Soccer Statistics: A New Era

Advanced statistics have been making their way into every sport over the last ten years or so, and it's all Billy Beane's fault.  The fact that Billy Beane doesn't have anything to do with it (and probably isn't even all that great as a GM) doesn't matter here: what matters is that stats have taken a great leap forward.  In baseball, it's commonplace to talk about BABIP and team's are shifting more than ever before.  In basketball, team's finally realize just how valuable the three-point shot is, especially on Daryl Morey's NBA 2k fanboy Rockets, who refuse to take any shot that isn't a dunk, three pointer, or Josh Smith doing whatever it is he gets paid for.  In hockey, we have uh...uh...Deryk Engelland being considered a hockey player still.

So it's not a perfect world, to be sure.  One of the toughest areas for advanced stats to take hold has been in soccer (or, as the English call it, crisps).  This isn't because of any sort of good ol' boy traditionalism so much as it is that it's really, really hard to measure things in soccer.  Normal counting stats like goals or saves exist, but tell you almost nothing about the game.  Clint Dempsey gets a goal for this just as much as he does for this.  Passing numbers are nice to look at too, but there isn't really a ton to be gained from knowing Andres Iniesta completed 7000 passes in a game other than that Barcelona loves possession just so much you guys.  Plus, it can be hard to break into soccer because so much of the skill is in the little things.  Basketball's great because you can obviously see when a good play is made and can understand where advanced stats are coming from.  Soccer relies so much on things like a good first touch that it can be hard to really know what to look for.

There needs to be more accessible, informative statistics for soccer, really.  American sports fans love the fantasy aspect of sports, where we can argue about why Michael Beasley is better than Corey Maggette even while knowing in our heart of hearts we're both wrong.  Stats are wonderful.  That's why we need more of them for soccer.  Here's just a few that can really make any person's fandom that much better.



Obafemi Martins Per Turnover
I have never seen any player in any sport so routinely react to turnovers in a wonderful manner than Obafemi Martins.  Literally any through ball that doesn't make it to Martins ends with this face:

You would think in a sport where turnovers are so common, especially on the long, gambling passes Martins loves to call for, he would be used to it by now.  Nope.  Every single time the ball gets away from him, he becomes Tony Montana.  Obafemi Martins wants the ball and he'll be damned if he lets something like ANYTHING AT ALL stop him from getting it.  That's why we need OM/T, to show us the players who truly want the ball more than anything in the world.  Keep in mind, this stat doesn't show us how much the player in question fights for the ball or anything whatsoever about their skill: just how often they get mad about not having it.

Ankle Kicks
People get kicked in the ankles just so damn much in soccer.  More accurately, people pretend like they got kicked in the ankles just so damn much.  That's what really makes it so great in soccer.  In basketball, sure James Harden gets fouled a ton, but he just kind of gets smacked, grimaces, and maybe at worst takes a few seconds on the floor to catch his breath.  In soccer, any contact sends a player flying across the turf, rolling around like a bad James Bond car crash, all in hopes of drawing a foul.

Sometimes people actually do get kicked, actually quite a lot of the times.  It hurts like a mother too, but still.  Getting kicked in the ankles is an important part of any soccer player's daily routine, which is why we need to be able to see a player's ankle kicks per game.  Additionally, it'd be great to see how often they are kicked, as well as their kicks-to-kicked ratio.  This probably isn't all that useful of a statistic either, outside of possibly showing who possesses the ball a lot and who plays in a heavy defensive position.  I can only assume Osvaldo Alonso's ratio is something like 900-to-4.

Useless Clearances
Clearances are a thing in soccer, and get tracked fairly accurately.  It's interesting to see which defensive players are able to get back and make those big bailouts for their team, punting the ball as far away as they can just for a respite.  However, there are a lot of really worthless clearances in each soccer game.  Players have a tendency to just blast the ball into the luxury boxes just because there's another player with 25 feet (or whatever that is in centimeters and hectares and all that other dumb metric shit THIS IS SOCCER GET OUT, EUROPE).

Why aren't these tracked though?  It's great fun to laugh at the hockey defensemen (Douglas Murray) who are so inept (Douglas Murray) that every time they touch the puck they just have to throw it the length of the ice (Douglas Murray).  Why not keep track of which soccer players are just as bad? Sure, there are times it makes sense to clear the ball off the continent, but more often than not it's just an admittance that you're not good enough to do anything else with it.

Soccer has a million little things happening that aren't tracked all that well.  These are just three examples that could add to the enjoyment of the game while doing absolutely nothing for one's understanding of it.  Feel free to add some suggestions in the comments and we'll get right on letting FIFA know about them.