Have you ever seen Dead Poet’s Society? In the scene at right, Robin Williams’ character is explaining to students that poetry cannot be “scored” and that any attempt to do so defeats the point of poetry. Mr. Keating would be disappointed with me. My endeavor is to grade players playing the beautiful game. It is subjective, often vague, and my attempt at defining the undefinable.
Origin Story
Let me start by saying I borrowed/stole the original idea for this from MGoBlog – run by a dude named Brian Cook. Each week after a Michigan football game Brian breaks down each play from the game using a +/- rating system. He then uses those ratings to explain the game. (Here’s an example)
It’s crazy well-researched, super long, informative, and generally entertaining. I thought why not try something like that for soccer? I have no idea what the process he uses for grading American football actually looks like. The system you’re about to be introduced to has evolved quite a bit since I started doing it. I’ll try to explain my methodology for the curious.
Explanation
I start by listing out the starting lineup down the leftmost column of the page and layout 6 columns to the right. -1, -2, -(3-5), +1, +2, and +(3-5). Then I re-watch the game in question. Each time something “notable” happens (Notable meaning anything that seems above or below average to me) I assign it a +/- value. There is much pausing and rewinding. The notations are just the shorthand for the event and then the minute at which the event occurred. The great majority of events are 1s, a few 2s, and then extremely rare special/awful plays that I assign +/- (3-5) points. At halftime and the end of the game I total up the scores to see where each player ended up.
I have recently begun categorizing the events into four “game phases.” If you look carefully at my notes you’ll notice each event has a 1, 2, 3, or 4 above it. That stands for:
1 – Event occurred while team was “In Possession”
2 – Event occurred while team was “Out of Possession”
3 – Event occurred during “Offensive Transition”
4 – Event occurred during “Defensive Transition”
I’ve toyed around with adding categories for offensive/defensive set pieces, but this already takes long enough, so I’ll leave it a four for now.
I’ve also come up with some “rules” for the way I grade games. I’d like to stress that I bend and break these rules all the time when I’m scoring games. To quote Captain Barbosa, “They’re more guidelines than rules.” Anyway, here’s a link to the rules if you’d like more details.
I’m always open to suggestions for how to improve the system. Feel free to contact me through the contact form on the site or on Twitter @blharreld
Caveats
This is not a perfect system. There are flaws I’ve spotted and others I’m sure I haven’t thought of yet. Here’s a couple:
- It’s very ball-centric. The majority of the events I chart happen around the ball. I try to keep my eyes all over the field, but I am certainly missing some off ball events.
- Camera angle. I’m not working off all 22 tape. I’m looking at the TV feed like everyone else. It’s impossible to grade all the players all the time.
- It rewards players that have a lot of actions. Game reader, I’m already in position so I don’t have to make a spectacular slide tackle-types will probably not come out as high as they should.
- It’s subjective. I may think a play was amazing and give it a +4 while another person may score that same play +2 or +3.
Anyone Want to Nerd Out?
No idea how many soccer nerds like me are out there, but I’m going to post a blank, printable version of my chart here for anyone that’d like to try it at home. Be warned: it’s going to take a minute.
HalfSpaces (+/-) Grading Chart
Good luck and godspeed fellow nerds.
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