For a footballer affectionately nicknamed “El Guaje” (the kid), David Villa boasts a monster resume. As his country’s all-time leading scorer, the Spanish footballer recently became only the sixth active player to score 400 career goals. Before the world tunes in to watch younger players fight for the World Cup, David took the time to reflect on his career and its humble beginnings.
… It also might be the only concern, albeit one that pinpoints exactly the caliber of player Doncic can become, and whether or not he’s worth a top selection that should in theory yield a superstar-level talent. Physical development will be one of the most important aspects of investing in Doncic. He noticeably put on some weight during the ACB and EuroLeague seasons, which affected his elusiveness on drives; his shooting numbers (which have fallen off a cliff in the second half of the season) may have also suffered because of fatigue. P3 athletes who have played in Europe have told Elliott that there is little to no attention paid to lifting or power development of any sort in their professional leagues. Trimming Doncic down and focusing on his explosiveness could unlock a different player than what we’ve seen out of Luka recently.
P3’s publicly disclosed data suggest some unorthodoxy to Doncic’s brand of athleticism, akin to a player like James Harden, whose ability to accelerate may be nothing special, but whose ability to stop on a dime is world-class. Doncic’s lateral acceleration numbers from 2017 were in the 71st percentile of all NBA players whom P3 has tested. His slide agility drill results produced times that “outpace most NBA guards tested at P3.”
… “I hope that sprint cyclists are warming up less now,” says study author Brian MacIntosh, Ph.D., a kinesiologist at the University of Calgary.
According to MacIntosh, while we know warm-ups help, researchers still are not certain what mechanisms are involved. However, a few have been identified that are collectively called “priming.” The first involves raising core and muscle temperature. A single-degree increase can improve peak power and performance two to five percent.
Other priming effects include an improved VO2 response at the start of the race and something called post-activation potentiation, or PAP. The idea is that performing a series of intense, voluntary contractions improves the muscle’s ability to contract. Many track cyclists now incorporate short sprints into their warm-up routines.
A little break from the normal content here as I have recently read “The Secret Footballer: What The Physio Saw” which is the latest book in The Secret Footballer series.
The idea of the book is to follow a Premier League Physiotherapist through the course of an entire season where they comment on issues that are happening at their club during each month. There is also some points where the physio will then relate back to previous seasons and incidents that link to these issues that are occurring at that specific time. Then at the end of each chapter The Secret Footballer writes a few pages which are stories of their own experiences in rehabilitation, or just funny stories that have happened within the treatment room throughout their career.
… “There are always things (to improve),” the England boss said. “We are a team that are improving and developing, and therefore there will always be things that we can get better at.
“We’re a long way from perfection. What pleased me is that there has been a long period of work gone into (Monday’s) result from all the players and all of the support team.
“If you don’t get the win, even though you’ve done so many things right, that can breed a little bit of doubt.
I have a guest post for the Research Digest, snappily titled ‘People who think their opinions are superior to others are most prone to overestimating their relevant knowledge and ignoring chances to learn more‘. The paper I review is about the so-called “belief superiority” effect, which is defined by thinking that your views are better than other people’s (i.e. not just that you are right, but that other people are wrong). The finding that people who have belief superiority are more likely to overestimate their knowledge is a twist on the famous Dunning-Kruger phenomenon, but showing that it isn’t just ignorance that predicts overconfidence, but also the specific belief that everyone else has mistaken beliefs.
… The major barriers that Ramineni sees for soccer technology are both financial- and personnel-related. He believes the cost of many technologies are “still too high for mid- and low-level clubs and leagues.” Additionally, “most teams still don’t have the manpower with the appropriate skill-sets to mine the large amounts of data generated by optical tracking.”
… Today’s faster, more physical game is slugged out on the baseline, while the finesse approach, including soft touches and controlled volleys (of the Pete Sampras era) is ineffective. The game is now about huge power and spin. Forehand winners, many times, exceed 100 mph. There’s more topspin today than ever before. And yet, even with more power and spin, players still retain a shocking amount of precision, making success at the net difficult.
When you peel back the layers of tennis today, like all professional sports, the way the game is played has changed with new technology, athletic conditioning, and (you guessed it) data. Baseball was one of the first to show off the power of big data, with the application of sabermetrics to optimize lineups. Now, the use of data has permeated every modern sport. Just look at the sheer number of three-pointers being shot by leading NBA teams as a result of data leverage that shifted gameplay.
Royal Statistical Society; Luke Bornn, Dan Cervone and Javier Fernandez from
… While the delay in the soccer community’s acceptance of quantitative metrics might be attributed to its traditional and well‐entrenched culture, or its semantic and geographical distance from baseball’s analytical roots, the data are also to blame.
The problem for soccer is this: data across all major team sports have focused on what is happening to the ball throughout the game. In baseball, for instance, tracking ball events alone captures nearly every impactful moment in the game. In basketball even, while off‐ball actions such as defensive positioning do affect game play, on‐ball events provide the data that comprise modern metrics (such as player efficiency ratings). In other words, all these metrics rely on is aggregate counts of how a particular play began and ended, with basic on‐ball information such as who took the shot and whether it was made or missed.
In soccer, however, on‐ball actions provide less insight into strategy and player evaluation. Indeed, soccer games are often won and lost away from the ball. As soccer legend Johan Cruyff explained: “When you play a match, it is statistically proven that players actually have the ball three minutes on average … So, the most important thing is: what do you do during those 87 minutes when you do not have the ball? That is what determines whether you’re a good player or not.”
Machine learning and AI are becoming critical components of more and more products. Some applications, like image recognition and natural language understanding, seemed out of reach just a few years ago but are now reaching the mainstream.
But, these powerful tools also create new product development challenges.
Having worked on building machine learning based products at various companies, I started noticing a common theme: data creates a fit challenge.
With the FIFA World Cup underway, a lot of the data that will be gathered will be done so by a company called STATS. We talk to its director of AI, Patrick Lucey.
Patrick Lucey is director and vice-president of artificial intelligence (AI) at STATS (Sports Team Analysis and Tracking Systems), a Chicago-headquartered sports analytics company.
It emerged this week that STATS is on track to employ 150 full-time and part-time staff by 2020 at its new offices in Limerick.
