Westside Timbers take Statzpack to the Oswego Nike Cup

The Westside Timbers (formerly Metros) are a soccer club based in Beaverton, Oregon.  Founded in 1983, Westside Timbers, is a premier club, providing exceptional soccer programs for players aged 7-18.

In the past week their U11 Copa team attended the Oswego Nike Cup, held just south of Portland home to the new kids on the MLS block Portland Timbers.

One of the player’s fathers who travelled with the team, Philippe Thuillier, signed up to a FREE Trial on Statzpack and recorded the stats for their U11 Copa team for their 5 games held over 3 days – with a W3D1L1 standing, scoring a massive 29 goals and conceding just 7.  In just 2 weeks the team has recorded 10 games over 2 tournaments!

Here are the 5 Game summary pages produced by the team at the tournament.

1. Vs. RPSC 0-2
2. Vs. BSC Portland Black 3-3
3. Vs. Willamette United Arsenal White 8-0
4. Vs. OSA Forza 4-1
5. Vs. CRFCA Barcelona 14-1

We’d like to thank Philippe and the Timbers club for their permission to publish this short case.

Jay Williams is a Professor of Exercise Science in the Department of Human Nutrition, Foods and Exercise at Virginia Tech. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in exercise physiology, kinesiology and muscle biochemistry. His research focuses on the responses and adaptations of muscle to activity, inactivity and disease. He also has a long history of working with athletes ranging from kindergarten soccer players to Olympic tracks and field athletes.

He runs a great blog  http://www.scienceofsocceronline.com/

Two years ago he published ‘The SCIENCE behind Soccer Nutrition’ and he has just published a follow up: The SCIENCE Behind Soccer Nutrition: Training Journal

The SCIENCE Behind Soccer Nutrition gives you the “whys” about diet and performance and provides a broad set of guidelines for eating a solid diet.    The Diet and Training Journal is a bit different.  It is designed as a tool, as a way to promote changes in nutritional habits that will instill a solid diet.  In short, this journal encourages you to examine how you prepare for a match and to take ownership of your diet and training.  By recording and reflecting on nutritional selections and performance, you will be able to raise your game to the next level.

 The Diet and Training Journal chapters include instructions on why and how to keep a diet and training journal as well as detailed information on nutritional choices:

- Why Keep a Journal?

- Making Solid Selections

- How to Keep a Journal

Also included are 12 weeks of daily journal pages – one page for each day plus a weekly reflection page.  Match-day pages are also included so that you can reflect on your match performance. Both books are available for less than $10 (£6) for further details click  here

You can win one of our world famous styluses, by completing this simple task.

Send in a picture of you and your team using statzpack to Styluscomp@statzpack.com  Simple.

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The heart breaker for the soccer coach, and sometimes the game maker.  If you look at the stats for the English Premier League over the past 10 years you can see a marked upward trend in the number of penalties  awarded, with 2001-2 only seeing 39 awarded, to the 101 awarded in the past season.  And no wonder it can be such an important moment in a game, as around 80% of penalties (in that league at least) result in a goal.  Last year it was Arsenal who gave away a whopping 9 penalties, though not an uncommon tally over the past decade, there has only been one team to concede 10, which was Blackburn Rovers in 2006-7.  Five years previous they conceded or won zero penalties. Times have changed. 

What do the stats look like?

Which club is more likely to concede a penalty? Well if past history is an indicator of future behaviour (and we know it is not…but bear with us) then Aston Villa are a safe bet. Looking at those teams currently in the EPL who have played there for the past 11 years.  They have managed to give away 55 penalties, an average of 5.5 per season.  And which team does the analysis show that manages to be awarded the most penalties?  Manchester United I hear you cry – most of them in the last 2 minutes at Old Trafford, right?  Wrong.  It’s Arsenal, who have accumulated 56 penalties, converting 46 of them since the beginning of the 2001 season. Check out all the stats here, at this wonderful website myfootballfacts.com. Including the fact that Matt Le Tissier in his career at Southampton scored 48 times from 49 spot kicks. All in the top flight of English football.  Awesome.    

A penalty kick may be awarded when a defending player commits a foul punishable by a direct free kick against an opponent or a handball, within the penalty area (“the box” or “18 yard box”).  

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I wanted to share an article I came across that details who must be the grandaddy of soccer analysis, Charles Reep.  As we use modern technology to help coaches and players improve their game, we are certainly not new to the task of recording stats.   Reep started to carry out match analysis in 1950 (long before many of us were born) and centrally believed that most goals were produced within 3-5 passes/moves.

“Not all revolutionaries are fondly remembered. Barney Ronay examines the controversial legacy of Charles Reep, football’s first tactical statistician.  Published in June 2003 in When Saturday Comes - which in itself is a fantastic journal for all things soccer related (be warned – visit that site and prepare to see an hour of your day leave you…)

Soccer Analyst

Wing Commander Charles Reep has been called many things. Twenty years ago the Times dubbed him “The Human Computer of the Fabled Fifties”; an obituary described him more simply as “a football ana­lyst”; while a slightly empurpled Brian Glanville once declared him a member of FA coaching director Char­les Hughes’s “band of believers and acolytes”, the arch­angel of “a fanatical credo, a pseudo-religion”.

Few figures in English football history have attract­ed as much vitriol or as much ideological zeal. The loth­ario of the long ball, Reep has remained unfathomably seductive to a roll-call of many of the most influential coaching figures in post-war domestic football. He is the national game’s deep dark secret; we know he’s bad for us, but we just can’t help ourselves.” 

Read the full article here.

Set yourself up on Statzpack
 Overview of the Dashboard on Manager
 

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I was struck by how open Mondays night game was, and how there seemed to be so much space when attacking (particularly for Man United, and particularly towards the end of the game).    Gary Neville mentioned that the pitch is really big at Old Trafford in his recent biography, and anyone who has been lucky enough tovisit it will tesify it is a large field.  This made us want to investigate…. according to this website (though dated in 2007.. gives us an idea):    http://soccerlens.com/premier-league-pitch-sizes/3683/     – it’s the second-biggest pitch in the league… in fact, it’s 786 square yards bigger (by area) than White Hart Lane where Tottenham, the defeated team play!  Spurs ground is small, close, intimate – probaby more theatre than the Theatre of Dreams.  I don’t think it’s a coincidence that United tend to drop off rather than press when they’re not in posession, and are so effective on the counter-attack using all that space with quick decisive, youthful, direct attacking soccer. 

Soccer Standards?

And this to a US sports coach may seem odd, where standard field sizes are more defined, for example American football fields are a set  360 by 160 feet.  Rugby league is played on a field 112-122 by 68 metres. In Rugby Union (yes there are two variants) the field of play on a pitch/field is as near as possible to a maximum of 144m long by 70m wide. In Lacrosse, the field of play is 110 yards (100 m) long and 60 yards (55 m) wide.) 

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What’s the difference between a direct and indirect free kick? How many strikers are in a 4-4-2 formation? And what’s this “injury time” business all about? Before you start tracking stats on your iPad.. .. ..

Against the run of play: When one team scores after launching a counterattack soon after it regains possession of the ball, that team is said to have scored “against the run of play.”

Attacking third: The third of the field where one team is trying to score on the opposing team’s goal.

Bicycle kick: A shot on goal taken by a player who has his back to the net and kicks the ball while both of his feet are in the air.

Booking: A term used to indicate when the referee has cautioned a player with a yellow or red card. A player is said to have been “booked.” Also known as a caution.

Cap: A recognition earned by a player whenever he plays in an international game for his country. A player becomes “capped” each time he plays for his country.

Caught in possession: A player who doesn’t move forward with the ball or passes to a teammate after receiving the ball, and who is then tackled by an opponent is said to have been “caught in possession.”

Caught square: When a through ball has beaten two or more opposing defenders because they were positioned square to one another (in a straight line across the field parallel to the goal-line) they are said to have been “caught square.”

Chip pass: A pass lofted into the air from one player to a teammate. Used primarily to elude a defender by kicking the ball over his head.

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From time to time when we talk to new customers and partners, we are often asked ‘so who uses yur product?’ or ‘where are your customers at?’.   When we were asked this last week by a new user in the mid west of the USA we decided to actually take a few minutes to list it out.  Well we all know that soccer is the truly global game, and the internet has no bounds so it really be no surprise (but it was..) to see that we have customers in the following countries: USA, UK, Ireland, Canada, Turkey, Spain, Netherlands, Sweden, India, Italy, South Africa, Malta, Cyprus, New Zealand, Malta, Australia and Malaysia.  

Global Soccer App

We have users who are high school teachers, semi-pro coaches, professional analysts, parents, even international scouts using our product.  What amazes us and equally motivates us a company is the enthusiasm of the soccer coach – wherever they are, or whatever age group or level they are coaching and we try to plough that right back into our products.

If you’re a Statzpack user you can help spread the word and by making referrals you can get extra free time added to your subscription, check it out here.   Hello world. Greetings Statzpackers

In the beginning, there were no jersey numbers.  Simple.  In today’s game from the U10 youth level (or even below) to the FIFA World Cup that would seem extraordinary.  Numbering allows for better game and player management, quick identification and coach communication. Its part of the modern game.  

Though there was some use of numbering in the early 1900s, it was the English 1933 FA Cup final which is marked the real debut  of the use of shirt numbers.  Everton were numbered 1-11, and Manchester City were given the numbers 12-22.  In a strange twist, City decided to give goalkeeper number 22, and assigned the numbers in descending order.  In 1939 numbers on the back of players’ shirts became mandatory in the English Football League although many teams had used them before.

The move to a fixed number being assigned to each player in a squad was initiated for the 1954 FIFA World Cup in Switzerland, where each man in a country’s 22-man squad wore a specific number for the duration of the tournament.  Thus creating the relationship between a player and a roster number.  Previous to this the jersey number had a specific relation to the position on the pitch – the obvious being the Goalkeeper was always assigned the No 1.

Though there are differing versions of number assignment, the traditional use of the numbers in a 11 a side team (on a 5-3-2 formation and we are talking in the 1960s) went something like this:

1 = Goalkeeper
2 = Right Fullback
3 = Left Fullback
4 = Centre Half/Back
5 = Centre Half/Back
6 = Centre Half/Back
7 = Right Wing/Midfield
8 = Centre Midfield.
9 = Centre Forward
10 = Centre Forward
11 = Left Wing/Midfield

In the 1978 and 1982 FIFA World Cups Argentina decided to allocate jersey numbers on an alphabetical basis to their players. This resulted in the great playmaker Osvaldo Ardiles donning the No 1 jersey, Maradonna ended up with No 10.   Superstition

In 1993, England’s Football Association switched to persistent squad numbers, abandoning the mandatory use of 1–11 for the starting line-up.  It became standard in the FA Premier League in the 1993-94 season, with names printed above the numbers. Most European top leagues adopted the system over the next five years and today few soccer teams from 10 year old up don’t have assigned jersey numbers to players.