Get to Know Your... Player Ratings

The 1-10 player rating scale in review for a soccer game isn't adequate enough. You don't know how often the player was involved in the game. Then there are problems with rating a player who played one minute flawlessly versus another player who played 90 uninspired minutes. Arguably its largest flaw is that it's incredibly unoriginal and boooring.

A better idea would be a +/- scoreline, similar to the one found in hockey. Then the simple reader will know how much each player contributed. You would be able to see how productive he was but also how he hurt the team. A really great performance would be around +4 while a Bornstein-in-the-Gold-Cup performance would be around a -4 or less.

Sooo how do I do this?

Great quest! Basically all you need is to come up with two numbers for every player. We'll keep the 1-10 rating but we also need an involvement rating for every player (keep reading!). You can use this platform if you'd like. It should open in Microsoft Excel and look something like this:

First you have to divvy up involvement points to the players. Let's imagine a big pie of involvement points. (Deliciously mathematic, I know.) Now slice that pie to all the deserving players. Well obviously some players are going to get bigger slices than others.
 

Imagine the pie has 100 points for all the players. To know how much each player gets, an expected involvement points can be found from adding up all the minutes they played then dividing it by ten. For example, a player with 70 minutes played should have around 7 involvement points. The expected points adds up to 99, 11 players playing 90 total minutes divided by 10 (11 * 90 / 10 = 99).

Next, tweak the expected points to the actual involvement points. If a player was really involved, add him some more points. If he wasn't, take some away. Just make sure it adds up to 100 for consistency's sake.

Then we'll bring the 1-10 player ratings back in. In the % column give each player a percent grade out of 100 (but then divide it by 100). Imagine this as a "How success were they?" percentage. Don't be afraid to be too exact. If you think they were slightly better than 70%, give then a 71 or 72! The more accurate the better.

Then you're done! You can sort by the +/- to see who really impacted the team.

The read out on the right is "x1 - First Last x2 (x3...x4/x5...x5)".

• X1 is a players' +/-. x4 minus x5. It gauges the positive/negative impact the player had on the game.
• (x3 - x4 = x1)
• "What?" Keep reading!
• X2 is the successful percentage.
• X3 is the involvement rating, a total percent of impact on game. The average full game player has around 9% (100% divided by 11 players). If a player is really involved for ninety minutes, he may end up closer to 13, in contrast to a player who did nothing good or bad with an involvement rating of 0.
• X4 is positive impact. It is a portion of the X3 and represents the player's positive impact on the game. A player that goes "14...14/0" did phenomenal while a scoreline of "9...5/4" would be around average.
• X5 is negative impact. It makes up the other half of X3 and is the negative influence the player had on the game. There isn't a set position that garners the most negative points although defenders will likely take a hit with giving up a costly goal.
• X6 is minutes played. Pretty simple!

Bob10's readout is "+6.4 - bob10 - 90% [8...7.2/0.8...70']". This means that bob10 had a great game. Not only was he successful 90% of the time but he exceeded his expected involvement points (7) with 8. Bob12 and Bob9 didn't have awful games but didn't break 0. They probably had some slip ups but nothing tragic.


Ta da!