Play it Again, Sam – Plus/Minus Wrap Up of 2019

Preamble

Despite the grand sounding title this article won’t exactly cover the whole year. The +/- grading system was born (the soccer version anyway – h/t to Brian Cook over at MGoBlog for the inspiration) in May 2019, during the U20 World Cup. The US U20s against Nigeria was the first game I graded. It looked like this:

Since then I’ve put an unhealthy amount of thought into the system and have also canvassed Twitter, Reddit, etc. for advice/suggestions/feedback. (btw thanks to everyone that has offered advice- Belz, Tomaszewicz, Susaeta, Velasquez, Pranjic, Brian, apologies to many others I’m sure I’ve left out)

The grades have evolved quite a bit since their inception. The first iteration scored every notable event -2,-1,+1, or +2. It has since been expanded to include those scores, plus a separate column for truly special plays or truly heinous biffs, scored anywhere from (+/-) 3-5.

The most recent evolution has been dividing the events into four game phases (In Possession, Out of Possession, Transition Offense, and Transition Defense). This is an example of what a current grade sheet looks like:

Completed grades from the notes have gone from this.

To this.

If you’d like to read any past +/- grade columns here they are.

Do I have a point?

Maybe? I’ve graded 11 full USMNT games so far, plus a couple other random matches. The only game I’ve missed was the home tie against Cuba in the Nations League. I was out of town when they played and I didn’t really feel like re-watching the US roll over a meatball. Sue me.

I went back and tallied up the total grades for every game I’ve scored. Also, I calculated +/- per 90 and +/- per minute numbers. I think it’s interesting and if you’ve read this far you might too. Here’s the numbers, sorted by Total +/-.

Trends after 11 games

Best Player: Christian Pulisic +60 in 8 games.

The obvious one is that Pulisic is pretty good. You’re welcome. Quality analysis, I know. For real though, this system essentially looks for touches, movements, efforts, ideas, etc. that are out of the realm of average. CP provides more of those than anyone else. In case you’ve forgotten, here’s Christian torturing Jamaica during the Gold Cup semifinal.

Christian Pulisic vs Jamaica

Happy 4th of July, folks. 🇺🇸

pic.twitter.com/e3hUmG28Dz

— Sanjiv (@USMNTvideos) July 4, 2019

My favorite statistic that I’ve made up using my other made up statistics 🤣 is +/- per 90. Christian checks in at 9.0 using that stat. The only other guys close have a much smaller sample size. Altidore and Dest are both at 9.1, but they only played 217 and 227 graded minutes respectively. Over 8 games and nearly 600 minutes Pulisic has consistently been the best player for the USMNT.

He also looks to have gone to another level with Chelsea over the past couple months. I’m looking forward to seeing if he can carry that form over to the national team. It’s also possible that the quality of the players around him and the system Chelsea plays are what enables him to show out…we’ll see in March I suppose.

Best Single Game Performance: Boyd +21

I sort of regret this grade given his subsequent performances, but he was really good against a terrible Guyana team. He scored two goals and could’ve pretty easily had four plus a couple assists/hockey assists. I was pretty hyped about him even before this performance. After this I thought we’d solved our problem at one wing spot…and then the next 10 games happened. 😑 Maybe he’s just lost his mojo and he’ll find his way back, but more likely he had a good game against crap opposition. Enjoy the memories though.

Tyler Boyd vs Guyana

pic.twitter.com/ktm9bCYuFF

— Sanjiv (@USMNTvideos) June 19, 2019

Best Per 90 Player: Sebastian Lletget at 11.0

I’m actually not a big Lletget fan. I don’t think he’s created a whole lot of danger when I’ve seen him play for the US (except that sub appearance against Mexico – he was really good in those minutes). BUT he’s put up good numbers in very limited minutes. Until Ledezma is ready to join the big boys there’s really no one else to play in the #10 spot, so let’s see what he can do with some real minutes there.

Team-wide trend

The average +/- for the team is all over the place. I guess you could say there’s a slight downward trend. The worst performance of the year (according to my grades) was the lone true away game the team played. Why is the team so bad on the road in CONCACAF? It’s bizarre.

The high point for the grades was the home game against Canada and even that feels a little like fool’s gold. The team scored four goals so there were obviously points to go around, but there were times where I felt like I shouldn’t even give points because Canada was just giving it away.

I’m an optimist about the USMNT so I don’t want to be a downer, but the team didn’t have a complete performance in any match that I’ve graded. Good moments, a good 20 minutes here and there, but nothing sustained. Maybe a year in the system, plus some player upgrades incoming will cause this graph to trend upward in 2020?

What’s Ahead in 2020?

I’m going to make it a goal to grade every USMNT game in the coming year. And, Lord willing, the US’ games in the Olympics as well. I don’t think I’m going to add any more complications. It’s getting time consuming to add it all up at the end now. That used to be the easy part. If I’m able to do that I think the player grades in the four different game phases could be very interesting given enough data.

Thank you to everyone that invested time into reading these things this year. I’ve enjoyed it as a time consuming hobby, but if no one read them there wouldn’t have been much motivation to continue.

If you enjoyed this and would like to be informed of future articles type your email address in the box and you’ll be notified of each new post. Also, feel free to follow me on Twitter @blharreld 🤓

P.S.

I know I’m leaving out the “Room to Improve” category. I and everyone else has said enough about those players. Let’s hope some fresh blood starts filtering in after the Olympics.