Jesse Davis

San Diego FC are setting risky new records in an eye-catching MLS debut No team in the world relies on buildup quite like the newly-formed group of ‘30 strangers’ with teenagers in key positions

If you loved Sarri's Napoli or De Zerbi's Brighton, you should be watching Mikey Varas's San Diego.

I wrote for the Guardian about the risky press-baiting style that makes MLS's newest team its most tactically interesting, statistically extreme and just plain fun.

EurIPS is coming! 📣 Mark your calendar for Dec. 2-7, 2025 in Copenhagen 📅

EurIPS is a community-organized conference where you can present accepted NeurIPS 2025 papers, endorsed by @neuripsconf.bsky.social and @nordicair.bsky.social and is co-developed by @ellis.eu

eurips.cc

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:

In the stands with my son, the Club World Cup was as human as it could possibly be Unexpectedly cheap tickets gave my boy an overwhelming soccer experience, and me a jolt of faith in a flawed tournament

I took my 8-year-old son to his first professional soccer game... at the Club World Cup. It was too much of everything.

But we found a moment of humanity in amid the artifice and the avarice.

Column @theguardian.com

www.theguardian.com/football/202...

The US needed more than a trophy from the Gold Cup, and it may just get it Missing stars and short on sparkle, the USMNT have still found something vital at this Gold Cup: a renewed sense of belief, identity and collective fight

Column on last night's spirited #USMNT penalty-shootout win over Costa Rica in the Gold Cup quarterfinals, and what this tournament really represents to the Americans.

@theguardian.com

www.theguardian.com/football/202...

Predicting the 2025 Women's European Championship The UEFA Women’s Euro 2025 will be held in Switzerland in July. Will Spain capture the title after winning the World Cup in 2023? Or will…

Our Women's Euro 2025 predictions are out! 🔮

Spain 🇪🇸 is our model's favorite to win the title, with Germany 🇩🇪 close behind. Meanwhile, Belgium 🇧🇪 will most likely be eliminated in the group stage.

w\ @jessejdavis.bsky.social

dtai.cs.kuleuven.be/sports/blog/...

I think we should be building systems that complement people; systems that do well the things that people do poorly; systems that make individuals and organizations more effective and more humane. 3/

If you missed it yesterday, I spoke to fans, economists and players unions and wrote long about the overlapping ways in which the Club World Cup represents a collision of all the untenable forces in modern soccer.

My Marathon Journey with Runeasi by Pieter Robberechts Discover my marathon journey with Runeasi by Pieter Robberechts, including my race day experience and new personal best of 2:31:59.

I strongly believe biomechanical analysis will be the next big leap in sports analytics—and not just for the pros. I got a glimpse by testing the @runeasi.bsky.social sensor (a @dtai-kuleuven.bsky.social spin-off) and wrote about how it helped during my marathon training → runeasi.ai/my-marathon-...

🌀 𝐎𝐩𝐞𝐧-𝐒𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞 𝐅𝐨𝐨𝐭𝐛𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐀𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐲𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 @ 𝐏𝐲𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐋𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐨𝐧 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟓

On Saturday I presented a Graph Neural Network Expected Possession Value model at @pydatalondon.bsky.social 2025.

This 𝐆𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐡𝐄𝐏𝐕 model is an ML approach that predicts scoring probability for any moment in the game

🔗 tinyurl.com/pydata-ldn25

This is one meal that makes both kids very happy

To give an example that funding research can have positive benefits beyond what was intended: we were able to apply some ideas from our sports research to play a small role in a study on Parkinson’s disease

www.biorxiv.org/content/bior...

I’m honored by @leanderalphabet.bsky.social excellent write up of our soccer research!

Lots of credit to my wonderful collaborators @janvanhaaren.be @wannesm.bsky.social @probberechts.bsky.social Maaike Lotte Tom @lorenzocascioli.bsky.social @hugoriosneto.bsky.social Max Arne Tim & so many others

How futi sees football in goal probabilities Meet the most important model behind our ratings

Over the next few weeks we'll be publishing articles to help you get to know how futi's stats work.

First up: meet our possession value model that turns every touch of the ball into goal probabilities.

Spain - Belgium #FlameTime with a very happy daughter

It's the hope that kills you

Yes (yesterday actually)!

I’ve tried that and gotten a response ! Thanks. Let’s see what happens

We’ve submitted a paper to arxiv that’s been on hold for 3 months. This seems abnormally long. Has anyone else had this issue? Any suggestions?

An experimental analysis of possession state value models: part 3 Conceptually, possession value approaches such as VAEP, PV, OBV, and g+ are all identical: they estimate the chances of scoring (and…

🚨The third and final blog post in our series on possession value models design decisions🔍: Can the features chosen to represent the game state inadvertently bias player ratings? w/
@probberechts.bsky.social @jessejdavis.bsky.social Lode Van Tente

dtai.cs.kuleuven.be/sports/blog/...

Thanks for picking up the mantel and carrying this on!

📣 Excited to share that the Workshop on Machine Learning and Data Mining for Sports Analytics (MLSA) will be held again this September as part of @ecmlpkdd.org! w/ @hugoriosneto.bsky.social,
@azimmerdm.bsky.social and Maaike Van Roy

dtai.cs.kuleuven.be/events/MLSA25

Machine Learning and Data Mining for Sports Analytics The MLSA 2024 proceedings focus on the application of machine learning and data mining techniques to the domain of sports.

The proceedings of the latest edition of our (@jessejdavis.bsky.social, @janvanhaaren.be, Ulf Brefeld) workshop are finally out: link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-86692-0
And the organization for this year's edition's already underway: dtai.cs.kuleuven.be/events/MLSA25/

We are looking for a Data Analyst to support performance functions of Tottenham Hotspur. Lots of interesting projects ahead, a lot to learn about football and lots of space to develop tech skills (I'll help here). More details on LinkedIn. www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/41...

Congratulations to our DTAI researchers for presenting their work at #AAAI2025 #AAAI25 Lennert De Smet, Dimos Tsouros, Liesbeth Allein, Jaron Maene, David Depot,
Ignace Bleukx.

This is a great initiative by @PySport! A common theme in the discussion was how many started their projects to learn. For me, contributing to open-source and collaborating with others has been instrumental in becoming a better programmer. Excited to see what’s next! 🚀

We all know backpropagation can calculate gradients, but it can do much more than that!

Come to my #AAAI2025 oral tomorrow (11:45, Room 119B) to learn more.

Christian Pulisic docuseries exemplifies USMNT’s mostly silent golden generation The Milan star’s nine-episode turn on Paramount+ is most notable in that it reveals anything about the player at all

I wrote about Christian Pulisic, his "Pulisic" docuseries, and what it says about a United States men's national team generation that lacks the promotional zeal of its predecessors.

@us.theguardian.com

www.theguardian.com/football/202...