MLS Attendance Analysis – Part I

Major League Soccer is now and has been since it’s an inception, a project. There is no escaping that. For every great bit of news, there’s soon to be not-so-great news, and vice-versa. Because soccer fans in the U.S. believe that so much is riding on the success or failure of this venture, many hardcore MLS fans like to keep an eye on league attendance in the hopes that maybe it will give some insight as to how the project is progressing.

MLS Attendance Analysis – Intro

Skip to part I

I’ve finished my preliminary study on MLS attendance numbers. Kenn Tomasch has done a great job so far of providing this info and doing some analysis of it, but I wanted to dig a little more in-depth and get a little bit more into the abstract of just how MLS attendance might work. Special thanks to Kenn for letting me use his data on doubleheaders. His site has a bunch of attendance info on all sorts of leagues, so if that floats your boat, check it out.

“DON GARBER! JEFF CUNNINGHAM WILL BE THE FIRST NEGRO IN THIS LEAGUE TO SCORE A HUNDRED GOALS!”

An interesting interview with former Columbus Crew forward and current Real Salt Lake forward, Jeff Cunningham.

What if LeBron James played soccer

You see this type of quote (sometimes with Michael Vick) a lot in the American soccer community: the general lamenting of soccer folks that the sport doesn’t get the “best athletes” the country has to offer.

HOF qualifications, 1972-1975 age group

As part of a discussion on Big Soccer, I decided to compile a list of possible qualifications for players who were born from 1972-1975. Most of the top guys are still kicking, but there likely isn’t a lot of career left for most of these guys except for maybe the goalkeepers. As a jumping off point for how you might go about deciding who does and does not belong in the American Soccer Hall of Fame, here are the numbers:

Percentage of Draws in European Leagues

A question that tends to come up a lot is what percentage of matches wind up as draws. Here’s the breakdown in the top 5 European leagues from the 2003/2004 through 2005/2006 seasons:

Season     Country   Draws   Games   Percent
2005/2006  England      77     380     20.3%
2005/2006  France      118     380     31.1%
2005/2006  Germany      96     306     31.4%
2005/2006  Italy       108     380     28.4%
2005/2006  Spain       105     380     27.6%
2004/2005  England     110     380     28.9%
2004/2005  France      132     380     34.7%
2004/2005  Germany      65     306     21.2%
2004/2005  Italy       125     380     32.9%
2004/2005  Spain       100     380     26.3%
2003/2004  England     108     380     28.4%
2003/2004  France       99     380     26.1%
2003/2004  Germany      72     306     23.5%
2003/2004  Italy        90     306     29.4%
2003/2004  Spain        95     380     25.0%
All Years  Totals     1500    5404     27.8%

As a general rule, a more balanced matchup between two teams is more likely to result in a draw. also lower scoring leads to slightly fewer draws.

English Club Ratings Explanation

The ratings that deal specifically with the teams making up the top 5 divisions in England are designed to give you at least some idea about the gap between the clubs at those levels. They are based, like the rest of the rating systems, on results. The results are gathered from the previous three seasons with the most recent seasons being weighted more heavily than previous seasons.

English Club Ratings 2005/2006 – Final

The following are the final end of season ratings for 2005/2006 for the club teams in the top five English divisions. The ratings are based on league and FA Cup results from the last three seasons. The ratings are derived entirely from results, no ’scale-thumbing’ was used to line up the hierarchy of leagues properly.

Ages of Players on World Cup Rosters 1998-2006

Here’s some fun data. (Well fun for folks like me anyway).

The following are the totals by age and position for players on the roster for the three most recent World Cups.

Home/Road Data World Cup Qualifying 2000-2005

Here’s some data that maybe a few fellow geeks might find interesting/useful.