Can I offer an olive branch and a warning to the football world from an avid watcher and youth coach of soccer. There’s a current trend in soccer of using analytics to drive player tactics and it leads to some incorrect conclusions. One of the most frustrating is the tendency for players to, instead of shooting from a distance, try to cross it in or pass the ball back and forth all the way to the net. The stats say a shot from distance has a low likelihood of going into the goal so they opt for keeping possession. But the problem comes from what happens when acting upon that stat. Players know that shots won’t take place outside the 18 yard line so they just pack the box with players and wait for the inward pass or cross.

You see… taking these statistically low success shots were forcing the opposing defenders to leave the box, which paradoxically increased the likelihood of inward pass success.

The reason stats can’t necessarily be trusted is because there’s knock on effects of acting on statistics that aren’t immediately obvious unless you apply multiple layers of cause and effect.

The single remaining takeaway is that given two equally skilled teams, the team that can adapt quicker will generally come away the winner. Using stats is sometimes a false comfort. They lie. The smarter players will win if they are creative enough and have been trained to be observant enough to see and recognize what’s happening on the field.