I'm a dumbass most likely, cause I missed that part of it initially.

Advanced stats (even just Expected Goals) would solve this, but I'm assuming no one is capturing this at the HS level.

I know for basketball, it's either a parent or sometimes one of the girls recording stats. For softball, one of the dads puts stats in through Gamechanger. Coaches can then go back and readjust whatever they want. There's no accountability or consistency or check on any of it.

Yeah, while advanced stats have been great for soccer, it requires a lot of work not only to capture, but to filter the subjectivity out (and that is done mainly through the application of rigorous definitions - so you might disagree with the definition, but at least it's applied consistently).

This past fall season I manually captured stats for my 13-year-old's club team (the coach videos each match and it gets posted online), and while it was a lot of work, it did yield some non-obvious suggestions for in-game improvement.

This prompts me to say something that's incredibly rare: I was, on this point at least, incredibly lucky to grow up where I did.

Both varsity and JV basketball had 3 person stat crews for every game dating back to at least somewhere in the 1970s. Students but well trained ones who had to satisfy the toughest teacher (and eventual state HOF b'ball coach) in the school before they could work a varsity game.

In addition to the official scorer keeping the book at the table as required by rule, we had one person charting shots, and then one for each team (us and the opponent) tallying everything down to reb/ast/to/blocks etc.

And if questions/concerns arose about the accuracy of anyone on the stat crew (rare) the games were occasionally re-scored from watching the game film.

And that was nearly 50 years ago in a podunk town at a podunk school with less than 500 students.

Yeah, that's not how it is, at least here. I'm sure for Texas HS football, they probably hire professionals or something. But here, we can barely get parents to show up for forced-sign-up concessions duty, nevermind the ones who run clock, scoreboard and stats. In fact, one of the girls has had severe after-effects from a concussion several months ago and is sitting out this year, so she's been either running the clock or keeping stats all year. And she's a freshman, I think?

I kept stats for my HS soccer team. The soccer coach was a math teacher and thought I was great with numbers, so he asked and I did it (along with announcing at home games) for 3 years. But I knew shit about soccer. I did my best to chart shot position and players would tell me when to credit assists, etc. That was 30+ years ago in Georgia.

Official scorebook and clock/scoreboard here, by state rule for varsity games, have to be run by someone 21 or older. I'd say 95% of the time or more that'll be a school employee with a love for the game, often as not the same person for 20 years in a row or more (back in the day we pretty much knew who we'd see on those separate duties wherever we went). You might see students handling one or both of those things at the JV level though.

Oddly enough, given the football-centric nature of the state, those stats are usually far less well attended to than basketball in most places, even less so than baseball in some places. Not sure how that came to be exactly but it's almost a given in most places I'm familiar with (which is quite a few after all these years). You'll see it get more attention now - especially where there are HCs that are more recruiting and media savvy - than it used to, but it's usually still on the lean side compared to what could be done.

Between 15 year olds running clock and 80 year old refs, amateur sports is not exactly thriving... There are more sports/games played than ever, but it feels like it's dying a slow death. 10-15 years ago, travel sports basically killed off rec leagues. Now they are trying their best to kill off HS sports.

Technically stats are never official, other than the number of goals scored by the teams. Football leagues these days claim they have official numbers and rulings on who scored the goal, but even those can be up for discussion, because somebody has to judge whether a goal scored with the last touch of the goalkeeper should or shouldn't be credited as an own goal. Quite often I see goalkeepers getting credited with stopping a penalty kick and scoring an own goal on the same 'play' when the penalty kick hits the post or bar (without the goalkeeper actually touching it to make it deflect onto the woodwork) and then unluckily bounces via the goalkeeper's body into the goal.

I suppose there is already a Boxing Day Massacre in English football history? If not, there will be one after today.

4 goals in the half and Schmeichel still MOTM.

Well, well, welll.

This is where they give up the 5th.

WELL, WELL, well?

Nailed it.

Comparision between CR7 and Messi
 

Alex B whom do you think is good in Ronaldo and Messi? Lot of the people say CR7 is better than Messi where as Messi outperforms the Ronaldo so how can people say Ronaldo is the lagesnd?:)

Great win for Leicester tonight with makeshift team. Best thing? My two best players were both academy products: Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and Luke Thomas were both excellent

Great win by Leicester City.

RE: five subs.

At what point is it more important to protect your players from overuse than it is to stop the bigger clubs from getting a perceived advantage?

For me: the managers have to adapt to the schedule, the managers should not have the ability to change the competition to suit how they want to play

If they want to play gegenpress, they have to rotate their squads more.

Adjust the way you play to the competition. The competition should not be forced to change according to how the ‘big clubs’ want to play

That was a fun game to watch. At no point did I expect a shutout, much less against a team in the top 4.

I hear what you are saying and I agree that managers should adjust to the schedule. But your response is why I ask the question.

To me, the focus of the discussion seems to be more about preventing the bigger clubs from getting more of an advantage and less about whether five subs would actually help the smaller clubs. I want to look more at the latter than at the former. I am less concerned if it helps the bigger clubs a little if it helps the smaller clubs more. I don't know if it does or does not. I just don't want to dismiss it out of hand because the bigger clubs are the ones suggesting it.

In my opinion it hugely helps the bigger teams - they have greater squad depth, so could tell their CMs for example to play at increased intensity for 60 minutes, take them off and put new international players on in their place

A lower team would have to match that intensity due to having generally lower quality players, but their subs will be weaker again due to less squad depth, so the gulf widens

If five subs get on, the squad depth of the bigger clubs would also increase even further over time, as two extra subs means more playing time, so some players who don’t want to be a squad player for a bigger team may reconsider if they know that 16 of the 25 man squad could get game time every week instead of 14

Okay, I am going to try this a different way. Would the smaller clubs get no benefit whatsoever from being able to use 5 subs as opposed to three subs or is there a benefit to them?

It is a different league but I watched Barnsley most of last year. A key part of their run to the playoffs was their ability to bring five players off and bring five players on to change the game in their favor. All while having the fourth lowest wage bill. The rule was there for every club in that league to use. Some did, others did not. It was most beneficial for one of the smaller club in that league.

I don't know if that would be the case in the EPL. Maybe it would not. The other top leagues in Europe have made the change. I have seen data that indicated that the smaller clubs actually used more subs when the league restarted in 2020. I would like to see it studied more.

IMO the benefit that smaller clubs would get would be outweighed by the larger benefit that the big clubs get.

In the case of Barnsley, they had a good manager last year, which was much more of a factor than how many subs they were allowed.

Arsenal needs to take a 30 second time out to settle them down.

Gabriel being stupid has taken the focus off just how bad the Martinelli miss was

I am pretty sure that every Watford player between Son and Sanchez jumped no higher that two inches off the ground. They deserved to lose that game just on that basis.

22 points ahead of United lmao

I realized that I need to play the long game with my United frustration, since I legitimately don't see them figuring things out until the Glazers either sell up or give up 100% control to someone who knows what they're doing.

Neither of these things are going to happen any time soon.

It's probably annoying to point out the disambiguate nature of "United", as there are 3 of them in the Premier League alone, 2 in The Championship, 3 more in the League One and another 5 in the League Two. But I'm still going to as one of the other Uniteds is 22 points behind the other Manchester. :D

That's fair. For those who don't know, I was talking about Manchester United, or, as I am increasingly thinking of them "Bucs North".

Annoying, but not unexpected

More seriously though, as the true Manchester City supporter you are, you've cheered for them through the ups and downs, witnessed a modest football club grow from second-tier to returning to the Premier League and step by step in about 15 years time become the wealthiest in the world. Manchester City is currently considered to be the most fun to watch in the entire soccer universe and until the UEFA Champions' League is won will have a "loveable loser" image to go with it.
Is there no fear for that management/ownership does (not) take notes and learns from the mistakes that the dearest of rivals have seen their money bubbles burst? And although it's not really up my alley anymore, I can understandable the schadenfreude over the once dominating rival from the other side of town, yet I wonder: is there so little to enjoy during this peak moment that makes enjoying the ride not enough?

well now, no need to post the same thing twice. :D

The best part of the FA Cup coverage for me is the PBP guys who usually speak in an unintelligible dialect. The PBP guy on the Tottenham game right now is amazing.

Well, Gold Cup refereeing isn't great, but at least it's better then the African Cup of Nations.

- 85th min: Final whistle blown
- Game resumed
- Red card VAR review rejected by ref
- 89:40: Final whistle blown again

40 minutes later: Officials have interrupted the post-game conferences to tell the teams to go out and finish the game (again). One team doesn't go out. They wait a couple minutes, and then blow the game dead a third time.

Maybe somebody with more soccer knowledge than me can explain...

talkSPORT on Twitter: "Harry Kane’s goal ruled out for offside #TOTCHE… "

How is Harry Kane offside there when the goalie comes out to play the ball but a defender is sitting in the goal. Is it just any human being in the goal area does not count? I would imagine the guy in goal is a field player and thus Kane would not be offside.

Technically it is 2 players between you and the goal when the ball is played. Typically that is the goalie and 1 defender, but in this situation it is 2 defenders.

As the parent of a 14 year 1 month and 10 days old, the idea of someone of a similar age of my child and his friends being a MLS player is incomprehensible.

No Alfonso Davies for Canada in their Jan 30th showdown with the US, as he has myocarditis from his recent bout of COVID.

I don't know what to make of this. Christian Erickson and now Ousmane Coulibaly suffering heart attacks and Alphonse Davies dealing with myocarditis all in the last 6-7 months is troubling.

It's known that COVID can cause heart inflammation, the (now former) Red Sox pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez missed an entire season due to myocarditis in the same condition.

Also, Aubameyang will miss at least part of the African Cup of Nations after a cardiac scan detected "lesions" on the heart.

There’s been other reported cases of lower tier footballers with similar issues - there definitely seems to be a lot more than I can ever remember before (it’s not a new thing, remember Marc Vivien Foe and Fabrice Muamba for example)

Whether it is more common now or just reported more is something we can’t know, and if it is the former, whether it is due to Covid, the vaccine or just simply that footballers are running harder and faster for longer in modern football… who knows

Erickson wasn't vaccinated when he collapsed. We do know that while Davies was vaccinated, he also got COVID about 10 days before the myocarditis was found.


As for Coulibaly, would it have made world news if James Rodriguez hadn't helped him before medics got there? There is more social media these days as well, so something that happens in a match in the Qatar league can be known to other people in Europe or North America right as it happens.

Philippe Coutinho returns to the EPL and comes off the bench to save a last-minute draw for Aston Villa over visitors Manchester United, who get two goals from recently-maligned Bruno Fernandes (although the first one was definitely a howler by the Villa goalkeeper).

Manchester United, looking more-and-more like an established mid-table EPL team.

"now' would be in the last 5 years, not just these two COVID-19 years. I'd also assume the later here.

Well that's ... different. Not sure I'd call the object a "pole". Almost looks like the blade of a short sword or something. Bizarre

Copa del Rey match between Sevilla, Real Betis abandoned after Joan Jordan hit by pole

Looks like a metal tent pole with one end flattened. That could have been really, really bad. The ref himself was about 2 feet away from taking that in the face.

WOW!