Sporting KC and Home Field Advantage in Soccer: A Luchametric Quickie

By MJD

Last night Sporting KC got its first home goal and its first home win, beating a surging San Jose club at Livestrong Sporting Park 1-0. We had predicted a SJO win, what with their lead-leading 1.54 Goals For per Game average going into the match, and their excellent recent form: 4 wins and a draw in their last 5 matches.  But KC looked better than we've seen them all year and prevailed in what we thought was a tight match.  In thinking about what we had missed in our analysis of the match, we realized that we had forgotten the most fundamental truth about professional soccer and about wagering on professional soccer: the 50/25/25 rule.

What's that you say? The facts are that in top leagues across the globe, including the EPL and the MLS, all things being equal, the home team will win 50% of the time, the away team 25% of the time, and the teams will draw 25% of the time.  That this is so is just part of the deep fabric of the game, decreed by the soccer gods long ago.  There have been various reasons put forth for this phenomenon, to travel demands on players, familiarity with the pitch, to the energy of the home crowd supporting the home team.  But we'll save any in-depth discussion of home field advantage for another post.

Here's the quickie.  Going into last night's match, KC had played 12 games, 11 of them on the road. In a normal season, half of those 12 games would have been at home, where (again, all things being equal) they would have won a full 50% of those matches (let's call it 6 home games just to make our back-of-a-napkin analysis easy).

Applying the 50/25/25 rule, KC's point total from 6 home games and 6 road games would be 10.5 pts from the home matches (3 wins and 1.5 draws) plus 6 pts from the road matches (1.5 road wins, 1.5 road draws) for a total of 16.5 pts total, not the 10 they were sitting on going into last night's match.

The point is that playing on the road for 11 games to open the season has distorted KC's record considerably, by about 34% or more.  This means they are a considerably better club than they've been given credit for.

Playing on the road in any league is tough, resulting in fewer chances created, more chances allowed, more mental mistakes, etc. KC has more home games left in their schedule than any other club.  Their PTS/GM will inevitably go up.  They will beat clubs at home that are substantially higher than them in the standings.  The only caveat to the 50/25/25 rule is that if two teams are not equal in strength, then the percentages get adjusted to the point that with two very uneven teams, the numbers change to 65/17/17 or even higher.

Our claim is that KC probably belongs in the middle of the pack, not down at the bottom with the likes of New England, who have no excuses.

Luchametric MLS Power Rankings Updated: Dallas you say?

Current Luchametric MLS Power Rankings

By MJD
Dallas sits atop our Power Rankings.  We've spent the last hour or so trying to figure out if there is a mistake somewhere.  There isn't.  Before you blow a gasket in disbelief, note that the LM is based on production per game.  And if you compare Dallas' PTS/GM to the Crew, RSL and LA, the four teams are much closer than might appear just from looking at the single table.  Plus you have to factor in that Dallas has the best recent form, which we're perhaps weighing too heavily.  We need more time to look at that possibility.

The R-Squared when we regress the LM to point production in the league currently stands at .76.  This means that our metric explains 76% of the differences among the teams in terms of point production.  That's pretty good, but not as good as the R-squared for 08 and 09 combined, which is .83.  And our R-squared for point production in the EPL is around .90.  So, we're still examining why the MLS metric is not as sharp as the one we developed for the EPL (both are virtually the same).

Further, we'd point out that Dallas has only lost 13% of its games this year.  This puts them second in the league behind LA at 11%, and makes them over twice as good as RSL (26%) and well below the league average of 38%.n  They currently lead the league in draws.  In short, they are very, very, very tough to beat. They have drawn or won 87% of the games they have played thus far.  Our metric treats draws and performance in draws as significant evidence of a team's power--what we call "production."  The American proclivity to ignore draws as nothing more than "kissing your sister," we think ignores what draws tell us about a team. As such, Dallas gets more credit for how well it plays in wins, losses AND draws, which probably accounts for their place in the standings.  If they can maintain their rate of production, they should start getting some clean wins.  But it could also be that they've peaked at mid-season, and by the end of the year will drop back down in our rankings.  We'll see.

MLS Power Rankings Updated: Go West My Tan-Faced Children

By MJD
We loathe the International House of Soccer's insistence on the two divisions as it distorts the league standings and has virtually no impact whatsoever on who gets into the playoffs.  And although relegation is a long way off (if it ever happens in our lifetime--hopefully another 40 years or so), we hope the league will go to a single table much sooner.  But this post isn't really about any of that.  It's about MLS on television and the land of great Mexican food, medical marijuana, and the EPL "late" game with breakfast.

Take a look at our Power Rankings and the Single Table and you'll notice that the western teams currently dominate the league.  In the Power Rankings, 5 of the top 8 teams are out of the West; and in the single table 6 out of the top 8 teams play their home games west of the Mississippi.  Again, we have disdain for MLS' marketing strategy, but we think it's worth noticing that the best football in the league is currently being played far away from the Northeast corridor.  Other than the Red Bulls, the top teams in the "East" are actually in the Midwest.  And the majority of top teams in the league are either in the same time zone as Chicago or even further away from the nation's most densely populated region. Of course, the big standout exception is our beloved Crew who continue to contend for a third-straight Supporters Shield, which would do more than anything to demonstrate the invalidity of the two-division playoff scheme. (That's a post for another day).

MLS' business model is designed to insure big market teams like DC, NY, New England (Boston), Philly and Toronto can carry the load when it comes to television market share.  Let's face it, the Crew vs. New England on a Saturday night is one thing; the Crew vs. KC is something else.  The former includes greater Boston as one half of its potential audience, which is the nation's 7th largest television market; the latter includes the nation's 34th and 32nd largest markets respectively (who knew KC was bigger than C-Bus?).

All of this is simply to say that you can bet the suits at the IHOS are sweating a bit as the season unfolds.  Philly looks like they genuinely stink.  DC is drawing fewer of its rabid white-collar suburbanites out for a night of pseudo-hooliganism than their reputation would predict, and NE looks like its headed for yet another season of marginality.

As such, you might think we'd see more games on FSC from the major markets in the West this year than we would in the East.  Unfortunately, it's more likely Don Garber and the Sports Admin majors in the league offices will decide that mediocre football that caters to the fans in the Northeast corridor is a potentially more profitable product than great football that caters to the fan of the beautiful game.

Which brings us once more to the patron saint of American soccer: Papa Walt: 

Come my tan-faced children,

Follow well in order, get your weapons ready, Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes? Pioneers! O pioneers!

For we cannot tarry here, We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers!

O you youths, Western youths, So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship, Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost, Pioneers! O pioneers!

Crew Attack Stats: Luchametric Exclusive

By MJD
We have preliminary data that show Robbie Rogers needs to step it up.

Nordecke Luchador will be tracking the Crew's attack this season like no other blog on the planet.  To the left is a chart detailing where on the pitch the Crew have produced either a Shot or a Shot on Goal or a Goal.  Note that this chart does not reflect free kicks or penalty kicks.  We're relying on ESPN's Gamecast feature to track the data, and over the Crew's first three games at least, Gamecast does not show where on the field the free kicks are being taken.  Our good friend Colin over at Championship At Best has clued us in on an alternative data source, but we're still working on accessing it.  Once we do, we may be able to provide even more insight.  And kudos to Colin as well for his outstanding work, upon which we've based the above chart.

How to use the chart? Well, it tells us the Crew is getting good opportunities in the box, which is always a good sign you're team is playing well in the offensive phase.  And the attack looks very balanced as well. But the chart is best used in combination with close observation of tactical tendencies in actual games. Is the team looking to push down the wings and cross?  Are we trying to break down defenses in front of the goal and get high-percentage shots on give-and-gos and through balls?  Should the Crew be taking more shots from the top of the box and beyond?  Open beer; drink beer; discuss.

Also, the table below gives us data on the Crew's attack through Saturday's fixture vs the garment clad warriors of RSL.

The Pro and Pro/GM stats are measures we developed to measure an individual player's contribution to his squad's offensive production.  The explanation is here.  Big Willie, Iro, Moffat and Lenhart are the top producers.  Rogers is last.  Notice just how few SOGs the left winger has.  SHTs, yes, but actual dangerous chances?  Not so much.  The other troubling thing we notice is that Big Willie produces a goal or an assist every 67 minutes of play (Min/G+A).  That puts him third in the league behind Buddle (61) and Morales (61.75).  But the rest of the Crew's attackers have yet to step up.  Once again, the Crew are relying too heavily on Schelotto to earn points.  It would be unfair and inaccurate to say the team is one-dimensional, as four players have 6 shots or more over three games.  But we certainly would like to see more goals and assists in the games ahead by the rest of the team's attack.

Notice also that immediately below the Crew's numbers we've included the top offensive players in the MLS this season for comparison.  One thing we'd point out right away is that if any one mentions Conor Casey to you as deserving of a roster spot on the USMNT in South Africa, point out to the would-be Einstein that all three of his goals this season are from PKs, same with Cunningham.  The talk about Buddle, however, may be warranted.

Finally, once we gain access to the new data stream, which will give us such elusive stats as passes created by a player that could have turned into a G or an Assist or a SHT or a SOG but didn't due to the subsequent player messing up or not quite reaching a beautiful through ball, we're going to tweak the metric.  Essentially, we'll be able to add "chances created" to what we already have.  This will allow us to include players, especially midfielders like Donovan, who clearly are producing for their clubs but whose production won't always show up as either a G or an A.

Hagalo, Columbus. 'Til I die...

MLS Power Rankings: LA, CLB, KC on Top - DC, Toronto, Philly at Rock Bottom

By M.J.D
We've thoroughly tweaked the metric, and at this early stage, LA and the Crew are outpacing the rest of the league.  The Crew's numbers are obviously suspect, as they've only played two games.  But we think the rankings of the teams with 4 games played are fairly solid, which is only to say that our rankings accurately reflect how well, or how poorly, they've been playing over the season thus far, and not necessarily their potential.

Given all the work we've done over the last year on both the MLS and the EPL, we've added a column to our rankings (P Pts) that projects the number of points a team is on pace to accrue by the end of the year.  The key is that the projection is a hypothetical: "If LA continues to play they way they've been playing thus far [that is, they play this well for all 30 games, which is an abject impossibility], they are on pace to earn 68 points by season's end."  Obviously, it's not possible for D.C. to earn a negative 2 points, but that's how poorly they've performed thus far.  Wow.  They truly stink.

Other things worth mentioning include the fact that the infamous MLS parity is not as apparent early on.  The bottom six teams in the league look to be considerably weaker than the top six.  Could the MLS table finally be starting to look like other tables across the globe?  We'll have to wait and see.  But our rankings do suggest that at this early stage, both the league standings and a comparison of teams by points earned alone, do not reveal the real differences among the teams in the league.  Finally, if Philly, Toronto and DC don't turn it around soon, and continue to drop points for another 4 games, over 25% of the season will have elapsed and their respective playoff aspirations will almost certainly be over.  In any league, you have to establish a decent rate of point production per game, or else the hole you'll dig for yourself will be very difficult to climb out of.  Of course, in the MLS you can always stink it up and then get rewarded with the eighth playoff spot and THEN try and play like a champion.  But I digress. . .

MLS Owners Gambling with League's Future: The Luchametric Mission Statement

The Nordecke Luchador and his associates do not condone illegal activity, but we believe that Major League Soccer will never enjoy the respect and attention of other world football leagues until there is more widespread betting interest in MLS. This will never happen until the monopolistic robber barons who control MLS abandon their childlike obsession with the anti-competitive, indeed, anti-American, single-entity system.

Ironically, it is the anti-competitive single-entity model that results in a hyper-competitive MLS. And it is this very hyper-competitiveness that is in fact holding the league and American soccer back.

More than $70 billion per year is wagered in online sports betting alone (not including street bets and legal sports books in places like Las Vegas). The number is projected to reach $100 billion by 2015. By far the most popular sport for gamblers worldwide is soccer, representing by some estimates one-third of the total wagers placed online.

You can place a bet today on who will win the Spanish La Liga title (which will not be decided until May), who will win the World Cup (which doesn't even start until June 11), first-half results for any first division match anywhere this weekend, or even whether Rafa Benitez will be fired from Liverpool (if the Scousers drop out of the top four, he will).  

By contrast, there are no lines available today on who will win the 2010 MLS Supporters Shield or the marketing gimmick that is the MLS Cup. Most bookies won't even take bets on the over/under for this week's opening games.

"Well that's just because the MLS sucks," you say.  OK, yeah, it's not the EPL. But like most things in life, the answer is not so simple.  It is also because the league is too competitive. "Too competitive" you say?  How can a league be too competitive? Competitive is good, right?" Not if you are a sports gambler. 

As Leandro Faria writes in Simple Soccer, "the smaller the number of big teams within a league, the more predictable it is."

In other words, the more competitive a league is, the more parity; the more parity, the harder it is to make predictions about the outcome of matches. Obviously, betting is nothing other than predicting the outcome of matches. Ergo, betters are interested in leagues that are more predictable, which is the same thing as less competitive -- but not necessarily less interesting or with inferior quality play, as we shall see below. Faria developed a "predictability index" based on actual team parity within leagues as measured by diversity of championships. The top four most predictable (least competitive) first division leagues in the world are in: 1) Scotland, 2) Netherlands, 3) Portugal and 4) Turkey.

The least predictable(most competitive) first division soccer leagues in the world, according to Faria? Brazil and U.S. Major League Soccer.  

The numbers clearly back this up. Last year the Columbus Crew won the Supporters Shield with 49 points. Of the other 14 teams in MLS, 12 were within 9 points of the Crew. Contrast that with the rest of the world. In EPL right now 56 points separates Manchester United from last place Portsmouth (nine of those are a result of the penalty Pompey suffered as a result of going bankrupt, but still). In the Italian Serie A,there are 39 points between No. 1 Inter and last place Livorno. In Der Bundesliga it's 38. In La Liga it's 52.

Now, predictable is a relative thing. Any team in any first division soccer league anywhere in the world can beat any other team in that league, as they say, on "any given Sunday" (or Saturday). So it's not as though less-competitive leagues are boring.The leagues that are actually more fun to watch are those that (perhaps counter-intuitively) are a little less competitive and thus have less parity.

(Two other factors also are at play here and are tragically missing from MLS: relegation and a single table, but  we will deal with these in a subsequent article).

The MLS league bosses are applying a simplistic, American (in the pejorative sense) paradigm and business model to the league. Their thinking is that by maintaining strict parity, there is more likely to be more widespread interest in more teams, deeper into the season, and that this will maximize revenue (which is all they care about). In fact, if they would allow for clubs to develop true competitive advantages with perhaps only a few teams each season vying for the top, there would be less parity, more excitement, more betting interest (not just in the U.S. but worldwide) and ultimately more revenue.

Whether you happen to be among those who love or hate (it's one or the other) the Yankees, Manchester United, Dallas Cowboys (of the '70s and '80s) or the Chicago Bulls, dynasties are a critical part of generating excitement in any sports league. Fans love narratives about underdogs and champions and the inevitable falls from grace that occur each season.  There will be no dynasties and no such story lines in the MLS until there is less parity--less vanilla and more funk, anger, despair and agony.

The Players Union's success in negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement is a major step forward in breaking down the owners' monopolistic scheme. Most fundamentally, it is a victory for the working man and for economic justice. But it also moves the MLS toward less parity, which in the long run does more than anything to support the long-term viability of the league by making it more interesting and more viable for the $70 billion sports betting market.

So, this brings us the mission statement part of this post. As El Luchador and El Chupa travel the world, from Cuba to Caracas, from LA to C-Bus, we are often asked, "Why do you do it? Why do you work so tirelessly, risking the wrath of Don Garber and his minions on the Dark Side of the Force?" Here's the answer:

Luchametric.com has two purposes. 1) Speaking truth to power, fighting the populist soccer revolution in the United States by taking it to the streets. 2) Supporting American soccer by supporting worldwide interest in placing wagers on U.S. soccer.

Do it.

Rhetoric in MLS Labor Strife Heats Up: Owners Piss Themselves

The war of rhetoric continued to heat up today just 5 days short of the strike deadline, with MLS owners rattling their sabers, putting lifts in their shoes, and fluffing up the comb-overs on their puny, greedy heads.

"I just hope the players understand the implication of the threats they're making to strike because if they do in fact go on strike, then that forces the owners to do something very aggressive and very different," Real Salt Lake owner Dave Checketts told the Desert News.

Having been exposed in the national soccer community as frauds, the owners clearly have calculated that fear-mongering  is the only tool available to them in their quest to force the players into submitting to another collective bargaining agreement that holds the latter as indentured servants.

"I've always said that 'MLS' stands for Major League Slavery," said World Football Daily's Steven Cohen.

Just picture Checketts stuttering, sweating and blinking rapidly as he says the following: "I just came from a meeting with several owners and the commissioner down here in Los Angeles, and we know exactly what we'll do. These are all owners who've been in the NBA, they've been in the NHL, some of them own Major League Baseball teams even today. We know what we'll do. We have a plan if the players strike."

If that "plan" involves bringing in scabs to play "games" owners think "fans" will pay money to watch, then they are higher than a Blues Traveler fan at Bonarroo.

Lest you conclude that Checketts is a lone voice crying out in the wilderness, witness Seattle Sounders Kingpin Joe Roth's hysterical statement to the Seattle Times: “From an entertainment standpoint, we haven’t made enough of an imprint on the national psyche," he said as he pissed himself. "I don’t think there will be a national outcry like with the NFL if somehow we wouldn’t be out there for a year – which would be terrible. Everyone would lose their jobs. We would all lose our franchises. And that would be that."

But as LA Galaxy, Everton and USMNT star Landon Donovan pointed out this week to ESPN, the players are not trying to destroy the economics of the league.  Said Donovan: "I think we've made it clear from the beginning that we're not into the idea of bankrupting the league and asking for tons of monetary increases. We just want basic rights other players around the world get."

"There are realities to the business that we're in and unfortunately for too long the business has been one-sided," Donovan continued. "We need basic rights if we're going to continue playing. We want rights that are afforded to other players in other countries around the world that we don't have here."

From the earliest days of the labor movement, the first tactic owners consistently have employed is fear. Early 20th-century coal operators smeared strikers with accusations that foreign communists were behind their efforts to achieve fair wages and working conditions, using words like "insurrection" and "Bolshevik revolution" to describe strike threats. Oftentimes, physical violence accompanied the heated rhetoric. Today, MLS owners have only words as empty as their stadiums will be if they try to stage scab matches.

As Jimmy Reed said: "Big boss man, can't you hear me when I call? Big boss man, you ain't so big, you just talk, and that's all."

Crew Preview No. I: Black and Gold Stand Pat but with Two Choice Exceptions

By El Chupa

The staff at Nordecke Luchador are hard at work preparing our pre-season rankings in spite of the impending, righteous and highly justified strike by MLS players.  We back the players 150% and blame the unimaginative, unenlightened, unethical and dishonest hacks in the league office at the International House of Soccer for the impasse.

But let's pretend the season IS really about to begin.  Here's a cursory overview of what we've noticed thus far.

A quick look here (free registration may be required and scroll down to the latest post) and you'll notice that no team made fewer off-season moves than did the Crew.  The two pickups they did make are impressive.

Sergio Herrera is a journeyman International Columbian who has bounced around but--and no propaganda, wishful thinking, or bullshit here--should bring experience and solid striking skills up front. We think he is more than capable of replacing Moreno. Moreno produced only 12 SOG in 22 games with four goals in 2009.  These numbers are respectable but Herrera is more-than-capable of the same contribution if not more.

Super Draft pick Dilly Duka (coolest name ever? Or goofiest name ever? Discuss...) is a young talent who is a US U-20 international and just the type of young player teams should be scouting and acquiring to build for the future.  The Crew showed last year that should Big Willy (um, "Guillermo" is Latinate for "William") go down or be limited in appearances due to age, the team needs a midfield creator.  Replacing Willy is too much to expect from Duka, who has yet to play a minute in a regular season MLS game. But it's nice to know the team is looking to the future in acquiring Duka, who could have gone much higher than 8th in the first round of the Super Draft.

We also have to admit that El Chupa, for one, was rather pessimistic about the Crew's chances against Tolouca, a tough Mexican club in mid-season form.  Their strong showing (admittedly at home against a team hailing from a country whose natives apparently are incapable of playing well in "arctic" central Ohio in freaking March) suggests strongly that the suits upstairs may have made the right decision to essentially stand pat this off season, giving the team's established players, starters and reserves alike, a chance to gel further.  If Lenhart and Rogers continue to mature and develop as we think they should, the Crew should again be extremely competitive.  Last year's late-season meltdown will hopefully not repeat itself this year.  And Crew loyalists can and should expect nothing less than a shot at both the Supporters Shield and the MLS Cup.  We'll break down the team's numbers in a separate post.

In the meantime, remember the immortal words of Abraham Lincoln: "Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." 

Word!

MLS Solidarity Sets Clock, Issues Edict

The fan group MLS Solidarity today added a countdown timer to its Web site to remind the U.S. soccer community and the capitalist money-grubbers in MLS management that time is running out to make a deal and save the season.

"Don Garber, Mark Abbott and the other bosses at MLS need to wake up and realize that we are dangerously close to the brink here," said MLS Solidarity Presidente Nordecke Luchador. "The clock is ticking for them to come to the table honestly."

The group has a Facebook page and an underground network of players and operatives within MLS. In addition to the countdown clock, MLS Solidarity issued the following edict:

We the fans of Major League Soccer call on the management of the league to finally abandon their dishonest, selfish position and come to the negotiating table in good faith. We stand in solidarity with the players, and we stand ready to support them by any means necessary. 

Multiple sources report that the players on Friday voted 383-2 to go on strike if a deal is not reached by 12:01 Eastern Time on March 23.

The union's collective bargaining agreement has expired, and league management have indicated they would be willing to start the season March 23 under the terms of the expired agreement. By voting to strike, the players have called the managers' bluff.

"They have not been negotiating in good faith, and we needed to show that we are united and serious," one player told MLS Solidarity. "We will not blink. If there's no agreement, we strike. Period."

Negotiators met twice this week with a federal mediator in Washington but the players moved no nearer their goals of more guaranteed contracts and greater free agency opportunities.

"The meetings this week were productive and we scheduled a number of additional meetings," MLS president Abbott lied to the Associated Press.

Remaining business for the group includes outing the 2 scabs who voted not to strike.

Group Formed to Support MLS Players Union

In  less than 24 hours nearly 100 people have signed on to a Facebook group formed to support the MLS Players Union in their struggle to achieve economic justice against the exploitive labor practices of the International House of Soccer (AKA Major League Soccer).

The Nordecke Luchador formed the group MLS Solidarity to show which side the fans are on.

"League bosses Don Garber and Mark Abbott (pictured at left) need to see that the fans will not tolerate the continued exploitation of the players," El Luchador said in a written statement. "We in Crew Soccer Nation call on our brothers and sisters in other Fandoms to step up, join our group and demonstrate where they stand. The old union cry is as true today as it was 50 years ago: 'Which Side Are You On?'"

For a detailed analysis of the many insustices built into the present system by the MLS , read this article by the Houston Chronicle's Jose De Jesus Ortiz.     

MLS Preview and Handicapping: New England at FC Dallas

By El Chupa

We hesitate to post lest we distract our readers from the crisis surrounding Nordecke outlined by El Luchador below. But duty calls.

Take Dallas at +110. New England is making a run at the end of the season but Dallas is tough at home and NE is hurt...bad. Dallas is also scoring like crazy. They are very close in the Luchametric and Dallas at home in need of three points to keep their play-off hopes alive is good bet.

MLS Handicapping: Preview and Betting Tips for This Weekend's Fixtures

By El Chupa
Overall, we're not too excited about this weekend's matches from a wagering standpoint. But we offer these humble suggestions.

LA at Crew - We think this is a likely draw. A VERY likely draw. And at +215, a very good wager. But we love the Crew too much not to hope for a win. Betting our mind and not our heart is not in our makeup, however. Look for El Luchador to put it all on the line in this one.

Seattle at New England - We like NE here, at home, fighting for a playoff spot. At +105 it's a decent wager. As far as we're concerned, both teams have been inconsistent and are part of the parity problem in MLS. This is also one worth avoiding as it could be low scoring and all it will take is an odd bounce or call to decide the match. But if we had to choose, we'd choose NE.

COL at KC - At +210 and a full STDEV above KC in the Luchametric, we very much like COL here. They need three points and have already beaten KC this year. We don't expect a lot of goals out of either team, however. Check COL's roster to see who's in and who's out. COL was all over SJO on Wednesday and were screwed by yet another bad call. Imagine that! Crappy officiating in the MLS. What a surprise. Update: COL is beat up pretty badly. This one is now too close to call.

RSL at DAL - We like DAL at even odds here. They are tough at home and teams wilt in the heat. For those of you in the North or Northwest of the country, take it from someone who lives on the GA/FL border. It's still hot as F down here.

Pick of the Week - COL to win at KC

LA at Columbus Preview: Offensive Statistical Insights

By El Chupa
First off, I know you can't see the data given the technical limitations of free blogging, but if you click on the image at the left you'll be able to see a much larger version of it. Here's the skinny.

The chart gives us a break down of each team's leading offensive players. And as we've explained elsewhere, Pro and Pro/GM are Luchametric numbers that allow us to compare the overall offensive contributions or production of individual players. As you can see, Garey leads both teams with 4.05/GM, followed by Beckham, Schelotto, Buddle, Donovan and Lenhart. In Overall Production for the season, Schelotto is on top followed by Donovan, and both are light-years ahead of the rest of the players on both teams. This is not only a reflection of their individual ability, but also their role on their respective teams (the fact that their job is to score and create scoring chances for others so they will naturally have higher numbers than, say, the goalkeeper). Notice also that Schelotto leads both teams when it comes to how many minutes it takes him before he produces either a Goal or an Assist with 105. Garey is second at 110.5 followed by Donovan (115.31) and then Beckham (124.6).

And as we've discussed elsewhere, we think one of the leading indicators of the quality of a scorer is the percentage of Shots on Goal that player turns into actual goals, as a scorer's merit is determined not simply by how many opportunities he either creates on his own or are given to him by his teammates, but the rate at which he actually converts those opportunities into goals. And in this category, Schelotto is the winner, as over one-half of his SOGs turn in to actual goals. Give him an inch, he'll take a freaking mile. Donovan is second at .40.

The numbers tell us what most of us already know: these teams match up extremely closely offensively. Both Beckham and Garey lead their respective teams in Pro/GM but both have played only just over 600 minutes. This suggests that given more playing time, their numbers would drop back down a bit closer to the standard set by Schelotto and Donovan, if not lower. But clearly each team can get goals out of a number of different players and from a number of positions on the field.

One thing we like about the Crew, however, is that they have more players with over two goals each. This confirms what we've already known for a while: that the Crew is very balanced and deep when it comes to putting players on the pitch who can pressure the other team and get the ball in the back of the net (case in point: Lenhart coming off the bench). In a tight game, especially late in the game, this gives the Crew a definite advantage over the rest of the league and over LA, especially at home. It also speaks well for the team's prospects in the playoffs.

LA vs Crew Preview: To Parity and Beyond!

By El Chupa
As the numbers to the left reveal (click to see a larger image), the Crew and LA are tied in virtually every category. The Crew have a narrow lead in total points, and points earned per game. And they have more home wins (HW), but they have only one more win overall than the Galaxy. The Crew have 38 Total Goals to the Galaxy's 35, and they both have virtually the same number of Shots and Shots on Goal. They also are basically tied when it comes to Shots on Goal per Game, Corners Taken, Shots on Goal Allowed, and Corners Against. QSHT is a raw measure of the number of SOGs above the league average that each team has created that were indeed high quality scoring chances, and again the difference is negligible. Most importantly, the Luchametric has them separated by a mere .3 of a STDEV. That amounts to a deadlock. Finally, it must be noted that LA's numbers don't reflect a full season with Beckham in the lineup.

This game will come down to tactics, individual match-ups, home field advantage, and whether each team performs to its full potential. We fear the Crew are staring another draw in the face, with which they should probably be satisfied. The pressure to send a message to LA and the league by earning a full three points is high, however, and the Crew are running out of home games. The pressure not to give up three points, however, is even higher. We'll be doing a comparison of each team's scorers later today or tomorrow.

MLS Handicapping: Nothing for Certain; Pick Your Poison

By El Chupa

El Luchador has made his opinions known about COL at SJO. In looking over the rest of this weekend's matches, El Chupa can only add that there are few if any high-percentage wagers. He can offer some advice, however.

We like NY at home, but only because it's offering the best cash line for a reasonable roll of the dice. They are 2-0-2 at home in their last four home games, and depending on which NY Red Bulls team shows up, they could either win or lose. We certainly expect there to be fewer than three goals, but the line on the under is rather lame.

We like SEA at home against CVS at even odds. SEA is due for a home win and although don't need three points, a win would send a message that they can beat someone other than DC.

Finally, we like the two-game parlay of HOU and LA. Both are at home, and both could use three points, as there aren't many games left and every team needs to get points at home if they hope to earn as many points as possible out of the few points available this late in the season.

MLS Power Rankings: Crew and LA Still Headed for Showdown

By El Chupa
We've tweaked the metric and updated the rankings through last weekend's games. The Crew are still on top. Regardless of LA's embarrassing loss at home to bottom feeders DAL, they maintain their hold on second place. CHI and DC round out the top four.

One obvious oddity: DC is ranked higher than SEA. Look, DC has lost to SEA twice in the last two weeks and yet DC is ranked higher. Get over it. SEA has DC's number and obviously match up better against DC than DC matches up against them. But in terms of overall production week in and week out (wins, losses, goals, etc) DC is slightly better. We stand by the rankings in spite of the head-to-head results. Right now DC's recent form is +2 while SEA's is -2. That's a big part of the difference in the rankings.

In terms of the tweaks to the metric, we think we were weighting away wins too high and losses too low. We also took out Assists and Shots entirely, and we added a measure we call "Quality Chances" or essentially "Quality SOGs." This is a measure of the percentage of SHTS and SOGS a team creates which were actually good chances to score rather than crappy shots that had no chance at all. We've noticed that overall, the sheer number of SHTS a team generates is not a useful way of distinguishing one team from another in terms of actual goals scored. The ratio of SHTs to Gs varies hardly at all across the league. But we HAVE noticed that the best teams have a slightly higher percentage of Goals to SOGS. In other words, the best teams get more goals out of the sheer number of SOGs they create. Another way to think of it is that not all SHTs or SOGs are created equally, so the metric needs to address this. A lame-ass SOG that has absolutely no chance of going in the net ends up in the box score as a SOG and so gets weighted in the metric just as heavily as an SOG that was in fact a true quality scoring chance. The new category attempts to address this by distinguishing teams in terms of how many actual quality scoring chances they create relative to the rest of the league. We'll break the numbers down in more detail later in the week. Right now. El Chupa has to get back to work.

MLS Power Rankings Updated: Crew Rule - Rapids Rising

By El Chupa
The MLS Luchametric Power Rankings have been fully updated through last weekend's games. The Crew and LA remain one and two respectively from last week. Colorado, however, has inched their way into the top four replacing CHI in the third spot with Houston rounding out the top five. The top five teams have a respectable Z-score of .69 of a standard deviation or above, which creates some significant separation between them and the rest of the league. Dallas, SJO and NY remain at the bottom. Relegation anyone?

For the Punters: MLS Fixtures (Updated)

By El Chupa
Three games this weekend in the MLS and a whole slew of World Cup Qualifiers. Let's take the MLS first.

KC at NE and TOR at COL. We think the best bet this weekend is a two game parlay of NE and COL to win. COL has quite possibly the stingiest defense. Although they've allowed 27 Goals Against, which puts them only two below the league average of 29 (HOU leads the league with only 22 GA), they've allowed a mere 74 Shots On Goal Against, well below the league average of 111 and currently the fewest SOGA in the league. And they are extra tough at home.
Meanwhile, NE has a +2 recent form (Wins minus Losses in the last four games) and is hosting a weak KC team. (What can we say? Home field advantage in the MLS doesn't mean dookie. And as we've already quantified, the parity in this league is unparalled. At least we got the COL game right).

This two game parlay is paying 2-1 currently.

The DC at DAL game is too close and should be avoided. The books are offering + odds on either team. If you think DC is burnt from the US Open Cup loss on Weds, than throw the dice and go with Dallas to win (We said it was close, and it was a draw. We are geniuses).

El Chupa Rants: MLS Parity, Marketshare, and Strippers

By El Chupa

As promised, here is an account of parity in the MLS this season, and my thoughts about why the MLS can go suck it.
To begin, allow El Chupa to rant. Great job MLS! You've raised the least common denominator in the league to the point where only one or two teams truly suck, but most teams are all pretty much the same. Plus, they all pretty much have the same chance of getting into the Playoffs and most of them WILL get into the playoffs. What incentive is there, then, for a team to acquire first rate talent and coaching? NONE! Parity, when it is a result of each team struggling mightily to be better than the others is one thing; parity when it is a result of an entire league rigged to reward mediocrity is something else: it's called Major League Soccer.

As the chart above indicates, through last weekend's games, 11 teams have earned 31 pts or more. The top two teams in each conference plus the next best six teams regardless of conference make the playoffs. The word on the street is that the current minimum number to qualify for the playoffs is 33. As the numbers suggest, 11 of the 15 teams in the league currently still have a shot at the playoffs. Let's think about this for a minute, shall we?

First, the playoff system is a joke. It's driven solely by the interest in generating revenue not the logic of sport and certainly not the logic of the beautiful game. Explain to me why over HALF of the teams in the league should qualify for the playoffs? Such a system insures that average and even mediocre teams get "rewarded" by additional games. Further, the EPL has no playoff system, La Liga has no playoff system, the Bundesliga has no playoff system. Why? Because it makes no freaking sense, that's why. In the MLS, after 30 games, including home and away against every other team in the league, it's clear who's the best team in the league in any given year: the team with the most points! Duh!

But it gets worse, the third column of the chart (PAA) indicates how many points above the league average (Points Above Average) each team has earned thus far. Notice that the top four have each achieved a respectable number of PAA. But notice also that seven teams are only within one or two points of the league average. No bell curve for MLS, we want everyone to be the same: average! Yay! We have the most mediocre league in the world! A bad call here (and there a lot of them in the MLS), an unlucky bounce there, and practically the entire league would be the same.

But it gets still worse. Look at the last column in the chart or points earned per game. Notice anything? How about the fact that a full 13 teams are within one point, or one draw, of each other. Read it two ways. One, the chart clearly shows that regardless of how many games each team has played (the more games, the more potential PTS, remember, so this column makes up for the fact that not every team has played the same number of games) virtually every team earns about the same number of PTS/GM as every other; indeed, the difference among 11 of the teams is negligible. Two, this means that when these teams play each other, each team has pretty much the same chance of coming away with 1 to 3 PTS as every other team. Look at the win-loss ratio. The average number of wins is 8, the average number of losses is 8. Most teams are within 1 or at most 2 W/L of the average. If the team was comprised of 15 Man Us, or 15 Barcas, it would be one thing. But we've got a league of 13 teams who would get carved apart by Portsmouth, currently at the bottom of the standings in the EPL, and two who are so awful they might get carved apart by the teams in USL 1.

The bottom line of course is, does parity equal good football? We think not. Unlike our friends at MLS.Talk, we think parity is bullshit and a symptom of just how far the MLS has its head up its ass. Allow El Chupa to rant a bit further.

The MLS has got to quit marketing to American Sports Fans and start marketing more to American SOCCER Fans. We don't drink Bud Light, we don't want cheerleaders at the games, we don't want two conferences which completely distort how the teams really compare to one another. We don't want a bullshit playoff where lame-ass teams who are incapable of playing exciting, creative, beautiful football get rewarded with more TV time and more TV revenue. Hey, MLS! You're losing TV marketshare to the European leagues. Hey, MLS! You're losing TV marketshare to the South American leagues. Why? Because we know better you twits! Why should I watch some dismal game between two mediocre MLS teams when I can watch a much better match from Europe or S.A. on FSC, GOL, Setanta, or their Spanish-language sister stations?

We want a single freaking table! We want relegation to the USL! We want at most four teams in the playoffs if we have to have a playoff just to keep the league afloat. And for the love of God, microbrews, and country, get rid of the Crewzers! High School and certainly College cheerleaders are actual athletes; professional cheerleaders are strippers without poles and far too many clothes on. Give me a break.

For the Punters: Keep Hope Alive

By El Chupa

After a difficult weekend, El Chupa has the following observations for our brother and sister wagerers.

Remember that the reason it is so difficult to make any money is the odds. Picking a likely winner is fairly easy, but picking one where the payout is even remotely worth the risk is very hard. The house always wins. And it's certainly the case that the house sets the odds in its favor not only for individual games, but also in order to steer bettors to certain matches. Man U at home vs Portsmouth is a no-brainer, and the house stands to make very little or even lose money if it is heavily played. So, they set the odds such that even the most die hard Man U troglodyte will lay off and look elsewhere. Do that for enough matches and the number of matches worth betting on gets smaller and thus attract the most attention.

The Luchametric is about to undergo a major revision. We're still very confident in the metric as a measure of a team's production, but we've learned a lot over the last few weeks and it's time to introduce some long-considered changes. Look for the new metric in the next few days.

MLS Parity: The Crew lost to NY yesterday. WTF? SEA lost at home to TOR. WTF? DC beat CHI at CHI. WTF WTF?! It's enough to make one give up on the beautiful game altogether. But a quick crunch of the numbers revealed just how much parity there is in the MLS this season and last season as well. Look for El Chupa's analysis in the next few days. Bottom line? Any team in the MLS can beat any other on any given night. LA and NE are both surging, but we really don't think they are better than the other top teams. We think that there are several teams (HOU, CLB, LA, NE, DC, CHI, SEA, even TOR) all of which are pretty much even. It makes for very frustrating attempts at sound wagers. If the best team in the MLS can't go into NY and beat the worst team, I don't give a damn about home field advantage, then something's fucked up. Either football is not the beautiful game but is in fact a completely stupid game, or the MLS has achieved a sort of parity that keeps each franchise in the hunt for the post-season thus generating revenue for each team and the league, but a parity that levels the playing field to such a point it makes for boring, stupid soccer with teams struggling just to create chances, goals and wins. We want competitive football, not every single team to be average, which is what you get when there is nothing BUT parity in the league. Think about it--parity means everybody is "average" as no one is better or worse than anyone else. Sounds like communism to me.