Jamon M - MLS and footy analysis

Jumping on to send this reminder: Friday Stat Dump returns next week.

If you'd like me to consider sharing a specific metric / statistic next week or in the future, let me know in the replies. I focus more on MLS league-level and teams than players, at least for now.

Sharing is Caring + Fan-Focused Frameworks how to generate shareholder value

I wrote something a little different:

statesidestats.substack.com/p/sharing-is...

No Friday Stat Dump this week and likely not next week, either. Apologies. Life sometimes gets in the way.

Enjoy the games this weekend.

I'm Jamon

and

Sanna Nyassi

2025 MLS Analytics Survey — American Soccer Analysis Every year, we update the State of MLS Analytics by putting teams into tiers based upon how many analytics staff they have. However, the number of analytics staff members doesn’t necessarily say a...

We had our say on the state of analytics in MLS. Now the staffers get theirs'.

Here's the 2025 MLS analytics survey: www.americansocceranalysis.com/home/2025/7/21/2025-mls-analytics-survey

Analytics Effectiveness Tiers next year imo

The annual MLS Analytics Staff Survey drops tomorrow with a new top 2 teams seen as most analytically advanced.

The least analytically advanced teams remain the same with one Loony exception.

The MLS analytics tiers for 2025 are out! Survey results coming soon.

What can we learn from possession-adjusted Clearances Differential? Not much we don't already know.

It makes a lot of sense that possession-oriented teams don't clear a lot (they want to keep the ball, not create 50-50s), so San Diego also sticks out here.

Enjoy the games!

/end

Over a season, it's logical that if a team has a lot of clearances against them, then they likely apply a lot of pressure.

Philadelphia with the most against (high attacking pressure), and FC Dallas with the fewest (low attacking pressure) make a lot of sense to me.

Game state matters, too.

3/

I prefer to possession-adjust them. That gets more rid of the "do you want the ball or not?" question, at least, given teams that don't have the ball as much -- in even game state, at least -- will probably have more clearances.

Even with possession-adjusting, Minnesota has the most.

2/

Friday stat dump: Clearances. Are they good or bad? Well, my preference is do them as little as possible, but the real answer is a bit complicated: it depends.

There are good, bad, and meh teams on both ends of this spectrum.

1/

* Maniacally laughs in probabilities *

The most aggressive set-piece team in the world plays in Minnesota Under the guidance of a former Manchester United assistant, Minnesota United are finding MLS success with a surprising tactic

Minnesota United became the most aggressive set-piece team on the planet with old-fashioned tactics backed by new analytics — and now they can’t stop scoring from it.

My first for The Guardian:

Tanner Beason doing his best Messi impression but can he now score a brace to follow that up?

Now that the 2nd round of Euro games is done, there's finally enough to data to analyze. I built a shiny app that lets you view Atomic VAEP for Euro games + players. (All modeling/data processing credit goes to @chloesainsbury.bsky.social)

Lmk what you think: catabush.shinyapps.io/vaep_tables/

While I was out-of-office, @paulharvey.theoutfield.nyc released this gem. Be sure to check it out.

I wonder how important those progressive passes and carries are? 🤔

Using Goals Added Subcategories for Player Evaluation — American Soccer Analysis By Paul Harvey , Mike Imburgio , Ben Bellman Since it was introduced, Goals Added has been superior to most of the publicly available algorithmic rating systems, such as those provided by WhoScor...

We dropped g+ sub categories last week, and here is how we use them from @paulharvey.theoutfield.nyc @mimburgio.bsky.social and @beninquiring.bsky.social

www.americansocceranalysis.com/home/2025/7/... Using Goals Added Subcategories for Player Evaluation — American Soccer Analysis

No stat dump this week. I’m off the grid essentially until next week.

Be safe this weekend.

xG Tableau is updated!

public.tableau.com/app/profile/...

The three most entertaining players of my adult life:

3. Ronaldinho
2. Messi
1. Calvo

Francisco Calvo doing Francisco Calvo things.

Beau Leroux. Remember the name. Nice banger at Stanford, but the kid could be special.

But the Galaxy just can't keep giving that kind of space in Zone 14, either. I mean, they can. They've been doing it all season.

The race is on to see if the underlying numbers catch up to the Timbers quickly enough to knock them down a ways in the standings.

As I saw live, they didn't look good against the Quakes, and today was horrendous in Toronto.

FC Dallas took two home games this week and played them like two away games against San Jose and San Diego.

This was the GameFlow on Wed. That is not a team playing at home in MLS.
bsky.app/profile/game...

I was wondering what Timber Joey was doing at the Cali Clasico

Incredible that other MLS teams watch Minnesota score from a box throw every damn week and some of them still aren't doing it

Make it six for Evander.

It can be easily argued that Nico Lodeiro was the strongest in-league inspiration for MLS data analysts like myself over the past 10 years. Every new 10 that came in the league was held to the Lodeiro standard.

End of an MLS era.