 years ago I was part of a group of 100 15-17 year olds in the US recruited by Liverpool to see if we were good enough to go over seas to their academy to finish up school. So I've been following them ever since. What I remember reading in their 2nd game against Barcelona is the data team told the coaches about how Barcelona was slow to setup for set pieces mostly corner kicks. The ball boys are all academy players and the coaches told the ball boys on corner kicks to get the ball to the Liverpool player as quickly as possible. I believe it went as far as them having more ball boys then usually to just have 4 of them sit with a ball in each corner.

OscarCunningham 7y ago
That's an amazing level of attention-to-detail. Liverpool seem very interested in perfecting every aspect of the game. Another example is that they have the world's only throw-in coach. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/45405476 https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/45405476
- NTDF9 7y ago
  This liverpool and Manchester City teams are setting the bar very high for what sports is going to be in the future. There is no way teams would go entire seasons with just one defeat (against each other) without paying attention to every tiny opportunities of success. Case in point, in preparation of next weeks champions league final, Liverpool are at a camp simulating Madrid weather and pitch surface. Even if they don't win, the knowledge they gain and the precision data they obtain for next season is crazy!
save_ferris 7y ago
Given that's exactly how Liverpool just beat Barcelona to reach the Champion's League Final, I believe it. https://youtu.be/4NhlXGMDNq4?t=250 https://youtu.be/4NhlXGMDNq4?t=250

actuator 7y ago

This season makes all these decisions look better in hindsight; but as mentioned in the article it didn't work at first. Liverpool tried to Moneyball their way into Top 4 and failed often. Classic examples being when they needed strength in positions like DM, CB or FB. They ended up going for players which made sense stat/pound. It led to LFC signing up players like Sakho or Moreno who had good stats for their value at that time but never worked out. Like in case of Sakho, he doesn't have the presence and leadership needed in the back and LFC needed it badly at that time.

Stay_frostJebel 7y ago

As a Liverpool supporter of almost 11 years (beginning from one of the clubs lowest points), I find this is absolutely fascinating. Curious to know how the research team was involved in the signing of Andy Robertson – perhaps the best value signing in recent memory.