For my genius project, I would like to apply analytics, or the breaking down of statistics, to soccer, the world’s most popular sport. What I would like to do is create my own system to rate players during matches. To do so, I will need to create a formula by combining different statistics that are important to soccer in such a way that it creates an outcome of a number that accurately represents how well a player played during a match on a scale.
My motivation to do this project is first a great personal passion for soccer. If you have not seen me talking about soccer so far this year, I’m really not sure where you’ve been. Also, I want to create a way to tell which individual players are the best. They would all be rated on a standardized scale so they could easily be compared and contrasted.
Here, my timeline shows that this project will last through the next five English Premier League matchdays, or spans of a few days in which every Premier League team plays against one another. For each matchday, I plan to watch at least two full games as well as portions and highlights of all of the rest. This will give me a sense of what is actually happening on the pitch so I can compare it to the outcomes of my formula. During the first matchday of this project, matchday 25, I plan to observe which players have success and try to figure out what contributes to their success and how I can put that into statistics and into my formula. Therefore, I will even create new statistics if I feel what is contributing to players’ success cannot be put into already created statistics. Before matchday 26 starts, I plan to have an initial formula to test for the day’s matches. To test the formula, I plan to pick random players, and compare their rating to how they actually played. For the next few matchdays, through matchday 28, I plan to repeat this process and tweak my formula as needed. For the final matchday, matchday 29, I plan to have finalized my formula and posted all player ratings from the matchday to social media so those who are interested can view, learn, and apply my ratings as they please. The only resource I need is NBC Sports Live Extra, where every Premier League game can be viewed on demand as I won’t be able to watch and analyze multiple live games simultaneously. To show a quick example of a few statistics currently used in soccer, here are the statistics from the FIFA World Cup Final from this summer, where Germany beat Argentina in extra time.
The goal of this project is to create a formula that can accurately rate soccer players based on how well they play during a game. It will be able to show which individual players are best because it will be standardized so players will easily be able to be compared and contrasted. I plan to and I’m excited to invest a lot of time into this, and I hope my formula will actually be able to be used by professional teams one day.
Hi Sam,
ReplyDeleteThis is a great idea and hopefully you will have success in making a formula. It is also good that you are doing something that you enjoy for your project. I know you already watch soccer every weekend and follow it closely so creating this formula will not seem like "work" because it is something you enjoy. One question I have is how you will determine the success of players? I follow hockey and an example is Alex Ovechkin. By points he is a great player but he is often seen not playing defense and is not always considered "great". It could be challenging to differentiate between what is seen and by statistics.
Sam,
ReplyDeleteThis seems like a cool idea and I'm very curious about the outcome of your project. However, you said that you were going to create a formula that rates the players abilities so that they can be compared and contrasted. What factors are you planning to use to create this formula? (E.X dribbling, passing, shooting,) Also, have you taken into consideration that different positions could be affected differently such as strikers, goalies, mids and defenders? In other words, a striker obviously focuses on offense the most compared to a goalie or defender that focuses on defending the goal from the opposing team. Will the different characteristic of each position change the formula as a whole? Other than that, great job and good luck with your project
Sam,
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I love your topic. It is very relatable (at least to me). However, I'm having a bit of trouble seeing how this will work. There are SO many factors that will play in to a player's final rating. How much will each statistic (tackles, passes completed, etc.) be worth in a formula? How do you determine the weight of each statistic? I'm very interested in watching the progress of your formula. I think it's a real challenge but if you can establish an efficient formula I'd be quite impressed.
I'm excited to follow this project. Good luck!!
vumoo
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