Foucault pendulum in the Houston (Texas, USA) Museum of Natural Science, photographed on 26 June 2010, by Ed Uthman, CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Introduction
It’s preseason somewhere still, isn’t it? In this preseason mini-series, we’re discussing risk: risk in soccer and how much risk a team, namely the 2024 San Jose Earthquakes, should take in order to maximize their chances for a higher playoff position in MLS.
In part one, we discussed how teams that take more attacking risks can leave themselves open to the opponent’s attacks. But the opposite can be very boring soccer (hello, Nashville) and keep you somewhere in the mid-table.
How Does Risk Affect MLS Teams?
It’s important to establish that risks are something that fewer and fewer clubs in MLS are willing to take. As much as coaches talk about playing between the lines with progressive passes, “verticality”, pressing, counter-pressing, numbers in the attack with overlapping full backs, and all the things that sound like good, attacking soccer, the ugly truth is 90% of coaches are willing to throw it all out the window to win. Almeyda might have been short-sighted in thinking his style could work in MLS’s parity model (it had no chance), but at least it was different.
What is working in MLS right now? Wilfried Nancy’s model in Columbus using a 3-4-2-1. His penchant to ask his team to take risks — the type that pan out more often than not — results in soccer that is very usually a thing of beauty, and the style is quite different than other teams. The result? An MLS Cup. Yes, Cucho Hernandez is one of the best players in the league, but it’s all for naught if Columbus can’t create the space to get him on the ball in the break or win the ball in the strategic areas to key those breaks.
Who was the opposite of that last season? Colorado. They took almost no risks, tried almost no pressing, didn’t try to get out on the break, and they look like an outlier on a lot of charts last season.
Here’s a repeat of the chart I showed last article as an example of the dichotomy of these two teams (look far right and left) and where the Quakes fit (see the red circle).
To bring back one more chart from the last article, we also demonstrated that a team that shoots an average number of shots with an average shot quality, could actually finish between -20 and +20 goal differential depending on the breaks a particular season.
The thing staring the Earthquakes right in the face is that they were an above average MLS team — in shots taken and conceded and the quality of those shots — to start the season last year, but as the season wore on they moved toward the middle and finally landed below average.
What were the main culprits?
- Although they generally outshot teams at home, the Quakes let their opponents hang around with them too much. Their home margins were positive but too narrow.
- They were outshot 2-1 on the road, although the quality of those shots was close to the same. Their away margins were negative and too wide.
So what happens when you add a narrow positive margin to a wide negative margin? A net negative, landing the Quakes in a -4 goal differential. The truth was closer to a -8 when you look at expected goals.
I updated our season simulator from last preseason, and taking the Quakes home and away numbers, you can see how they did (black bar) and should have (longest bar).
How do the Quakes improve this? The simple answer is have a wide positive margin on shots and/or shot quality at home, and a narrow negative margin on the road (only two teams in 2023 had a positive goal differential on the road). If you flip the numbers from 2023 so that San Jose does what other teams did to them, and vice versa, it looks more like this:
The longest sticks above show a +8 or +9 goal differential and likely a 4th or 5th place finish in the table. You are talking the difference between 2.5 more shots per game at home and roughly four fewer shots against on the road, while maintaining the 2023 shot quality on all ends. The difference is not as big as you might think.
Here’s a look at all the teams across the league in 2023, home and away, and their shots and xG per shot. Darker colors are better on both sides of the ball. Teams are listed alphabetically.
As you can see from this, San Jose’s biggest issue remains how many shots they give up on the road, and a little-too-narrow-for-comfort margin at home on the shot differential.
The Come-Out Roll
In Tiotal Football’s article I referenced in part one, Football Tactics and Rolling Dice, he proposes a table top game method to identify if a team is willing to play with more risk — the “Come-Out Roll”.
In order to actually let the game happen, which is something you want cuz you have the better players if you’re Man City, you need to roll the dice on the “come out.” You want to let the game breathe and to have the ball move back and forth a little, which might mean losing possession some. Let both teams try to start things happening, confident that if they do that, there will be more space for everyone, and you’ll have more dice to roll for goal conversion (because your team has the better players operating in all this space).
…Basically, we have to add in the concept that a coach can change not only the amount of total dice rolls but the allocation of those across both teams. And the reason we have to do this, is that the stakes of figuring out this question are pretty big.
– Tiotal Football, Football Tactics and Rolling Dice
In short, this decision that is made by a table top game player of “whether to come out or not” is a reflection on the risk level of tactics of a soccer team and, presumably, their coach. I say “presumably” because stronger teams will impose themselves on the game more, so even if a coach wants his team to “come out”, they may lack the ability for some or all of a game to do so. In MLS, the ability to have financial parity makes it so that almost all teams should have the ability to decide how much they want to take risks.
How this could work in a table top game? Let’s assume the teams are even strength on talent, so both coaches get two six-sided dice. Because this is MLS — the strongest home field advantage in the world — we’re going to give the home team an extra six-sided die.
Now the home team wins the ball. Their player coach is given the option to roll their dice. Given where they won the ball, they have three options:
- If the player rolls a total of six or less across the three dice, their risk to get forward results in a chance to score. (1 in 3 chance)
- If they roll a total of seven or more, the opponent gets to roll their two dice for a chance to score if they throw doubles. (1 in 6 chance)
- If attacking player chooses not to roll the dice or if neither chance happens, then a minute burns off the clock, and the attacking team player can roll again to see if they retain possession for another potential come-out roll.
In this kind of game scenario, the player has to decide if they want to take a 1-in-3 chance to shoot and risk giving up a 1-in-6 chance to their opponent. If you have more dice (and thereby have an advantage), then you probably like your chances. If you only have two dice, then the chances are even. You might want to skip that come-out roll sometimes. If you have a lead, you have to decide if you protect it, or push for another goal while risking a counter the other way to tie the game.
Coming Out to Play More Often
In 2023, it felt like the Earthquakes skipped that come-out roll more-and-more as the season went on: “No, thanks, we have a point in hand. We don’t want to risk that.” Then, with the season on the line against Austin and needing a win, they rolled the dice every chance they got and just rolled bad numbers over-and-over again, even if they got to shoot. Playing that conservative way for most of the second half of the season is a good way to get 9th in a 14-team conference when they had initially had 5th or 6th place in hand.
By releasing Jamiro Monteiro, San Jose took out a big part of the central defensive stability and opted to get a bit more risky. Maybe the next player won’t be as much of a defender, and the central midfield gets broken down more often. But the plus side may be they can now have more numbers they can hit if they choose to come out.
By signing Amahl Pellegrino, San Jose decided to change the risk profile a bit. They are rolling dice less to dribble into the box, and more to see if they can overload-passing-triangle-and-give-and-go their way into the box to get off more shots. A comparison of Cade’s shots (first below) and Pellegrino’s shots (second below) could not be more stark.
Is Pellegrino enough to really give the Quakes a different level of unpredictability and create better risk-taking in the attack? I’m on the side of “unlikely”, although I do like more Skahan in the mix, because I think he does bring some of that risk as well. Luchi Gonzalez indicated at Coachella that Skahan’s less structured than Niko Tsakiris is. But a real “DP 10” distributor who has a scoring upside feels needed still to really shake things up.
As I said earlier, more-and-more teams in MLS are opting for coming out less. Scoring is down. Shooting is down. Teams are taking fewer risks overall, particularly in the Western Conference. It’s a lot of sameness talent-wise and tactics-wise.
If Pellegrino and a new attacking DP (or great performances from Skahan and Tsakiris) can change how often the Quakes can come out and attack, then they can probably create a higher number of shots and better quality shots as well. Plus, Pellegrino should easily best Cowell’s conversion rate.
The fastest way for San Jose to move up the table is by reducing how many shots they give up on the road by preventing their opponents from coming out to play as much as they did in 2023. 13 would be a good target, 14 might be fine. It remains to be seen if Bruno Wilson can help with this as an anchor-type center back.
If teams feel like they can come out to play too often on the Quakes and not get punished the other way, particularly at home, that’s still going to be a big problem.
(At this point I am stopping writing this article to watch the San Jose at FC Dallas. Let’s see how it goes…)
Well that…was more of the same.
Managing 10 shots on the road is fine, perfectly fine, particularly when San Jose got 1.7 xG out of them. But giving up 23 for 2.4 xG is exactly what I’m talking about. Even managing 0.17 xG per shot, our simulator says these numbers give the Quakes a 20% chance of a win. And that’s how you end a season with two away wins.
If the Quakes can cut that to something more like a 1-to-1.5 ratio, that should get them between three and five wins, and that could be a nine-point swing from last season. Getting the home shots to that ratio could add on three more. 12 more points would have tied the Earthquakes with St. Louis last season.
One key way to give up fewer shots is to win the ball higher. The biggest tactical issue I have with the Yueill/Gruezo combo is neither is a ball-winner, so it’s not clear to me how the Quakes keep opponents from getting into the final third too often. A long shot is probably a missed shot turnover, but now you have to start your next possession from your own six.
Three Points Are More Than One
It’s common wisdom by now that the way to the playoffs in MLS is to win your home games and get draws on the road with the occasional win. Fair enough, the Earthquakes squeaked into that 9th spot in the West with 14 draws last season, tied with NYCFC.
But there is a problem with this logic. To understand it, we can look no further than the basketball revolution ushered in by the Golden State Warriors, Steph Curry, and Klay Thompson: three points is worth more than two. As Ryan O’Hanlon points out in his book Net Gains: Inside the Beautiful Game’s Analytics Revolution: going from 50% long two-pointers to 40% three-pointers is worth 1.2 times more over a few hundred shots, even with the decrease in conversion percentage.
To state the obvious, in soccer, a win is worth three points and a draw is worth one. This math alone should tell you that going for a win in all situations is likely better than going for a draw in any situation. But let’s check out the math a bit.
Let’s say that the Quakes are tied 1-1 in the 70th minute. That feels like something that happened a lot in 2023. If they aggressively go for the win (i.e., they decide to use their come-out roll every time they have the ball), then it may work 33% of the time, the opponent may counter and score 33% of the time, and the game may still end in a draw 33% of the time. But now, instead of playing for another draw and not using their opportunity to “come out”, they will get four points instead of three (1 win, 1 draw, and 1 loss). Getting four points instead of three, two or three times a season, is the difference of at least one position in the table if not two or three. Unless the higher probability is that they would get less than a point by pushing for another goal, they should be pushing for another goal.
In preseason, Luchi Gonzalez conceded the team needed to have a mentality of pouring it on after the first goal in 2024. There were some encouraging signs in the FC Dallas game: Benji Kikanovic had multiple chances to get a second goal, and Pellegrino had a good, but angled, chance as well.
The calculus the Quakes and Luchi Gonzalez should take is: “what is the probability that our talent is good enough to give us more points by playing aggressively for a win?”. The math won’t be exactly the same in all situations, but even increasing the potential points (or expected points aka xPts) by any margin may be the difference between a home playoff game and no home game, or even no playoffs.
I say, swing that pendulum back a bit toward the risky side.
Conclusion
(My computer crashes on Sunday. Four days later, I have it back.)
Let’s see what’s going on today…
Well, that’s one way to come out to play more often. If this happens, it’s time to rethink the entire pressing scheme. That’s a different article for a different day.
Enjoy the Cali Clasico home opener.
Editor’s note: Soon we will be sharing our Season Simulator app with everyone to play with for themselves. If you would like more information and to give input on the features, join our Patreon as a member, join our member Slack, and join the #analytics channel there.
