Jesse Davis

Mauricio Pochettino suddenly has a glut of USMNT options as the World Cup looms Timing and luck often dictate a team’s success at tournaments. And the co-hosts have players coming into form at just the right time

Fortunes at the World Cup are largely dictated by the timing of primes and injuries and form. After months of concern, the United States men's national team suddenly find itself in a very good spot with all three.

There are 107 days to go until the U.S. plays Paraguay.

Column @theguardian.com

Biases in Expected Goals Models Confound Finishing Ability Expected Goals (xG) has emerged as a popular tool for evaluating finishing skill in soccer analytics. It involves comparing a player's cumulative xG with their actual goal output, where consistent ove...

Longer and more worked out versions here

arxiv.org/abs/2401.09940

⚽Call for Abstracts ⚽

The abstract submission for the Leuven Institute of Sport Science’s #FootballAnalytics Symposium closes this Thursday, Feb 26 @ 17:00 CET

The symposium is on April 23rd. Speakers include @unravelsports.bsky.social and Pascal Bauer (DfB)

www.kuleuven.be/liss/events/...

New Vacancy - Data Engineer I am excited to share we are recruiting for a Data Engineer to join our Research team at Liverpool Football Club - this is a fantastic opportunity for someone to be a… | ... New Vacancy - Data Engineer I am excited to share we are recruiting for a Data Engineer to join our Research team at Liverpool Football Club - this is a fantastic opportunity for someone to be a par...

We’re recruiting for a Data Engineer to join our Research team at Liverpool FC. In my (perhaps biased) view, it’s a great opportunity to join an excellent team, work at the forefront of sports analytics, and have a tangible impact.
www.linkedin.com/posts/conorq...

Watching soccer in the soccer with @hugoriosneto.bsky.social

Family night for OHL - Arsenal

I'm thrilled that our spinoff Runeasi has closed an investment round and secured €1 million in new funding!

This will help us in our quest to make the world run better!

trends.knack.be/ondernemen/a...

Get ready to meet futi Sorry for the wait. Would some free advanced data make it up to you?

We're so back

The World Cup is out of reach for many. The hope lies outside the stadiums | Leander Schaerlaeckens The opportunity for this tournament’s legacy is in the fan fests, camps and tune-ups accessible to more than the lucky few

The 2026 World Cup will be inaccessible to many, whether financially or geographically. But the tournament's unprecedented vastness will also give it an enormous footprint, a chance to fashion a kind of shadow World Cup out of the tournament's orbit. To still leave a legacy.

Column @theguardian.com

⚽Event Announcement⚽

Leuven Institute of Sport Science’s #FootballAnalytics Symposium will take place on April 23!

Current invited speakers are Prof. Pascal Bauer (DFB, USaarland) and @unravelsports.bsky.social

Abstract submission closes on Feb 26 @ 17:00 CET

www.kuleuven.be/liss/events/...

Can we measure the ability to block dangerous passes in soccer? ⛔️⚽️

We recently presented our latest research paper "Quantifying Off-Ball Defensive Impact through Cover Shadows" at the Hudl Performance Insights 2025 Conference:

📺 youtu.be/kf6far1Zst8?...
📝 static.hudl.com/craft/perfor...

OHL Arsenal with a very happy 12 year old

Congratulations Chloe! That’s fantastic news!

From Data to Wisdom: Playing Football’s Information Game at the Right Level – Jan Van Haaren From Data to Wisdom: Playing Football’s Information Game at the Right Level.

My latest blog post "From Data to Wisdom: Playing Football’s Information Game at the Right Level" explores how football clubs can move from simply collecting data to making better, evidence-based decisions.

janvanhaaren.be/posts/from-d...

Are set plays ruining the Premier League? How throw-ins are boosting Arsenal, but adding boredom As Premier League teams learn set pieces are a more efficient way to score, open play goals become rarer. Can the game withstand such a shift?

I've always wondered (and feared) what might happen if everyone started taking set pieces seriously. The first eight weeks of the Premier League season might be giving us a glimpse into the future, where soccer no longer features much, well, soccer: www.espn.com/soccer/story...

Congratulations to DTAI PhD student Laurens Devos for successfully defending his PhD thesis on "Verification and reasoning for decision tree ensembles": tinyurl.com/47efmbj5
🎓👏🥂🍾
@wannesm.bsky.social
@jessejdavis.bsky.social

We’re excited to launch the 𝐒𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐂𝐨𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐫 𝐗 𝐏𝐲𝐒𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐀𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐲𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 𝐂𝐮𝐩 - a hackathon-style challenge that will bring together the community to collaborate, compete, and innovate using open-source SkillCorner data.

👉 Sign up pysport.org/analytics-cup

How Do We Know a Metric Is Good? A Case Study on VAEP In sports analytics, the primary goal is to develop indicators that quantify the skills, capabilities, and tendencies of athletes and…

Before an app launches, it undergoes usability testing. Why shouldn't an advanced sports metric?

In our latest blog, we propose 4 criteria:
1️⃣ Trustworthy
2️⃣ Novel
3️⃣ Intuitive
4️⃣ Useful

Then, we put VAEP to the test...

\w @jessejdavis.bsky.social & Maaike Van Roy

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

Yes, this should also be possible when using the Poisson Binomial. You can use the approach outlined by @centralwinger.com that we refer to in the blog.

TBH, I think that would also be the best way to do it for MCMC as then you avoid using rejection sampling.

Match xG Simulator How (im)probable was the match result? Check it out here.

@probberechts.bsky.social has also provided an online tool that computes the exact probabilities:

dtai.cs.kuleuven.be/static/sport...

This is joint work with @janvanhaaren.be & @probberechts.bsky.social

Many others have looked at the MCMC approach (cf @danny.page's online simulator) or discussed how to use the Poisson Binomial distribution to compute these probabilities exactly (cf @tonyelhabr.bsky.social, Jonas Lindstrøm,...)

Expected goals and the Monte Carlo Trap On a team level, xG is often used to assess the quality of the goal scoring opportunities that a team creates and concedes. That is, it…

We can use xG to compute post-hoc win-draw-loss probabilities.

Our new blogpost shows MCMC's estimates of these probabilities are unstable, computing them exactly is faster than approximating them, and MCMC's runtime strongly depends on its implementation.

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

Burger time! With a very fitting flipper thanks to @janvanhaaren.be and Giels

The Long Game by Leander Schaerlaeckens: 9780593653876 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books The gripping account of the U.S. men’s national soccer team’s winding saga from obscurity to the global stage as they stand on the brink of a seminal World Cup in 2026. For almost half a century,...

🚨🚨You can now pre-order my book, THE LONG GAME, on the United States men's national soccer team and its messy rise from total international irrelevance to, well, TBD!🚨🚨

I spoke to ~150 players/coaches/etc. and got fresh stories and unprecedented access!

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/722130...

At OHL for women’s champions league qualifiers with the whole family

3. Discuss how to foster such collaborations. We provide (anecdotal) advice, wrt possible pitfalls that may arise and how to avoid them when collaborating. We believe joint events can help facilitate collaborations. This paper arose out of discussions Sigrid and I had at such an event. 4/4

2. Highlight emerging trends in computational research on sports both from a methodological and task perspective.

Tackling these problems requires combining sports & computational expertise. I.e., deeper collaborations between sports and computational researchers will be essential.

3 / 4

1. Overview historically prominent lines of work in computational approaches (e.g., AI/ML/Statistics) to analyzing tactics in soccer.

Hopefully, this can serve as an introduction for those wanting to learn about the area but many not know where to look for relevant publications.

2 / 4