mark thompson

ASA Roundtable: American Soccer Insights Summit — American Soccer Analysis At the end of January, many members of our ASA Community headed down to Rice University in Houston to talk a whole lot of soccer analytics. ASA Slack was buzzing around so much we figured we’d convene...

A lot of the ASA-erati attended the @americansoccerinsights.com summit at Rice University last week, and people wanted to talk about their experience.

So we convened the ASA roundtable for highlights.

www.americansocceranalysis.com/home/2026/2/7/asa-roundtable-american-soccer-insights-summit

I don't watch a lot of rugby but that's gotta be the quickest yellow card after entering the pitch that I've seen

Head on over to bsky.app/profile/did:... for a stream of light football posts. You can follow @blueskysportsbar.bsky.social if you want your football posts to be pulled* into the feed

*the algo is a work in progress but it's still pretty good

I find it annoying that @bsky.app has such a good feature but it's not obvious to me how to easily grab a link to the feed during general use of the app/website

Gonna try and tweak something on the Live Football Chat feed to weed out some of the more obvious Six Nations chat

We are so, so close to that guy finally being able to cut his hair #footy-live

I'm a little uneasy about pressing the accelerator on this kinda thing, but an LLM agent self-developing a framework for social media interaction made something that would be useful to, like, 30% of bsky

Part of that is that Mainoo is on the steep upwards curve of development ofc. But so many other factors in how a player performs

The recent United men's team performances are a good example of how players aren't just one static 'quality'. There are times over the past few seasons when a Casemiro-Mainoo double pivot would've been heavily targeted

It's so great that we have such an obvious datapoint to check for 'ball juiced?'

KICKOFF #UFCC Match #5421 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Manchester United F.C. 🏆 vs 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Tottenham Hotspur F.C. ____ #MUNTOT #EPL

KICKOFF #UFCC Match #5421

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Manchester United F.C. 🏆 vs 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Tottenham Hotspur F.C.
____
#MUNTOT #EPL

ahhh right. Yeah. No, I'd agree. And it's hard to hold all of the details in your head to design something more unique if you're not already experienced at it

Like 'this project is unimaginative and derivative, this is what you get if you don't learn to code'?

I'm really lucky that these coding models hit at *just* the point where my coding skills were decent enough to already be turning my thinking to software design

‘I know where you park your car’: Online abuse and real-world fear in women’s football Online threats have been described as 'alarming', while the game is trying to balance accessibility with player safety

Important reporting

www.nytimes.com/athletic/702...

The biomechnical secrets behind Matheus Cunha’s explosive shooting Breaking down the four key elements of the Brazilian's exceptional technique

we should have more biomechanics articles in 2026

www.nytimes.com/athletic/701...

Grace writing about past football is an auto RT, auto read

What Went Wrong? Brazil at the 2006 World Cup Ronaldinho + Kaká + Adriano + Ronaldo = not a lot

published the review of brazil's 2006 world cup failure last night. check it out. www.graceonfootball.com/p/what-went-...

not gonna comment on the pitch markings

This comes up a lot so I do want to let you all know that the option of turning the existing building into a heritage/museum site has been costed out and it is substantially more expensive

"Imagine everyone had access to materials and power saws and belt sanders. Everyone on your street would, in theory, be able to build you tables and chairs for your business. You probably wouldn’t want them to, unless they could already build something sturdy. But there’d be uses for it."

The wobbly chair of sports software A few weeks ago, I made Sportscode. Hudl, watch out. Well, actually, the point is that Hudl doesn’t need to watch out, because - alas - there is a difference between a working DIY video clipping bit ...

y'all talking about whether AI will kill SaaS apps, I think this holds up

www.getgoalsideanalytics.com/wobbly-chair...

oh, the men's Six Nations is gonna test the Live Football Chat feed and it's not passing the test. I'll try and get around to tweaking it, but it won't be *easy*

ah. France are good?

the Epstein files are really devastating because they remind me of how many girls and women miss out on professional opportunities, mentorship and careers because of how many powerful, rich and influential men only view girls and women — and interactions with them — through the lens of sex

“Claude Code added GasTown as a feature”

You bolt awake in the mountains of Carthage. You are not online. It is 217 BC. You are the general Hannibal, and you have changed your mind. The future cannot come to pass. Rome must burn.

There’s never been a better time to build something without understanding how it works at all

FAA-Wawrinka at Montpellier tomorrow, oo

my other two cents is that everyone working in media should have a personal site and a personal email list, less for a fall-back income stream, more for 'this quarter I have worked on X and Y, follow me at Z' given that Z will change every 9-18 months

Just mean that they and the world are all multimedia. My gut feeling is that thinking of 'replacing a newspaper' immediately puts you into the written focus that isn't the state of the world anymore