
Liverpool Football Club’s reliance on analytics - sbuk
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/magazine/soccer-data-liverpool.html
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hijinks
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.

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OscarCunningham
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
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!

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actuator
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.

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chrisseaton
> 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.

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dylan604
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_\(film\))

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

~~~
gricardo99
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-
eve...](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-people-tracking-every-touch-
pass-and-tackle-in-the-world-cup/)

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).

~~~
bmiller2
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

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petercooper
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
Where did he study for that?

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Stay_frostJebel
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.

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NTDF9
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
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.

~~~
NTDF9
I don't think you get the scale of analytics. It's not just goals, touches,
formations anymore.

It's about entire models of game play style and running simulations with a
prospective player to see how they fit in. The data science there is not
querieable science. It's more about simulations with numbers.

~~~
0xADEADBEE
I'm wildly skeptical of this. Do you have anything I could read to better
understand it? From where I'm sitting, this isn't Sabermetrics, chiefly
because football isn't a series of set pieces with very clearly defined plays
and variance of individuals. You sound pretty confident in what you're saying
though so I'd be genuinely thrilled to be shown how idiotic my supposition is!

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pbhjpbhj
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.

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petercooper
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?

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Benjammer
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

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heartbreak
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.

~~~
mintplant
"Fighting Irish" could still be plural, couldn't it?

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Benjammer
Good point, I should have clarified, I meant "doesn't end in 's'".

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guelo
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.

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safog
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.

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jnordwick
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
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.

