#116 Mastering Soccer Analytics, with Ravi Ramineni

Learning Bayesian Statistics

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Takeaways:

• Building an athlete management system and a scouting and recruitment platform are key goals in football analytics.
• The focus is on informing training decisions, preventing injuries, and making smart player signings.
• Avoiding false positives in player evaluations is crucial, and data analysis plays a significant role in making informed decisions.
• There are similarities between different football teams, and the sport has social and emotional aspects. Transitioning from on-premises SQL servers to cloud-based systems is a significant endeavor in football analytics.
• Analytics is a tool that aids the decision-making process and helps mitigate biases. The impact of analytics in soccer can be seen in the decline of long-range shots.
• Collaboration and trust between analysts and decision-makers are crucial for successful implementation of analytics.
• The limitations of available data in football analytics hinder the ability to directly measure decision-making on the field.
• Analyzing the impact of coaches in sports analytics is challenging due to the difficulty of separating their effect from other factors. Current data limitations make it hard to evaluate coaching performance accurately.
• Predictive metrics and modeling play a crucial role in soccer analytics, especially in predicting the career progression of young players.
• Improving tracking data and expanding its availability will be a significant focus in the future of soccer analytics.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction to Ravi and His Role at Seattle Sounders

06:30 Building an Analytics Department

15:00 The Impact of Analytics on Player Recruitment and Performance

28:00 Challenges and Innovations in Soccer Analytics

42:00 Player Health, Injury Prevention, and Training

55:00 The Evolution of Data-Driven Strategies

01:10:00 Future of Analytics in Sports

Thank you to my Patrons for making this episode possible!

Yusuke Saito, Avi Bryant, Ero Carrera, Giuliano Cruz, Tim Gasser, James Wade, Tradd Salvo, William Benton, James Ahloy, Robin Taylor,, Chad Scherrer, Zwelithini Tunyiswa, Bertrand Wilden, James Thompson, Stephen Oates, Gian Luca Di Tanna, Jack Wells, Matthew Maldonado, Ian Costley, Ally Salim, Larry Gill, Ian Moran, Paul Oreto, Colin Caprani, Colin Carroll, Nathaniel Burbank, Michael Osthege, Rémi Louf, Clive Edelsten, Henri Wallen, Hugo Botha, Vinh Nguyen, Marcin Elantkowski, Adam C. Smith, Will Kurt, Andrew Moskowitz, Hector Munoz, Marco Gorelli, Simon Kessell, Bradley Rode, Patrick Kelley, Rick Anderson, Casper de Bruin, Philippe Labonde, Michael Hankin, Cameron Smith, Tomáš Frýda, Ryan Wesslen, Andreas Netti, Riley King, Yoshiyuki Hamajima, Sven De Maeyer, Michael DeCrescenzo, Fergal M, Mason Yahr, Naoya Kanai, Steven Rowland, Aubrey Clayton, Jeannine Sue, Omri Har Shemesh, Scott Anthony Robson, Robert Yolken, Or Duek, Pavel Dusek, Paul Cox, Andreas Kröpelin, Raphaël R, Nicolas Rode, Gabriel Stechschulte, Arkady, Kurt TeKolste, Gergely Juhasz, Marcus Nölke, Maggi Mackintosh, Grant Pezzolesi, Avram Aelony, Joshua Meehl, Javier Sabio, Kristian Higgins, Alex Jones, Gregorio Aguilar, Matt Rosinski, Bart Trudeau, Luis Fonseca, Dante Gates, Matt Niccolls, Maksim Kuznecov, Michael Thomas, Luke Gorrie, Cory Kiser, Julio, Edvin Saveljev, Frederick Ayala, Jeffrey Powell, Gal Kampel, Adan Romero, Will Geary, Blake Walters, Jonathan Morgan, Francesco Madrisotti, Ivy Huang and Gary Clarke.

Links from the show:

• LBS Sports Analytics playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7RjIaSLWh5kDiPVMUSyhvFaXL3NoXOe4
• Ravi on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ravi-ramineni-3798374/
• Ravi on Twitter: https://x.com/analyseFooty
• Decisions in Football - The Power of Compounding | StatsBomb Conference 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7CXtwDg9lM
• The Signal and the Noise: https://www.amazon.com/Signal-Noise-Many-Predictions-Fail-but/dp/0143125087
• PreliZ – A tool-box for prior elicitation: https://preliz.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
• Ravi talking on Ted Knutson's podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1exLBfyFf0d1dm2IaXkd2v
• More about Ravi's work at the Seattle Sounders: https://www.trumedianetworks.com/expected-value-podcast/ravi-ramineni

Transcript

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