Club Team Tiers

[Carlsbad7]

Right - but that's the point. Regardless of why that difference isn't as large as it might be in a perfect world (A better team might theoretically keep on scoring to go up by 10 if there weren't a stigma), it doesn't matter. The results are the results, the wins are wins, and the scores are recorded.

I don't agree with that.

If you're a better team and you can score 10+ goals on an opponent at around 5-6 unanswered goals coaches have a decision to make.

Go all in and keep your starters in to score as many goals as possible or pull back and let players try different positions to keep the score even.

 

[RandomSoccerFan]

We're still not communicating. I am not disagreeing with your thought process here. Of course coaches will have all sorts of legitimate reasons for either running up the score or not, or defending at all costs or not. Any and all of these decisions may be made for a whole variety of legitimate reasons.

But at the end of all of that - there is a score at the end of the game. And whether it is a 4 point difference, an 8 point difference, or a 20 point difference - the difference between those three outcomes doesn't provide much data about exactly how different in quality the two teams are.

But aggregate all of those results, figure out which team wins, and the rating is what it is. And it's at this point where everyone thinks they are getting screwed. "I should be ranked higher because I could have won by more" "They should be ranked lower because getting extra goals over a terrible opponent shouldn't matter much". As long as everyone is whining, it's probably working OK.

 

[focomoso]

Where do you guys play that teams pull back when the score is lopsided? I haven't encountered that timeline. Most coaches we've had, even the softer ones, take that opportunity to work on specific tactics, but not to stop scoring.

Years ago, my son's team was up by a ton at half. The coach told the boys they had to make 15 passes before they could go to goal. Guess what happens when you make 15 passes before attacking... you score more goals. It got so bad he told them not to shoot at all, but that was even worse. They'd get right on the doorstep with an open net and turn around and pass back. It made the other team feel even worse. So he put the defenders up top and they really ran up the score because it was their only chance.

The coach told me later that he was never going to pull them back again. "Just play our game."

 

[focomoso]

Also, I don't know the inner workings of the algorithm, but I'd think that the goals lose weight as the difference is greater. The goal from 1-0 to 2-0 should count more to the teams score than 11-0 to 12-0.

 

[Zeke]

We're still not communicating. I am not disagreeing with your thought process here. Of course coaches will have all sorts of legitimate reasons for either running up the score or not, or defending at all costs or not. Any and all of these decisions may be made for a whole variety of legitimate reasons.

But at the end of all of that - there is a score at the end of the game. And whether it is a 4 point difference, an 8 point difference, or a 20 point difference - the difference between those three outcomes doesn't provide much data about exactly how different in quality the two teams are.

But aggregate all of those results, figure out which team wins, and the rating is what it is. And it's at this point where everyone thinks they are getting screwed. "I should be ranked higher because I could have won by more" "They should be ranked lower because getting extra goals over a terrible opponent shouldn't matter much". As long as everyone is whining, it's probably working OK.

I don’t really care much about any team “getting screwed” in the rankings. The rankings are certainly good enough to help flight a tournament, which is nice.

That doesn’t mean the algorithm can’t be better. Lowering the weight given to expected mismatches would help.

Why? Teams do weird stuff when they’re expecting a blowout. The weaker team can give up before the first whistle. The stronger team might start the entire bench, or loan their starters to an older team with injuries.

In effect, neither team really cares whether the final score is 8-0 or 14-0. So why should your algorithm?

 

[RandomSoccerFan]

First, not my algorithm. I'm just using the app like you. Second, you (or I, or likely anyone else other than the developers), have no idea whatsoever about what the algorithms are already doing to discount the weights given to different amounts of score differences. Of course it is going to put less weight as blowouts get worse. Of course at some point the amount of goal differences don't matter. Of course I imagine that this was thought of years ago when it was being developed, and continued to be massaged over the years and now with the app. It's tweaks to all of these things, specifically weighting the results of real matches vs. predictions to make sure that the predictions, and therefore the ratings, are as accurate as they can be given the incoming data.

If folks are curious about the details - the support email is right there in the app. They are incredibly responsive, and I imagine if there's anything that they can share, they would - just ask!

 

[Socal-Soccer-Dad]

If they keep underperforming, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what happens.

They keep underperforming just by enough to not get the dreaded red score line... but also never good enough to get the coveted green score line when they win
you know if you know

 

[Socal-Soccer-Dad]

You mean besides the handful of parents that have their phones out discussing the upcoming game's likely score? My buddy got me hooked, and then we got a few more parents hooked. Provides us with good pre-game recreation for us while we are waiting for the last game to end and those parents to move their chairs.

We were supposed to lose today's game 4-1.

We were up 1-0 at the half.

Parents were optimistic on the sidelines.

But I trust the algorithm.

We lost 4-1. LOL.

 

[Socal-Soccer-Dad]

You are a walking advertisement for the ignore button. Are you this slow and disagreeable in real life, or just on internet forums? But in case some neurons upstairs decide to fire, all of my knowledge is both from using YSR for years, and now the app, from its birth. And dozens, if not hundreds, of email conversations back and forth to Mark and his team about things I was seeing and suggestions for improving the app. Quite a few of them have made it in; he's incredibly responsive. A number of current and past posters on this board also have a similar relationship with him and his team.

And yes - as discussed in the first post about in this thread, there seems to be a glitch where when data sources are added manually, sometimes the rating of the combined team seems strange for a day or two. I've noticed it. I've talked to Mark about it. He's investigated it quite a few times. It isn't reproducible. And as also discussed since that first post, it resolves itself shortly, just as it did in this case.

If you want the details on the predictivity, ask support! The queries run periodically and automatically so the team can make sure that the predictions continue to track as expected. If you lost confidence in the app as a whole because of the bug above, so be it. I think you're a fool, but being foolish is certainly anyone's right.

Guys guys, I think he was joking (right right??)

Let's all get along.

I get on here to feel better and banter with strangers so I don't have to talk to other parents on my kid's team

 

[Socal-Soccer-Dad]

There is another great part of the app. You can click on any team on it and see the game results for that team. Nationals proved to me that the algorithm isn't perfect and I think there should be more weighting to the "difficulty of schedule". I say that because of the dominance of SoCal. We play great teams and a lot of other clubs play very sub-par teams, beat them 9-0, and the app gives them way too much credit. Really good teams can absolutely score goals at will against really weak teams and you learn nothing playing those teams if the score is 4-0 or 14-0.

This is absolutely true.

I've seen some teams specifically try to blow out teams as large as possible even against teams not at their level. They consider it a pride to get a 15-0 score line out there. I'm not judging. I think there are pros and cons.

But I know my kid's team even if we did randomly meet a team in league that's "scoreable on" at will... the coach instructs the kids to stop scoring when it gets to 7-0 or something... they COULD hang 15 on some of those games... but they don't and so it doesn't get reflected as such in Gotsport and consequently on the app...

 

[Socal-Soccer-Dad]

Years ago, my son's team was up by a ton at half. The coach told the boys they had to make 15 passes before they could go to goal. Guess what happens when you make 15 passes before attacking... you score more goals. It got so bad he told them not to shoot at all, but that was even worse. They'd get right on the doorstep with an open net and turn around and pass back. It made the other team feel even worse. So he put the defenders up top and they really ran up the score because it was their only chance.

LOL this did happen a couple of years ago in a tournament where they clearly promoted a flight 2 team up to the top bracket because they needed to fill the space....

It was 10-0 at the half and so coach instructed everyone has to touch the ball before they could score... so everyone would take turns and check in to the ball and get in a touch and then they'll go ahead and score... haha didn't really help...

The coach told me later that he was never going to pull them back again. "Just play our game."

I think this is the better approach... just play bench players more but play their regular game... let them do their own thing...

 

[RandomSoccerFan]

This is absolutely true.

I've seen some teams specifically try to blow out teams as large as possible even against teams not at their level. They consider it a pride to get a 15-0 score line out there. I'm not judging. I think there are pros and cons.

But I know my kid's team even if we did randomly meet a team in league that's "scoreable on" at will... the coach instructs the kids to stop scoring when it gets to 7-0 or something... they COULD hang 15 on some of those games... but they don't and so it doesn't get reflected as such in Gotsport and consequently on the app...

Right - but your team is not a rarity in behaving this way. Many teams do the same. Most teams (IMO) do the same. And yes, there are teams that seem to be going for a high score like an arcade game. I don't believe the differences in outcomes, from beating a team soundly, to beating them mercilessly, make much of a difference in the team's rating, as at some point the weighting of blowouts continues to go down. FOMO because there aren't 15-0 score lines isn't really needed.

In the youngers, it was more common to play in a league or participate in a tournament that had "mercy rules", and would penalize a team if they won by more than 7 goals. Coach had a code word he'd scream at the team, basically forbidding them from scoring another goal - as if they did so, they'd actually lose a point in the tournament scoring. That is more rare once they get to the larger field and 11v11, most tournaments we've seen no longer include this for those age groups and up.

 

[Rollonyoubears]

There's an 'all hands' meeting every year. It takes place in your wallet.

Welcome to the show.

Pretty much! Haha. But we all love it.

 

[Surfer_dad]

I don't agree with that.

If you're a better team and you can score 10+ goals on an opponent at around 5-6 unanswered goals coaches have a decision to make.

Go all in and keep your starters in to score as many goals as possible or pull back and let players try different positions to keep the score even.

I agree and at Surf, our coaches are trying to balance winning and playing time. Rosters are too big in my humble opinion and the coaches know that and will jump at every opportunity to get his (or her) non starters in the game. Scoring for most players are difficult and your starters almost always include your scorers. When your scorers are taken out of the game, scoring goes down. If you don’t take out those payers that score, the score runs up. There is the problem with rankings. Some teams have essentially enough players to field two teams, and the starting 11 might be in the top 10 and the next 11 might be in the top 50. So, rankings would have to know who is playing, etc etc etc to be really accurate. I love soccer rankings with its flaws because any ranking system has flaws. ECNL rankings have much bigger flaws.

 

[RandomSoccerFan]

I agree and at Surf, our coaches are trying to balance winning and playing time. Rosters are too big in my humble opinion and the coaches know that and will jump at every opportunity to get his (or her) non starters in the game. Scoring for most players are difficult and your starters almost always include your scorers. When your scorers are taken out of the game, scoring goes down. If you don’t take out those payers that score, the score runs up. There is the problem with rankings. Some teams have essentially enough players to field two teams, and the starting 11 might be in the top 10 and the next 11 might be in the top 50. So, rankings would have to know who is playing, etc etc etc to be really accurate. I love soccer rankings with its flaws because any ranking system has flaws. ECNL rankings have much bigger flaws.

I don't believe this is the case, but I imagine that we're posing different questions. The ratings/rankings/predictions attempt to be as accurate as feasible, given the incoming data of scores of the games. If it could infer more accurate outcomes given the incoming scores - it would - that's what all of the improvement over the years is focused on. The predictivity results of it right now, are exactly what they are - no better, or worse. Throwing out the model because conditions aren't exactly average for that game, isn't necessary or appropriate - the predictivity results already include all of that variability - because it has no idea it's there in the first place. The predicted results are what the team is predicted to do given all prior results, in all conditions.

Now - if the model had additional incoming data, like which specific roster was on the field, the weather, injuries, etc., I don't doubt that it would up the predictivity a bit compared to today. The question is how much better, as eventually there would be diminishing returns no matter how much data it has, and there will always be variability in results. Would it go from 83% to something like 90% or even higher? Who knows - but there is definitely an upper limit, and it's hard to say how far (or close) it is from that right now.

 

[RandomSoccerFan]

Against my better judgment, I figured I'd share another example of this bug that I saw this afternoon. Here is one new team entity, with 3 data sources brought together manually (Davis Legacy 07/06B White). When brought together, the ratings/calcs look weird. #1 defense in nation, #13 overall, but #212 offense, and only #624 in schedule strength. I'm pretty confident that when I look back at this same team a day or two from now, everything will be much more believable and better representative of the data sources. For the umpteenth time in this thread - I don't believe these possible errors amount to much at all, as they are quickly normalized - but it would be even better if we couldn't cause them to happen occasionally in the first place.

 

[Jamisfoes]

Another example of something that doesn’t make sense is 2014 Pateadores NBCM. They are currently 17th in California. Look at their record and compare it to Strikers Barahona at 15th. I don’t think they should even be in the same ball park. Sorry to pick on the Pats but the discrepancies I notice are mainly with Pats.

 

[RandomSoccerFan]

Another example of something that doesn’t make sense is 2014 Pateadores NBCM. They are currently 17th in California. Look at their record and compare it to Strikers Barahona at 15th. I don’t think they should even be in the same ball park. Sorry to pick on the Pats but the discrepancies I notice are mainly with Pats.

I'm not sure I agree, I don't think it looks that out of whack. They show a 41.5, and just look at the results from Surf Cup at the beginning of the month. They beat a 39.7 by 2, a 40.7 by 3, a 39.3 by 3, a 40.6 by 2, and a 35.8 by 8. A 41.5 rating passes the eye test, as it is about where one would estimate just by looking at the results. Now that team entity only has info for 2 tournaments, so while it has determined it's enough to show a rating, it's quite possible additional games coming in will provide some clarity on where they should be rated.

 

[Jamisfoes]

I'm not sure I agree, I don't think it looks that out of whack. They show a 41.5, and just look at the results from Surf Cup at the beginning of the month. They beat a 39.7 by 2, a 40.7 by 3, a 39.3 by 3, a 40.6 by 2, and a 35.8 by 8. A 41.5 rating passes the eye test, as it is about where one would estimate just by looking at the results. Now that team entity only has info for 2 tournaments, so while it has determined it's enough to show a rating, it's quite possible additional games coming in will provide some clarity on where they should be rated.


View attachment 22832

Agreed based on the limited recent games, they might be. But this team has been around for a while. It’s the same team as Pateadores SC NB…in the unranked section. I suspect a bad actor getting rid of old data to game the system.
Perhaps there should be a stricter criteria for top 50 teams.

 

[RandomSoccerFan]

Agreed based on the limited recent games, they might be. But this team has been around for a while. It’s the same team as Pateadores SC NB…in the unranked section. I suspect a bad actor getting rid of old data to game the system.
Perhaps there should be a stricter criteria for top 50 teams.

You can't help yourself, can you? There is almost certainly no bad actor, there is just apathy from anyone looking at their own team data in terms of merging them. Is it healthy to always think there is a conspiracy/nefarious threat behind everything that you don't like or understand?

Pateadores is always going to be clunky with any aggregator software like this. There are a bunch of similarly named, but different, clubs - and they all register their team names into leagues/tournaments with various permutations, making it non-trivial to bring teams together that are probably the same (but named slightly differently). Other clubs that have this issue pretty regularly because of the number of different teams, number of affiliates, and frequently changed team names include Total, Strikers, Legends, Albion, City SC, Slammers, and probably a few more. For just the Pateadores in the main listed club "Pateadores SC", they show data for 75 different girls teams and 115 different boys teams from 2016 through 2008. And there are 7 club listings, including that one main one, in just CA (Pateadores HB, Pateadores IER, Pateadores IRV, Pateadores Long Beach, Pateadores Newport Costa Mesa, Pateadores Santa Clarita Valley, and the main Pateadores SC). If someone affiliated with the club cared about getting this data shown correctly, they'd need to stay on top of how these potentially hundreds of teams are registered in their various tournaments/leagues/events, name them consistently, and bring them together as needed. But most certainly don't see this as a priority, so it comes down to any interested parents to do it. In most cases - it works pretty well, as it only takes a singled interested party to keep things clean, but for clubs like this it can get large enough and complicated enough that team data isn't as collated as one may want.

In this case, if you are convinced that these two teams are identical, and that new data should be added to the other team - all it takes is to add it and hit save. If you're right, it's likely that you just helped make the data more accurate. If you're wrong, someone might potentially change it back or send a note to support ("WTF - who messed with my team!"). And if it turns out to be inaccurate, it is just as easy to remove the data afterwards - nothing is permanent.

Here are the two teams:



Here's how to add/merge that data:



Here's the resulting team, with all data sources in one:



Now it looks like the team has done amazingly well, almost suspiciously well, in the Surf cup - showing 3 green overperforms. It might be that the same team just did well, or the team entities might really not be the same, and a different roster is now cleaning up in tournaments.

 

[Socal-Soccer-Dad]

But this team has been around for a while. It’s the same team as Pateadores SC NB…in the unranked section.

When I see this and I know for sure they're the same teams, I add the games/sources manually...