I attended the US vs. Belgium game in person. The performance was so incredibly bad it’s hard to think about calmly, but I’d like to offer one observation I haven’t seen anywhere else. Starting in September last year, Poch has been using a 4-2-3-1 (on defense, shifting to a back three on attack). Before then,…
So I had a pretty simple question: how many MLS players are participating in the World Cup? Surely, I muttered to myself, this data must be really easy to find. Nope. So I decided to play with Claude (the Anthropic “AI” – though I still hate using the term “intelligence” for these Stochastic Plagiarism Engines)…
This weekend the Seattle Sounders will host Sporting Kansas City in the MLS regular season. Most Seattle Sounders fans agree that Andrew Thomas, Jesus Ferreira, Jordan Morris, and eight water bottles could probably beat SKC this year. SKC is really, truly, monumentally bad at the moment. Which is weird. Historically the MLS has enjoyed significant…
Soccer is a delicious, multi-faceted game that can be analyzed at many layers: at the team level, one can debate player selection, formation choices, tactical choices, and so on; at the individual level, one can discuss an individual’s athleticism, fitness, ball skills, and on and on. In the attack, one key element to consider at…
