Jamon M - MLS and footy analysis

That was a lot of fun. Vancouver has been a lot of fun this season.

Happy for their fans, and the 53K that showed up tonight.

Weird season for LAFC, but it’s nice that Son is working out. Can’t wait to see a full season of him with this group.

That second yellow to Blackmon has changed everything. Son goal, LAFC momentum, now an extra time advantage.

And even if Vancouver somehow advances, they won’t have a very key player for the Western finals.

Goalkeeper assist! #VANvLAFC

Regular FSD readers (thank you!) might note something new: I've added grouping bars to my analysis toolkit.

Not just another chart, it's extremely configurable across the 2,000 metrics/stats I can track.

What group of metrics/stats would you like to see next? Here's xG Tier goals:

That's another FSD in the books, and I even got it out on Friday for a change.

MLS playoffs are back. Enjoy the games!

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Kai Wagner got a bit of a boost by looking at all ball-winning actions, because he gets a high amount of successful tackles that win possession.

To be fair, ball-winning actions doesn't change teams by a lot on a per-game basis compared to recoveries alone, but I wanted to show it anyway.

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Whoops, that went out before I was ready. Let's pick this back up.

Jeppe Tverskov from San Diego is the breakaway leader in recoveries.

Recoveries are not the only ways players win balls, however. There are also interceptions and tackles won (w/ the ball): ball-winning actions.

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But which players are helping these teams create this differential? With my handy new player analysis, we can easily answer this question.

Here are the top 40 players in total recoveries for the season.

So we can see how the full season ended, here is a scatterplot of recoveries differential and goal differential.

As a bonus, here is the same but with expected goals differential (xGD). It's not surprising that it has a bit of a stronger effect with xGD.

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Does winning duels lead to winning MLS games? Finding a defensive stat that really matters We found the real “50-50 balls”, the ones every soccer player on the planet was told to win growing up.

Friday Stat Dump: MLS 2025 Ball-winning Action leaders.

Back in June, I wrote about the value of recovery actions in a FSD thread and for Backheeled.

In short, I demonstrated a solid positive correlation between recovery differential and goal differential.

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www.backheeled.com/winning-duel...

Alex Freeman’s story I feel like is almost underrated. Became a full time starter this season and not only was MLS Best XI but is also contributing to the national team. His ascendence in 2025 is remarkable

👀🤔

No Friday Stat Dump today due to family plans. I may produce one tomorrow.

Either way, enjoy the playoff games and finals across all the American leagues.

Over in USL, Spokane Velocity lead Portland Hearts of Pine in the USL1 semi-final on — what else? — a long-throw set piece.

1-0 halftime in Spokane.

I’m a huge fan of his offball runs when the ball is behind midfield. He’s such a unique threat that just didn’t work in San Jose for various reasons.

Amahl Pellegrino finding success with San Diego, particularly in the playoffs, warms my heart.

That ball from Jordi Alba to Silvetti was a good example of a linebreaking pass from the outside. That’s what he does.

Everyone is aware we’ve got Cincinnati and Columbus Hell is Real Derby in the playoffs happening right now, correct?

My feed is all MNUFC/Seattle, Nashville/Miami, and the Next Pro final…

Only impressive if you mentioned it coming down to keeper kicks.

Would guess that was why MLS’s officials determined not to have Obed Vargas retake his attempt.

Thanks, Robert. 😂

The Sounders use of third-man runs and off-ball movement led directly to the first goal and to the corner that led to the second.

It’s completely baffled the Minnesota United back line and given the Sounders an early 2-0 lead.

For the same reason I use Lifecycle instead of Life-cycle, Life Cycle, or LifeCycle. it's accepted and looks better to me. it's also the way I talk.

I do admittedly flipflop on Through ball and Throughball in my writing, though.

Let's chat about it. It's tough to communicate nuance in 280 characters.

One of them does 😂

anytime. happy to chat offline, too.

The objective is to identify passes not classified as through balls but create clear attacking space behind defenders. Event data poses challenges, which is why it's a "mostly accurate" method.

Looking at completed through balls + linebreaking passes gives us an interesting set of players:

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Questions come up when I use linebreaking passes. I'm not ready to share the methodology publicly yet, but I have validated the method visually with dozens of passes.

What I can share: the methodology takes ASA's definition of progressive passes (25% closer to the goal) and adds more logic.

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Now that everybody is caught up on long throws it's time to start talking about Dyche Zone free kicks

I visually reviewed a few dozen passes to confirm the logic was sound.