Category Archives: Major League Soccer

Categories

Archive

Inflation-adjusted efficiencies of MLS front offices

Now that the 2011 MLS Cup Playoffs are in full swing, I’ve taken a look back at the just-completed regular season with a post on the relationship between payroll and league performance and another on the marginal payroll cost per point won in the league. In this post, I’ll expand the marginal payroll cost study by looking at the previous five seasons, from 2007 until now. Why 2007? That was the year when the league implemented the Designated Player Rule, popularly known as the "Beckham Rule". Before that season MLS teams operated within a narrow payroll band, but in the… Read more ›

AuthorHoward Hamilton
Categories
Football Business Analytics, Major League Soccer, Team Performance

How efficient are MLS front offices? A performance benchmarking analysis

Following on from my previous post on the relationship between Major League Soccer payrolls and on-field performance, I consider how efficient league teams have been in the 2011 regular season. I seek to answer the question, What is an MLS team’s cost per point relative to the league average? In order to answer this question, I perform a quantitative performance benchmark analysis modeled after Bill Gerrard’s study of the Oakland A’s in his Moneyball paper. Performance benchmarking is the practice of assessing an organization’s performance relative to some defined baseline. (It doesn’t have to be an organization; such analyses are… Read more ›

AuthorHoward Hamilton
Categories
Football Business Analytics, Major League Soccer, performance benchmarking analysis, Team Performance

How financially deterministic is MLS?

One of the theses of Kuper and Szymanski’s book Soccernomics is that team performance in a football league is strongly determined by its payroll; in other words, clubs with highest payrolls finish at the top of the league more often than not. I’ve seen publications that state the correlation coefficient between payroll and points in the English Premier League is around 75%, and perhaps there are similar results in other European leagues (definitely Spain, to some extent Germany). I decided to look at the payroll figures for the recently completed 2011 MLS regular season to determine if the same principle… Read more ›

AuthorHoward Hamilton
Categories
League Competitions, Major League Soccer, soccernomics, Team Performance

The Curse of CONCACAF Champions League and Squad Management

During tonight’s MLS Playoff match between the New York Red Bulls and FC Dallas, the “Curse of CONCACAF Champions League” was brought up.  FC Dallas has had to play more matches than NYRB this season and came into the match looking a bit fatigued.  Since the CONCACAF version isn’t as lucrative as the European version, [...] Read more ›

AuthorSarah Rudd
Categories
Analytics, Major League Soccer, MLS, playoffs, Statistics

Goalscoring variances at close of MLS regular season

Three months ago I wrote an article on the goalscoring characteristics of champion and relegated teams, and showed that champion clubs in general have very tight and consistent defenses. In particular, the goals allowed variance — the spread of the individual numbers about the average goals allowed — tends to be less than 1.0 for the top teams, which means that the standard deviation is less than 1.0 goals/game. (Standard deviation is the square root of variance.) Now that the 2011 MLS regular season is over, it might be useful to plot a similar chart of team goalscoring statistics. Below… Read more ›

AuthorHoward Hamilton
Categories
Major League Soccer, Team Performance

Final Pythagorean table for 2011 MLS Regular Season

Below is the final Pythagorean table for the 2011 Major League Soccer season which concluded this evening. The league Pythagorean exponent is 1.70, and draw and loss columns are in reverse order from the American sports table format. The LA Galaxy raised their performance in the final third of the season and narrowly missed becoming the fourth team in MLS history with a points-per-game average above 2.00. They and the Seattle Sounders were the biggest overachievers of the MLS regular season. Equally impressive was the rise of Sporting Kansas City. They were bottom of the league table in June, thanks… Read more ›

AuthorHoward Hamilton
Categories
Major League Soccer, Soccer Pythagorean, Soccer Pythagorean: Tables

Pythagorean table for 2011 MLS Regular Season (2011-06-12)

It’s taken a while to reach this point, but all of the MLS teams have played enough matches to make a Pythagorean table meaningful. Here is such a table for the 2011 MLS regular season for matches played up to today (12 June). As always, the league Pythagorean exponent is 1.70. Draw and loss columns are reversed from the format used to report records in the USA. Almost all of the league teams play in line with their statistical expectations. Sporting KC and Vancover are the exceptions with a Pythagorean residual of -5. Sporting have played almost all of their… Read more ›

AuthorHoward Hamilton
Categories
Major League Soccer, Soccer Pythagorean, Soccer Pythagorean: Tables