You can’t spell mullets without MLS

By: Melissa | December 30th, 2007

Ok seriously, I can’t take credit for the awesome title. I nicked it off a comment over at Sacha Kljestan’s myspace page. Anyhooo, I’ve spent the last two weeks in bed with the flu from hell followed by a trip to Southern California where my family spent the entire “vacation” taking turns yelling at me. The holidays are great yet terrible at the same time.

There hasn’t been very much Quakes news to report so I haven’t felt compelled to post anything new here. The Combine went off last week without a hitch and the participants are now waiting for a callback (but for what its not entirely clear). Really, the only cool bit of new news is an interview from today’s Guardian where Billy Beane talks Moneyball and Premiere League Football. The article mainly explains how he successfully applied the concepts to baseball and that many football managers are seriously interested in making it work for soccer. We do get a little bit of insight into how that may actually happen via third party companies that collect data on players.

There is a fast-growing industry of analysts seeking to do for football what Beane has done for baseball. ProZone, Opta and Sports Universal are the most prominent, but the technology is still in its early stages. The collection of raw data remains labour-intensive – ProZone, for example, send films of matches to India where players’ movements are manually tracked. For Beane, though, these statistics provide a potentially crucial insight into the objective analysis of players. Figures for distance covered, tackles made, successful passes, shots, sprints and so on can be compared to the average. Many clubs are making use of it: about 20 in the top two divisions employ ProZone analysts. [Sam] Allardyce, in particular, has embraced the system at Bolton and Newcastle.

According to the article, new team owners and managers are more often graduates from business schools versus ex-players so they want to see this statistical approach succeed. Oh yeah, and there’s also a quip about how the new American owners of the Premiere League are pushing for efficiency over “art.”

So I hope everyone has a great New Years lined up. I think one of my many many New Years resolutions is to stop hoping Benny Feilhaber comes back to the US to play for San Jose. I think realistically, he doesn’t play the positions our Scoobies are trying to fill (and are willing to pay a bit more money for) so I’m retiring the dream… and leaving it at this amazing picture from his myspace page.

And here’s a little personal observation. When I finally got the crap out of Southern California, I took Bart home from the airport which passed by the Oakland Coliseum. While the train approached the Coliseum stop, I saw the giant Raiders and the A’s banners draped over the entrance to the stadium. I think it’d be pretty cool if the Quakes got perhaps a smaller banner to put up as well? Maybe just big enough to see from the Bart stop? I’m guessing whatever marketing push the front office has in mind will kick into gear in 2008. Hey guys – start with a banner!

Alright, I’m ending this completely non-sequitur post with another Song of the Week entry. This one is a London MC named Motet. I can’t find any videos online but do click over to his myspace page and listen to the tracks, especially “Rebirth of fresh demo.”