As I was watching my beloved Houston Dynamo play last week, this goal prompted me to take a deep look into the importance of space in soccer and why Americans hate it so much.
Bear with me here.
Take a look at this sequence of play leading up to the Houston Dynamo goal (black jerseys) and think about who the most important player is during this buildup.
Even though he doesn't score or get an assist, I'd argue it's Memo Rodriguez (left winger, #8). A lot just happened so let's break it down.
Here, Memo (the only guy on the Dynamo making a run) anticipates that the play is going to build up on the left side of the field and immediately makes a hard run down the sideline past Jay Chapman to get open.
Then something beautiful happens.
Memo's movement does two things:
1. Creates space for the overlapping fullback
His quick, direct run immediately causes the Toronto FC right back to backpedal, creating space for the overlapping fullback, Adam Lundkvist (and yes he is Swedish), to run into. This is important because Memo's off the ball movement allows Lundkvist to advance the ball into Toronto's half.
2. Creates more space
Here, Memo receives the ball from Lundkvist prompting Auro, the Toronto FC right back (who I have decided to label as "Fool"), to follow Memo, opening up tons of space for the försvarsspelare to run into. Again, Memo's off the ball movement is really important because it creates space for the play to develop. If you take another look at the gif you'll see how Memo completely drags Auro out of position (before y'all go on about how he's trash because he plays for MLS, Auro is a 23 year old from São Paulo FC and had offers from multiple La Liga clubs so he's legit) and creates the goal scoring opportunity for Tomas Martinez. Without Memo the ball doesn't get anywhere close to TFC's final third during this possession. Tomas Martinez gets the goal, Lundkvist and Manotas get the assists, but Memo doesn't get on the score sheet for doing all the hard work.
The game of soccer is all about space. The best teams are those who can create the most space and exploit it.
Why Americans Hate Soccer (quick tangent)
In popular American sports (football, basketball, golf) we are taught to watch the ball. Whether it's a pass downfield, a drive to the basket, or an eagle putt, the ball is where the action is. If you watch the ball, you will, more or less, get most of the action.
In soccer it's what you do when you don't have the ball that is important. As the great Johan Cruyff put it:
"When you play a match, it is statistically proven that players actually have the ball 3 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."
Here is another example of great off the ball movement from the 2018 FIFA World Cup (keep an eye on #9 Romelu Lukaku)
First off, GOOSEBUMPS. Second, Lukaku's movement is EXCELLENT. Notice how his first run drags the left back out of position, creating space for the winger, and his second run pulls the center back out of position, creating space for the goalscorer. I cannot stress how important the creation and manipulation of space is in this sport. This game goes into extra time if Lukaku doesn't make these runs:
Americans think soccer is boring because most don't understand it. You have to watch the players on the field, not just the one with the ball, in order to get a good idea of what is going on in the game. Every movement and pass impacts the game and it's the intricacy and creativity that soccer demands that makes it such an entertaining game. Again, it's all about space! The next time you watch a soccer game don't keep your eye on the ball and think about the movement and passing of a team in terms of the space they create. I promise you'll enjoy the match much more.
Fixing the Problem
While off the ball movement is key in soccer, it's not valued it as much as it should be. Memo Rodriguez and Romelu Lukaku did all the hard work for their respective teams but don't get on the score sheet for it. Assists are only given to the player who makes the final pass leading up to the goal (unfortunately, cool dummies don't count). However, thanks to some data scientists (Dan Nichol and Mladen Sormaz, the head of football analytics at Leicester City FC) off the ball movement is now quantifiable!
Opta (the biggest data collection company in sports) holds an annual analytics conference where the top analysts meet and present their soccer research. This past year Dan and Mladen gave a presentation,Quantifying the impact of off-the-ball movement in football, where they discuss movement in space and how it creates attacking opportunities. Part of their model uses a really cool pitch control metric developed by University of Dallas graduate and head Liverpool Data Scientist, Will Spearman, but that's a post for another day.
The gif on the right roughly shows how their model works. They use GPS tracking data to determine a team's formation and then evaluate the attacking runs on how much damage they cause to their opponent's defensive shape. In this example, the run by the left winger does an excellent job of breaking the opponent's shape.
The graph on the right shows attacking runs, plotted based on the amount of space they create and formation damage they cause. The obvious conclusion from this graph is the more shape damage and space a run creates, the more likely it will lead to a shot. What I love about this graph is that it helps us identify high quality attacking runs, even if they don't lead to a shot. For example, a forward can make a lot of great runs that create space for his/her teammates (which would be represented on the graph by a dot in the upper right hand side) and even if he/she doesn't get credited with a goal or an assist, we can still identify him/her as an excellent forward. This is a huge step in player evaluation and hopefully it will lead to an expected chances/space created statistic.
If you have an extra 20 minutes, I'd highly recommend checking this presentation out.