American sports fans have long been comfortable talking in the language of stats and analytics. Soccer embraced the 'moneyball' revolution later; the sport was once perceived as too complex to model analytically — there were too many players on the pitch, the game's progression was too random and chaotic to reliably predict. That's no longer the case, and soccer watchers are well aware of stats like xG (Expected Goals) and each match is an opportunity for a team to mine data, whether its tracking data, on-ball data, or even analyzing body poses and movement. Today, we speak with two soccer analytics veterans, Mike Treacy (head of risk at Apex Fintech Solutions) and Joris Bekkers (a soccer analytics consultant). Treacy's background includes a stint in analytics for a Premier League team and he's currently advising the MLS team Austin FC while Bekkers has built software that analyzes raw soccer data and he's worked with the US Soccer Federation. We talk to them about how VAR has affected the sport, how data analytics can capture ineffable things like hustle, how European leagues and the MLS differ in their analytics strategy, and why chess and soccer are not so dissimilar.
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