Soccer nerds with spreadsheets and ggplot2. Data collection & analysis for soccer made or played in America. #USMNT #USWNT #NWSL #MLS #USL

Soccer analytics has always had a problem between the boxes. Thanks to expected goals, we’ve gotten good at valuing shots, but shots won’t tell you much about the ninety-plus-minute scramble that...

By Tyler Richardett and Brian Greenwood For the latter half of 2021, American Soccer Analysis has been working on an R and Python library to make it easier to programmatically interact with our data....

This is the first article of what we are terming The Replication Project where we take an important soccer analytics finding from yesteryear and see if it still holds up with modern data. While this...

American Soccer Analysis has been in the analytics game since 2013, and, early on in this project, we noticed something that’s always troubled us when it comes to taking the seminal analytics studies...

Ask anybody around my age (now pretty old!) to describe their first experience playing Pokemon Red or Blue, and they can probably tell you. From Professor Oak being unsure of your gender, to the...

In an effort to continue to bring you the best American soccer analysis, we have added three new leagues to the web application : USL Championship (2017 - ), USL League One (2019 - ), and the...

The United States Men’s National Team Twitter community is an interesting place. While there is lots of good stuff there, like detailed tactical analysis and extensive coverage of every bounce pass ,...

Recently, this tweet created a small firestorm in the soccer analytics community. While it is unclear the source of the error, it was pretty clear that there weren’t 1,300 passes and 50 shots in an...

Much has been written and studied about set pieces in soccer. Penalty kicks have been Bayesed multiple times , I’ve analyzed free kicks in MLS and at the World Cup , corner kicks have been rigorously...

Since data analytics tools first began to be applied to soccer, the field has moved in waves. In the beginning, there was a focus on goals. Then attention shifted to look at other things we can...

This week, news that is sure to shatter the confidence of MLS fans broke via Andrew Pearson on twitter: there may be massive election fraud happening during the weekly MLS AT&T Goal of the Week...

Formations are a lie, for the most part. We all know this by now; learning a team’s formation generally tells you very little about how they play. One reason for this is that positions are also a...

We have a humble request of you, our dear reader. Honestly, we never expected to get here, but nonetheless here we are. American Soccer Analysis has been a labor of love for years. We are staffed by...

When you talk about a soccer team, you almost always talk about its style: high-pressing, possession-heavy, parking-the-bus, etc. A team’s style not only signifies how they play on the field but also...

This is the second article in a series of articles and videos in the Where Goals Come From project from Jamon Moore and Carl Carpenter. Read part one on Where Goals Come From . Scoring goals in...

What makes a passer good? Completed passes are better than incomplete, and more passes seem like they’re probably better than fewer, so you might start with the proposition that a player who attempts...

In the world of sports, the search for an all-encompassing player evaluation metric is never-ending. Baseball was the first to develop its metric with Wins Above Replacement. Basketball followed suit...

I will start this with a disclaimer: this is not how Borussia Dortmund or Manchester United incorporate analytics into their coaching workflow, it’s not even how the Colorado Rapids incorporate data...

In the offseason we upgraded our passing model, and its outputs are now featured in our xPassing tables (both interactive and static ). After a few minor tweaks this week, now is as good a time as...

One of the most peculiar matches of the 2018 regular season occurred on August 18th. The LA Galaxy were already stretched thin from injuries to both dos Santos-es and Romain Alessandrini (their three...

Directional Passes Over Expected: Where do players exceed passing expectations? During the National League Wildcard playoff game, American Soccer Analysis contributor and Lamar Hunt US Open Cup...

Baseball popularized the use of the Wins Above Replacement (WAR) statistic; representing a player’s estimated contribution to a team’s win tally above what a generic replacement would contribute. In...

Formations are a lie, for the most part. We all know this by now; learning a team’s formation generally tells you very little about how they play. One reason for this is that positions are also a...

Look at that. Pretty, right? The colors. The font. The icons. The logo. That tiny beeswarm. All work together to make a pretty damn good visualization. But these things just don’t emerge from a...

By Mike Imburgio It’s been about three years since goals added (g+) was first introduced with the aim of measuring how much value a player adds to their team through on-ball actions. Since then, the...

This is the seventh article in a series of articles and videos in the Where Goals Come From project from Jamon Moore and Carl Carpenter. Now that we have inundated you with progressive passing data,...

In 2019, de Boer came in claiming he’d “fix the defense” of the MLS Cup winners and leave the attack the same. They started in a 3-4-3, which after some early failings, morphed almost immediately in...

LAFC aren’t just good. They are a force. They have 1.43 Expected Goal (xG) differential per game. No team in MLS history has had more than 1 xGD/game since 2013. LAFC’s xGD is only 0.12 fewer than...

While valuations of offensive actions in soccer are, by no means, perfect, they are still significantly more accurate and meaningful than how we evaluate defensive actions and players’ defensive...

Expected goals (xG) have become the most widely used metric in football analytics in the last decade. In short, xG models, such as the one developed by American Soccer Analysis , calculate how many...

A couple weeks back, I tweeted a list of MLS teams that employed someone on staff focused on analytics. Unexpectedly, the tweet got a lot of feedback, mostly people urging their favorite team to hire...

Last Saturday, the North Carolina Courage’s Denise O’Sullivan ushered in the return of professional team sports in the United States after several months, with the first strike of the ball in this...

Coaching the New York Red Bulls must be a dream for most managers in North America's soccer circle, but Chris Armas also has had one of the toughest tasks in MLS. A mid-season takeover is never easy,...

6:30 AM During the fall season, my day starts pretty early. Training sessions are in the mornings to allow our players to schedule classes for the afternoon and not be pressed for time. I’m very much...

Christopher Wondolowski should be an American sports icon. He should be beloved and admired. If he is hated by anyone, it should be by MLS fans in the same way Indianapolis Colts fans “hate” Tom...

Amidst all the chaos that the 2021 NWSL season brought (which we won’t get into in this space) there was some fantastic soccer played. While the goals per 90 were at their lowest in many years, that...

By Drew Olsen ( @drewjolsen ) The season is about to begin! After almost three weeks of releasing previews, we’re finally done. If you missed any or just want to make sure you’re ready for the...

Everyone knows you should play for the draw on the road. What this article presupposes is... maybe you shouldn’t. At least in MLS. At least some of the time.

One of the most interesting aspects of MLS when compared to many other popular soccer leagues in the world is that MLS operates under a salary cap. From a roster-building perspective, this has a...

We have updated our goals added (g+) methodology to produce g+ components for goal keepers. You can find these new metrics on the Goals Added window in the app under the Goalkeepers tab ( MLS , NWSL...

The 2021 MLS season is nearly upon us! This is our first batch of team previews, three teams with seasons that start this week in the CONCACAF Champions League. Let’s do this.

This is the second article in a series of articles and videos in the Where Goals Come From project from Jamon Moore and Carl Carpenter. Read part one on Where Goals Come From . Scoring goals in...

We’re quite pleased to bring you a very special episode of the American Soccer Analysis show this week. RBNY midfielder Sean Davis joins Ian and ASA editor Drew Olsen to discuss the state of analyt...

We are now well and truly back with the return of English football and to everyone’s shock and horror, Christian Pulisic is still really good! Since the return of the EPL hee bagged the equalizer...

Heading into Toronto on a snowy December day in past years may have had visitors buzzing about the state of BMO Field’s snowy pitch in preparation for an MLS Cup final. For now, there is just roster...

One of the most peculiar matches of the 2018 regular season occurred on August 18th. The LA Galaxy were already stretched thin from injuries to both dos Santos-es and Romain Alessandrini (their three...

The ball is placed on painted grass and a tall bright goalkeeper strides backward toward the goal. Now lunging forward the leg swings like a pendulum through the ball sending it bravely toward the...