Those who try to compile soccer statistics get a lot of stick. Soccer is a game with twenty-two people on the field at any given moment, each of whom have vastly different responsibilities, many of which defy easy quantification. How many defenders have we seen who make lots of tackles, but have to because they let their man get open so many times? Or the midfielder who completes a high percentage of his passes without sending them anywhere useful?

No reasonable person can deny that there's some useful information the leagues don't always give us. A player who scores 5 goals in 300 minutes is not equally as valuable as a player who scores 5 goals in 600 minutes; indeed, he should be more valuable than a player who scores 6 or 7 goals in 600 minutes. The number of goals a goalkeeper allows isn't as important as the percentage of saves he makes, particularly when compared to his teammate who plays behind the same defense.

This is why I take the time to come up with these little statistical vignettes. Was Camilo Sanvezzo really the best scorer on the Vancouver Whitecaps last year, or did he just play the most? Did Davide Chiumiento really dominate the assist charts like most of us thought? And who's better, Joe Cannon or Jay Nolly?

This is the third in a three-part series recapping the Vancouver Whitecaps' summer seasons statistically. Part one, about the Whitecaps Residency USL PDL season, went up back in November and can be found here. Part two, reviewing the Vancouver Whitecaps Reserves, can be found here.

Continue reading this post »

The 2011 season marked the return of the Major League Soccer Reserve Division, a proud moment for those who had longed to get it back. Young talent on the fringe of the first team and veterans trying to get back into shape would all have the chance to play against fair competition. It was a big development in the rise of Major League Soccer towards the world-class league it so wants to become.

Well, the Reserve Division we got wound up having ten-game seasons against regional opponents. The games were spread so far apart that there was almost no lineup continuity and the Whitecaps regularly flipped which of their assistant coaches would run the team. The organization expected so little interest that the initial games were closed-door.

The MLS Reserve Division was better than nothing in 2011, but not much better. It did give the Whitecaps a chance to play a few young men of some promise but who weren't good enough to crack the first eighteen on a regular basis. They didn't play much, and it's doubtful we'll be able to draw much meaningful information from such a handful of games... but all the same, here is the Vancouver Whitecaps MLS Reserve Division statistical round-up for 2011.

This is the second part of a series. My first post, recapping the Residency's USL PDL season, is here.

Continue reading this post »

The Vancouver Whitecaps are rightly renowned among North American soccer gurus for their academy program, the Vancouver Whitecaps Residency. Canadian internationals Adam Straith and Randy Edwini-Bonsu count themselves alumni, as do former Canadian U-20 player of the year Ethan Gage, U-17 players of the year Russell Teibert and Bryce Alderson, and a host of quality professionals around the world such as Alex Semenets, Kyle Porter, Paul Hamilton, Luca Bellisomo, and Simon Thomas.

For most of their history the centrepiece of the Residency program has been their team in the United Soccer Leagues Premier Development League. Pitting teenagers against players sometimes five years older, the Residency's on-field results in USL PDL have been mixed but there have been some successes: a USL PDL playoff semi-final run in 2008 and a near-dash into the highly competitive Northwest Division playoffs this past season.

Today, the Residency also competes in the United States Soccer Development Academy U-18 and U-16 leagues, with both teams set to play in the USSDA Showcase in Florida starting tomorrow morning. However, the PDL team (leavened with professional veterans such as Philippe Davies and Alexandre Morfaw) remains the highest level of developmental soccer in Vancouver.

A trip to a Residency game means good soccer, knowledgeable fans, and a free ticket. It's a great, cheap way to see good soccer and I enjoyed almost every game I went to this summer. But it's also a chance to evaluate the future of the Vancouver Whitecaps; indeed, of the Canadian national team.

Today, rather than my own amateur scouting, I'm going to let the numbers do the talking. After the jump, the Whitecaps Residency's statistical leaders from the past USL PDL season, along with my own reflections on what those numbers show.

Continue reading this post »

As some of you may know, I've been trying to collect spreadsheets with essential Vancouver Whitecaps statistics for this season. I collated similar statistics for the 2010 season, and it was just basic stuff: minutes played, goals scored, assists recorded, and how often player scored per minute. The rough goal was to say, for example, that Randy Edwini-Bonsu should play more because he scored much more frequently than Cody Arnoux; to collect sometimes aggravating-to-find statistics in one place, to know exactly what role each Whitecap has played throughout each season and to compare our offensive players on more than just raw goals scored. Last October, I posted the 2010 numbers in a somewhat-simplified-for-public-consumption form.

I keep running track of the 2011 leaders in minutes played for the Whitecaps with a panel on the right-hand sidebar (and by "running track", I mean "I just updated it today for the first time since the Toronto game"). My spreadsheet this year is a bit more thorough than last, including things like yellow and red cards. Having just updated my collection, and as I'm starving for something interesting to post, I thought that you might be interested in a few curious statistical trends asserting themselves five games into the 2011 Major League Soccer season.

Obviously, five games is far too few to draw any sort of conclusion. But that doesn't mean numbers have no value. After the jump, a couple odd statistics that come leaping out of my spreadsheet.

Continue reading this post »

This is the sort of post that is going to appeal to about three of you. But hopefully those three of you will really like it.

After the jump is a list of the minutes played, goals scored, assists recorded, and the rates at which each player got a goal, an assist, or both in the 2010 Vancouver Whitecaps USSF D2 regular season. The list is sorted alphabetically by the player's last name. Only the USSF D2 regular season is included; the Voyageurs Cup and the playoffs may follow in a subsequent post, if there is interest.

There is never much statistical work in soccer and never has been. With the relatively limited number of statistics that can be derived from the game, it's questionable how much real insight one can get with a calculator anyway. As somebody who can't subtract, I certainly won't be the one to usher in the North American soccer statistical revolution. But I do have an interest to see who scored at what rates, and who played a tonne of minutes this season. Thus, the data dump.

Tomorrow, I'll look at some of the surprising aspects of these numbers and see if there's anything we can learn about the Whitecaps' strong, but ultimately unsuccessful final division two season that we didn't already know.

All scoring and minutes numbers are from the United States Soccer Federation.

Continue reading this post »