Get to Know Your... Momentum Graphs

Hopefully we've understood the Subjective Point Graphs by this point. (Recap: points given to chances on goal. Boom. Caught up.)

Momentum Graphs track the progress of teams over the last seven minutes of the game. If the team did a lot in the last seven minutes, a lot of points. If not, low points. Just to confuse you even more:

Okay maybe information overload on that last picture but here's the end result:

Complexity made simple! USA started the second half with a band, fizzled, then from 75+ (to their goal in the 7th minute of stoppage time) the pressed Venezuela.

Get to Know Your... Subjective Point Graphs

The gist: I track points throughout the game then tally them up. The metaphorical sperm impregnates the egg and graphs are born.


More exhausting: Throughout the game, we give plays point values based on three threats. From least weighted to most...

• threat of a ball played 
• threat of a player with possession of the ball
• threat of the shot.

These are calculated up and are called called subjective points. Again, these points are completely subjective (duh) but in an attempt to explain a game to someone who didn't witness the match, you couldn't help but be subjective.

Why subjective points? The main goal is to explain what happened in the game. Through these points, we can tell who controlled the game, how well a team capitalized on their chances, and maybe what the score really should have been. Soccer statistics are misleading enough as it is. Seeing a team maintain possession or have a ridiculously high passing rate doesn't necessarily mean they controlled the game. And how many times have we heard "Well it was 2-0 but it should have been 1-1 because their goal was just a mistake on our end and we missed an easy chance,"? Subjective points are an attempt to combat these claims.


So what's a "Subjective Point Graph"? This:

Couldn't help but put one of America doing well.

The x-axis has the respective minute while the left is subjective points. The great thing about the points is that you don't really need a reference of what's good, like in most sports. A .300 batting average is great but what does 40 subjective points mean? Don't think of it as a milestone number. Think of it as a comparative number. Just by looking at the lines we can see that America created more chances than Venezuela.

(But if you just have to know, an average half has 60 combined subjective points. Whether it's 30-30, an even half, or 40-20, it usually totals to 60, which makes sense. If a team is attacking more than another, the lesser team is losing chances to score. Give and take.)

2012 NCAA Soccer Recruiting

Because TopDrawerSoccer.com won't do it, I compiled the 2012 NCAA Soccer Recruiting process into one similar of Rivals.com. A point for every star recruit a player is. (5 for 5, 4 for 4...) There were several players with no stars but seeing as there were less than 10 two-star recruits and 0 one-star recruits I just bumped them up to two-star recruits. I think the blanks were players simply unrated, not actual zero-star prospects.

The spreadsheet is sorted by the number of stars for incoming freshmen. The purple column on the right is half the number of total points from an early ranking I did last month. I was curious on how much of the prestige carried over to recruiting. Positive numbers means the school exceeded the prestige rating while a negative score means they were expected to get more recruits than they did. Connecticut, for example, had a -20 because they have no recruits on Top Drawer.

Looking back, I should probably weight 5 stars more than just 5 points... With this current set up, two three star recruits are more valuable than one 5 star recruit. I may tweak this in time.

Anyway, here's the list.

Various Points

I know Conneticut has a younger team than most but that doesn't mean they don't need to recruit at all. Currently Top Drawer has them with zero incoming freshmen but surely that's not the case.

UNC leads Wake Forest by two but Virginia, Maryland and UCLA are all close as well. Each one of the five schools have won a championship in the past ten years and five out of the past seven champions.

High Point and Portland bringing their A games.

Not a lot of recruits for Indiana, Akron, and others, but definitely a lot of quality in their few selections.

USMNT Hopefuls - May 2012

Not a lot of notes on these players as nothing has really changed in the past month...  But spreadsheets galore, so enjoy!






Lichaj ("lee-high", in case you were wondering) has been receiving a lot of playing time recently and Aston Villa is looking to avoid relegation, which is good news for American defenders. Hopefully Ream can follow suit...

MacMath and the Union have stepped it up defensively. I was hopeful he'd get his feet under him...

Chandler resigns while Wood battles injuries...

Rowe has quietly played 540 minutes in seven games this season...

Garza and Corona are finding more consistent playing time with Tijuana...

Ryan Meara is getting a lot of buzz with his performance this season but also being linked to the Irish U21s, which he ultimately did not train with...

Duka finally returned to the field. Still looking for his first 90' of the season...



Minor changes^^

NCAA Soccer 2011-2003

In attempt to find the accoladest NCAA D1 men's soccer program I went back through some Wikipedia pages and blah blah blah came up with these numbers:



TP - Total Points (RP + SP)
RP - Round Points (1 point for every round the school advanced in the end of the year tourny)
SP - Seed Points ('x' points for their respective seed. [seed]/16*7 = SP; 16 seeds in all; If no seed then zero points)
DIFF - Difference in RP/SP; this should be pretty close

Out to the right is every school's performance from 2011-2003. The first column under the year indicates how many rounds they reached (7 - Champion; 6 - Runner-up...) and the second column is the pre-tournament rank. Since 2003 NCAA has seeded the top 16 teams with byes while the other 32 chump teams have to play the first round.

The most a school could get in a year would be 14 points. 7 for the championship and 7 for being seeded #1 going into the tournament, which UNC did this last year.

Again, this latest format has been instituted since 2003, which is convenient because that's about when I got tired of entering in the information. They've apparently bounced around with first round byes for a while but they have settled on this for some time.

Notes

• More impressive than Maryland blowing the competition out of the water is that the 1-20 is larger than I would have thought. Sure, Maryland is up 15 points on second place, and for good reason, but there are only 15 other schools that have accomplished a third of what Maryland has. It's like women's basketball for goodness sakes.
  

• The seed points and round points are pretty close. In fact the champion has been seeded at least third for seven out of the last nine years. UC Santa Barb has the biggest difference with a +20, meaning they really exceeded the seeders' (whoever is seeding these teams) expectations.
• I started to sort by conference then got really bored by that.
• Once 1960s-powerhouse St. Louis is at a respectable 28th.
• 34th Dartmouth has made the tournament the past five years from the Ivy League.
• Maryland, Indiana, UCLA, Virginia, Connecticut, and Duke have all made the tournament since 2003.
• Akron was pretty decent before Caleb Porter arrived. An Elite Eight finish the year before and a Sweet Sixteen appearance two years before that. Not saying he's overrated by any stretch, just an interesting thought.

"Funny thing, the Old Bridge used to be called the 'New Bridge.' Yeah, bit a funny thing..."

MLS vs. the World

One of the biggest headline-worthy articles for an American soccer player is where he is playing overseas. Even if it's as small as something as a trial or someone overheard a club might be interested, it'll get written about form every angle. The problem is there isn't a really good grasp on what countries have quality leagues or not. In an attempt to solve this problem, I took the top 1000 clubs from the World Football Club Ratings. I sorted them by country and tallied up the results.

Pos.Country.TtlPoints / # of teams in the top 1000.(Numbers from April 13th)

1. Spain - 40871 / 26
2. France - 40854 / 27
3. Brazil - 40826 / 27
4. England - 40797 / 26
5. Argentina - 40440 / 27
6. Italy - 37328 / 24
7. Germany - 33119 / 21
8. Chile - 29691 / 21
9. Portugal - 29079 / 20
10. Colombia - 28080 / 20
11. Russia - 27492 / 19
12. Mexico - 27401 / 19
13. Netherlands - 26813 / 18
14. Turkey - 25958 / 18
15. Peru - 23822 / 17
16. Czech Republic - 23057 / 16
17. Belgium - 22916 / 16
18. Uruguay - 22776 / 16
19. Greece - 22736 / 16
20. Japan - 22620 / 16
21. Paraguay - 22475 / 16
22. Nigeria - 22021 / 16
23. Ukraine - 21704 / 15
24. Ecuador - 19713 / 14
25. Norway - 19520 / 14
26. Algeria - 19306 / 14
27. Romania - 18468 / 13
28. Iran - 18329 / 13
29. Poland - 18137 / 13
30. Morocco - 17822 / 13
31. Korea Republic - 17279 / 12
32. Bulgaria - 17223 / 12
33. Sweden - 16954 / 12
34. United States - 16578 / 12
35. Cameroon - 16569 / 12
36. Cyprus - 15711 / 11
37. Zimbabwe - 15545 / 11
38. South Africa - 15493 / 11
39. Israel - 15461 / 11
40. Denmark - 15069 / 11
41. Saudi Arabia - 14373 / 10
42. Serbia - 14253 / 10
43. Egypt - 14188 / 10
44. Hungary - 13976 / 10
45. Belarus - 13928 / 10
46. China PR - 13791 / 10
47. Ghana - 13606 / 10
48. Wales - 13055 / 9
49. Switzerland - 12871 / 9
50. Scotland - 12850 / 9
51. Ireland Republic - 12813 / 9
52. Thailand - 12753 / 9
53. Croatia - 12661 / 9
54. Finland - 12540 / 9
55. Bolivia - 12424 / 9
56. Moldova - 11718 / 8
57. Congo DR - 11418 / 8
58. Slovenia - 11355 / 8
59. Tunisia - 11288 / 8
60. Austria - 11262 / 8
61. Angola - 11242 / 8
62. Costa Rica - 11193 / 8
63. Ivory Coast - 11147 / 8
64. Trinidad and Tobago - 11129 / 8
65. Venezuela - 11050 / 8
66. Kazakhstan - 10366 / 7
67. Azerbaijan - 10094 / 7
68. India - 9965 / 7
69. Slovakia - 9828 / 7
70. Guatemala - 9684 / 7
71. Qatar - 8804 / 6
72. Indonesia - 8360 / 6
73. Honduras - 8269 / 6
74. Estonia - 7828 / 5
75. Puerto Rico - 7232 / 5
76. Mali - 7185 / 5
77. United Arab Emirates - 7050 / 5
78. El Salvador - 6943 / 5
79. Panama - 6932 / 5
80. Australia - 6885 / 5
81. Bosnia-Herzegovina - 6771 / 5
82. Montenegro - 5522 / 4
83. Uzbekistan - 4538 / 3
84. Sudan - 4468 / 3
85. New Zealand - 4360 / 3
86. Papua New Guinea - 4116 / 3
87. Libya - 1367 / 1
88. Fiji - 1348 / 1
89. Canada - 1319 / 1 - (Toronto FC)

I think the top five are fairly interchangeable as far as the "Best League in the World" title goes. You may have noticed that multiple countries have more teams represented than their first league holds. This is taking into account some of their second league teams. (The highest American team is Los Angeles Galaxy, who sit at 208th, in case you were wondering.) I would say the top 26 countries or so have better domestic club football than the States do. After that it's too close to say who is better than who as one/two middle class teams isn't enough to show dominance.

This next list is the number of American players in the given country. These numbers take into account the lower leagues, which are not represented in the previous list.

102 Germany
91 Mexico
41 England
10 Denmark**
10 Australia**
9 Norway
8 Sweden
7 Netherlands
7 Belgium
7 Scotland**
5 Portugal
4 France
4 Israel**
3 Argentina
3 Italy
3 Greece
3 Poland
3 Switzerland**
1 Spain
1 Chile
1 Czech Republic
1 Bulgaria
1 Zimbabwe
1 Egypt
1 Wales
1 Ireland Republic
1 Tajikstan
1 Croatia
1 Bolivia
1 Venezuela
1 India
1 Guatemala
1 Bosnia-Herzegovina

** - Country with a weaker league than the US

The biggest eyesore is the absence of American players in the top five leagues. While there are 41 in England (although a rough estimate of 90% of those players are not in the 26 English teams listed above), there are only eight players in the other four leagues. Although Germany and Mexico hold prestigious leagues in their own right, if we're looking for our players to find tougher competition than the MLS, the answer isn't multiple leagues. As far as English leagues go, the MLS would sit mid-to-bottom-table in the Npower Football League Champion. West Ham would be a step up while Doncaster would be on par with an average MLS team.

USMNT Hopefuls - April 2012

(Falling a bit behind on the MLS Goalie stuff but that was to be expected I guess...)

Good news! I entered 2012. These are the spreadsheets I'll be using to post players' progress and predictions.

The Latest

• Gyau, along with Corona and Adu, were the most highly praised following the Olympic qualifying (que loud exhale). Personally, I thought our defensive woes were more worrisome than lack of offensive firepower. Either way, Gyau's speed and ability to get in and out of tight positions was encouraging. I'd like to see his field vision continue to rise but for right now I'm very pleased.
• More up and downs for Woods. He starts making appearances (a cool three caps) after getting cleared to play but suffers yet another injury that requires knee surgery. I've been a big fan since the summer but the amount of time off the field is not encouraging.
• Corona enjoyed a goal-happy tournament and seemed to really be the major drive in the team's offense. Back to Mexico for now.
• Gatt scored in the opener for Molde and is looking forward to the Champions League this summer.
• Diskerud gave a surprise interview over on BigSoccer.com. There were mixed reviews on his play from the tournament, with me more on the positive side.
• Johnson was the main scapegoat from the debacle in Nashville but before the El Salvador game I thought he had been looking sharp and still promising. The Hamid fan club is strong right now but I think Johnson has more than a slimmer of a chance to get to Brazil in '14.
• Hamid looks to be relying on pure athleticism to get by over mental preparation before a shot. He's a tad chaotic with shot saving in recent games. The first goal in the Canada game is a good example in that he was just putting himself out in the mix and not really thinking about the best way to handle the ball. He'll be fine when it's all over but that's his biggest hurdle to clear at the moment.
• McInerney has gathered modest time from the Union. He's scrapped 65 minutes in the three games he's played but as the Union has only scored two goals in four games they may be looking to change things up.
• Duka is still recovering from an hamstring injury he suffered in the first game of the season.
• Gil picked up his first goal of the season back on the 18th and has been called into Ramos' camp that runs from the 9th-16th.
• Rowe scored his first goal of the season as well back on April Fool's Day. The highlight shows him playing a great ball to ex-international hopeful Lee Nguyen. Nguyen's attempt on goal is cleared out but the ensuing throw-in gave Rowe a one-on-one with Sounders. Rowe really didn't shoot the first shot as much as he just placed it on goal but the follow up was definitely clutch.
• Garza wrote for Goal.com about his journey to Tijuana. The LB has received some time for the club but only at the end of the game.
• Chandler is getting regular minutes and his play, minus as of late, has been above average.
• Lletget was the expected fill-in for Porter and the U23s after Gatt dropped out but missed the cut. BigSoccer rumored of fitness problems but West Ham's site praised him for recent good play with the reserve squad.
• Lichaj recovered from the injury rather nicely with a goal and an assist in his second game back. The public opinion was liking the push forward but defending was a little weak.
• MacMath has struggled for Philadelphia, which is really unfortunate because he's made some great heads up plays for them too. The goalie pipeline in America will be fine with time.
• Jeffrey was bad on all accounts against Canada. His defensive game seems to be a big liability at the moment. Maybe an attacking center-mid position would fit him best.
• Pelosi is still recovering...
• Kitchen received mixed reviews at the OQs. Has solidified a starting spot at DC United, apparently.
• Oliver was called into the most recent U20 camp with Gil. Oliver has committed to Indiana University for the fall.

(Drop outs)

• Hertzog has had trouble cracking the starting lineup for NY. He's seen time in reserve games though.
• The 18 year old Daniel Potts is with the reserves but his American ties are so weak I'm not torn up that he dropped from the 20.

I also started charting the "Old Guys" progress. Some interesting stuff...


Again, these are all just guesses, not facts. But that said, some interesting things I noticed:

• Bocanegra, Beasley, Cherundolo, Goodson, Jones, and Buddle are not projected to make it to Brazil.
• Adu is projected to reach 67 caps (he has 17 now) but of those next 50 only 4 will come the next two years.
• Chad Marshall still has eight caps left in him.
• The MLS is deceivingly represented in the list. 9 of the 32 players are currently in the MLS (with three of them looking at only one more cap). But most of the players started in the MLS. Steve Cherundolo and Jose Torres are the only one in the top fifteen that didn't play in the MLS at some point. Yes most of those players have left the MLS but the MLS isn't the same in 2012 as it was in 2002. But that's an argument for another day. (I will never argue that.)
• Charlie Davies is still looking at 29 caps, which is surprising. The almost 26 year old will be towards his peak around the World Cup but I don't think anyone really knows what to expect.

The biggest question is how many coaching caps will Caleb Porter receive after the unfortunate exit... No rating system to guess that.