Get ready folks

[RandomSoccerFan]

I can’t even tell which team is which. Unless it’s a team immediately in my area I have no idea. Also some of these teams play up a year. You really can’t tell looking at the EA website.

Please post a link.

OK - it's a mystery, but you don't want to share. So I dug. I imagine you're complaining about a California bracket, of EA, and you've had issues with the Boys side before. So I looked at all California EA teams in 2010B that are in Unranked. There were about 12. 2 of them could be easily merged. The rest of them appear to be either one-offs, or are no longer playing. But one in particular did turn out to be a mystery, that is most probably due to the club being careless with team names, either intentionally or unintentionally. If you look at Socal Elite FC EA B10, it seems that there are two identical teams that played at the same time/days. Digging all the way through the links, it sure looks like the teams are named identically, they are in the same age brackets, yet they are separate. It's almost certain that SoCal Elite just put a younger (or older) team in one of the competitions, yet kept the name the same - so it isn't obvious to merge or separate the team data from just looking at it.

 

[Carlsbad7]

I really think you've concocted a pretty convoluted solution to a problem that won't really exist by the time this all comes to pass, and described all the possible complications of same. I'm pretty confident it's not going to be nearly as bad, and even if it were, it would only be transitionary while all the leagues that matter got in sync.

I didn't concoct anything.

Another poster said if there were groups of players BY and SY the easiest way to make the rankings app work without changing anything is an additional break out of the data between BY and SY per age group.

Instead of...
B2010
B2011
B2012

It would be...
B_BY_2010
B_SY_2010
B_BY_2011
B_SY_2011
B_BY_2012
B_SY_2012

What I wanted to do is add a power percentage to the teams in the league that were 6 months older. This would allow all all teams to continue to be viewed in the same age group. (Ie B2010, B2011, B2012)

 

[RandomSoccerFan]

And as explained, there's both no need to do so (add some type of power rating), nor would it buy anything, even if it were possible. It doesn't work like that. However one wants to group and sort the team ratings is all mathematically possible, and it's just different ways to display the same underlying data.

 

[Carlsbad7]

And as explained, there's both no need to do so (add some type of power rating), nor would it buy anything, even if it were possible. It doesn't work like that. However one wants to group and sort the team ratings is all mathematically possible, and it's just different ways to display the same underlying data.

What you're describing would be like grouping two different age groups (that rarely play each other) together and ranking them.

Like this...
B2010-2011

The rankings provided wouldn't be helpful.

 

[RandomSoccerFan]

No, I'm not describing that at all. I'm saying that the only thing that matters is the team entity, and the rating that is attached to it due to its performance in its game results. That rating is independent of everything, whether age/gender/location. I'm not sure that plain fact is really understood by most.

Ranking that rating is done by putting them all in a like group and sorting them. Now it's done by age/gender/location, as those are the most obvious attributes assigned to a team entity that can be pulled in as part of their results.

You believe that if there are BY teams and SY teams, that they shouldn't be put in the same group and ranked because one is 6 months older. OK - but then you're proposing exactly that, there are two sets of groups for each age range, and sort ratings independently for each.

I think two things. One, it's clunky, and splitting the ratings out into two separate groups would be too confusing for most to interpret, so it wouldn't be a great UI for any app doing so. Two, I don't see clubs actually naming & separating their teams as such, with some BY teams, and some SY teams, depending on level of play, league, etc. If that second one doesn't happen, there's no ability (or need) for the first.

 

[Jamisfoes]

OK - it's a mystery, but you don't want to share. So I dug. I imagine you're complaining about a California bracket, of EA, and you've had issues with the Boys side before. So I looked at all California EA teams in 2010B that are in Unranked. There were about 12. 2 of them could be easily merged. The rest of them appear to be either one-offs, or are no longer playing. But one in particular did turn out to be a mystery, that is most probably due to the club being careless with team names, either intentionally or unintentionally. If you look at Socal Elite FC EA B10, it seems that there are two identical teams that played at the same time/days. Digging all the way through the links, it sure looks like the teams are named identically, they are in the same age brackets, yet they are separate. It's almost certain that SoCal Elite just put a younger (or older) team in one of the competitions, yet kept the name the same - so it isn't obvious to merge or separate the team data from just looking at it.

View attachment 23490View attachment 23491View attachment 23492View attachment 23493View attachment 23494View attachment 23495

Thanks for looking into this. The problem with the EA website is they don’t list the coach and manager. I don’t know how SR can figure out team entity based on the limited information. Relying on users to correct only works if the teams are local and people are actually familiar with the teams they are playing.

 

[RandomSoccerFan]

Coach fields and manager fields aren't usually that important. Many tournaments don't include them, and for systems that do - often clubs leave many coach/manager names attached to a particular team. Yes - it may be helpful if a human is trying to differentiate between two data sources and that data alone makes the difference - but it's rare. In almost all cases, team name is more than good enough - along with any links that team name has to other data (like gotsport team ID). And if there isn't any clarity there, the data isn't automatically merged, and it goes into unranked, and eventually someone moves it over if possible or it just stays there. But in this case - you can't fix bad data if it's unclear from the source. Playing the wrong age team in a different age bracket and not changing the team name - ends up with exactly this outcome. It's not a big deal in the scheme of things, and none of this data is perfect - but if a team/club cares about their own results being attached to the correct team, it's not hard to just name their teams appropriately. Some clubs do it without an issue with hundreds of teams. Others are quite haphazard.

 

[TopesWin]

Thinking about this a little more...

If ECNL went SY and GA, MLSN, etc stayed BY and the rankings app split out teams by BY and SY (ie BSY2010 and BBY2010) the group that benefits the most would be the league with "lower" ranked teams.

On the girls side SY = ECNL and BY = GA. So the two top teams per age group would always be one team from GA and one team from ECNL. On the boys side there would be one MLSN team and one ECNL top team per age group.

The group that losses out in this situation is the lower top tier teams from a league with a large number of top teams. The group that wins is the league who's teams aren't ranked as highly but just happen to be the opposite of the BY or SY group with a large number of top teams.

Here's another weird thing that could occur. Say 99% of the leagues in the nation were BY and one rec league was SY. You'd end up with one top BY team that represented the best team of 99% of the teams playing. But you'd also have another SY top team that represented 1% on the teams playing. Someone that didn't understand the the makeup of the BY vs SY grouping would assume the SY2010 team and the BY2010 team were equivalent when they are not.

None of that is a problem at all, even if it did happen, which it won't.

 

[TopesWin]

Newbie here. What's the relevance of rankings in real terms? College recruiting? Invitation to tournaments?

Bragging rights for parents. And to a lesser extent, (1) for tournament organizers to make sure their flights are competitive and (2) for coaches to find scrimmages that are at the correct level to make a good game.

 

[RandomSoccerFan]

I like that they tend to provide some more sturdy foundation for how a team is performing compared to its peers. In a world where it doesn't exist, coaches are free to label every team "Elite Premier Academy Select Championship team", and the club can sell parents on it at $XXXX/year, regardless whether the kids all look like Messi or instead have trouble remembering which cleat goes on which foot - and the parents would have very limited information on whether what the coach/club is sharing is generally accurate.

I do find it pretty crazy that there still are tournament directors who "do their own research", and think that they have to check last season's bracket for each team to kinda see how good a team might be, when much better quality info is a few clicks and $10/year away. It's a whole lot more manual work, which ends up with crappy results. It's barely a hobby for most of us, and it's ostensibly their job - yet they don't find ways to be better at it.

 

[Scrub It Kook]

I like that they tend to provide some more sturdy foundation for how a team is performing compared to its peers. In a world where it doesn't exist, coaches are free to label every team "Elite Premier Academy Select Championship team", and the club can sell parents on it at $XXXX/year, regardless whether the kids all look like Messi or instead have trouble remembering which cleat goes on which foot - and the parents would have very limited information on whether what the coach/club is sharing is generally accurate.

I do find it pretty crazy that there still are tournament directors who "do their own research", and think that they have to check last season's bracket for each team to kinda see how good a team might be, when much better quality info is a few clicks and $10/year away. It's a whole lot more manual work, which ends up with crappy results. It's barely a hobby for most of us, and it's ostensibly their job - yet they don't find ways to be better at it.

I question how widely used the soccer rankings app is. Without a doubt the die hard's use it. But many mid-to-lower flight team parents have no idea of it's existence. I know parents of flight 2 players who don't have a clue about it, but yell & scream at their kid during games as if they're playing in the World Cup when the app clearly shows their team is going to lose 5 nil.

 

[Carlsbad7]

I question how widely used the soccer rankings app is. Without a doubt the die hard's use it. But many mid-to-lower flight team parents have no idea of it's existence. I know parents of flight 2 players who don't have a clue about it, but yell & scream at their kid during games as if they're playing in the World Cup when the app clearly shows their team is going to lose 5 nil.

When you're new to the game everything looks ridiculously easy to do on the field. You don't realize that the things players do takes time to develop.

When you've been around for a while you start to realize that the preparations taken before the game by the coach with the players is what translates to performance and results.

It's a weird transition. At this point I can watch a random field and identify which players are doing things like futsal or arena or general small sided games. Also if I know the coach I can tell just by watching players play who is coaching them.

I'm sure the top coaches and docs can see 100x what I'm able to identify. Just from being around the game longer and being more closely involved.

Circling back, the parent that screams at their kid will mellow out as they learn more about the game. They just want what's best for their kid and don't understand all the dynamics going on around them.

 

[Carlsbad7]

I like that they tend to provide some more sturdy foundation for how a team is performing compared to its peers. In a world where it doesn't exist, coaches are free to label every team "Elite Premier Academy Select Championship team", and the club can sell parents on it at $XXXX/year, regardless whether the kids all look like Messi or instead have trouble remembering which cleat goes on which foot - and the parents would have very limited information on whether what the coach/club is sharing is generally accurate.

I do find it pretty crazy that there still are tournament directors who "do their own research", and think that they have to check last season's bracket for each team to kinda see how good a team might be, when much better quality info is a few clicks and $10/year away. It's a whole lot more manual work, which ends up with crappy results. It's barely a hobby for most of us, and it's ostensibly their job - yet they don't find ways to be better at it.

The world before the rankings app was absolutely atrocious.

You'd get a list of the "top" clubs every 6 months that was 100% paid for by different clubs. It was literally so transparent I'm surprised there wasn't a "sponsored by" xyz after every ranking.

 

[RandomSoccerFan]

I question how widely used the soccer rankings app is. Without a doubt the die hard's use it. But many mid-to-lower flight team parents have no idea of it's existence. I know parents of flight 2 players who don't have a clue about it, but yell & scream at their kid during games as if they're playing in the World Cup when the app clearly shows their team is going to lose 5 nil.

I used to talk it up a bit more to other parents, and some certainly got interested in it. But honestly, most of them would then just come to me before a game and ask what things looked like (so I could look at the app and tell them, as if my ability to use a smartphone is a class of magic). Nowadays, it comes up in conversation from time to time, but the vast majority of the time I'm explaining it to them for the first time - they had no idea it existed. Two weeks ago for me, this included parents of kids on a team in the top 2% of teams in CA, so ignorance of its existence is not solely made up of lower level teams - it's pretty widespread.

I think there is also a natural skepticism of things like this for many. "Wait, that app is going to tell me how good my kid's team is? Bullshit. I know better". It doesn't matter whatever level of accuracy can be shown - it just wouldn't matter if it got 100 games in a row correct - many would bitch that it got game 101 wrong, so to them it's useless. It also doesn't help the cause that there are pretty bad examples out there of ranking/rating processes, whether the paid promotion on websites and related media, or ones that are just particularly bad at math - so someone who becomes skeptical of all things in this genre may have some experience to back up their beliefs.

That said, IMO, the addressable market with this is large enough that Mark could be making some real money with it if he wanted to. Full web advertising campaign, with SR showing up in the banners in every soccer website, and he should up the cost 500%. Anyone who is dropping $10/year on it is not the casual fan; they are the borderline psycho soccer parents (like many of us), who would have no qualms dropping $50/year on it, if not more. Heck, we have it on 3 devices here for convenience, and it's still only $30/year.

 

[TopesWin]

What you're describing would be like grouping two different age groups (that rarely play each other) together and ranking them.

Like this...
B2010-2011

The rankings provided wouldn't be helpful.

Of course it would be helpful. There wouldn't be anything wrong with that either. In fact, if you were really worried, you could just take the data and break it down any way you want. None of your scenarios are a problem at all.

 

[rainbow_unicorn]

We all want to believe this about ourselves, but unfortunately we're all flawed. However much it matters, or doesn't matter, can be applied to the score of a game, position in a standings bracket, or relative team strength ratings. A consistent argument could be made that none of it matters a whit, or all of it is terribly important - while the truth probably falls somewhere in the middle depending on the individual perspective.

I don't think it's correct that nobody of importance cares about rankings.

Fair enough, I should have reworded this and said scouts do not care so much about a team's ranking...rather they want to know if a player can ball regardless of what team they play for. I find it ironic that in youth soccer the parents that want SO much for their kid focus on all the wrong things (i.e. wins and rankings).

 

[LASTMAN14]

Fair enough, I should have reworded this and said scouts do not care so much about a team's ranking...rather they want to know if a player can ball regardless of what team they play for. I find it ironic that in youth soccer the parents that want SO much for their kid focus on all the wrong things (i.e. wins and rankings).

Kinda like Leena Powell at Tudela. She’s on the US U17 roster and a UCLA recruit.

 

[Carlsbad7]

Of course it would be helpful. There wouldn't be anything wrong with that either. In fact, if you were really worried, you could just take the data and break it down any way you want. None of your scenarios are a problem at all.

If you want numbers to be useful they need to be "correct".

A 6 month difference in the age between 2 different groups of players to me needs to be accounted for to make the data presented valuable.

If this type of thing isn't accounted for in the way data is presented large numbers of users will discount the rankings app as biased and unusable.

If you notice I'm only talking about ranking of teams against other teams. Individual team against team predictive outcomes would not need a power addition because you want an analysis of the actual result not what would happen if both teams had players the same age.

After thinking about this I've talked myself into presenting the data as BY-G2010 and SY-G2010 is the way to go. Although it would be nice to have all teams in a single G2010 group it's just easier to keep everything as and not mess around with adding a power result.

 

[Zeke]

If you want numbers to be useful they need to be "correct".

A 6 month difference in the age between 2 different groups of players to me needs to be accounted for to make the data presented valuable.

If this type of thing isn't accounted for in the way data is presented large numbers of users will discount the rankings app as biased and unusable.

If you notice I'm only talking about ranking of teams against other teams. Individual team against team predictive outcomes would not need a power addition because you want an analysis of the actual result not what would happen if both teams had players the same age.

After thinking about this I've talked myself into presenting the data as BY-G2010 and SY-G2010 is the way to go. Although it would be nice to have all teams in a single G2010 group it's just easier to keep everything as and not mess around with adding a power result.

Why do you think GA would want to use a different age system than ECNL?

I can’t see ECNL going it alone with SY or GY. And I have a hard time imagining GA staying BY if the majority go SY. Seems more likely they both follow the vote, whatever it is.

 

[Carlsbad7]

Why do you think GA would want to use a different age system than ECNL?

I can’t see ECNL going it alone with SY or GY. And I have a hard time imagining GA staying BY if the majority go SY. Seems more likely they both follow the vote, whatever it is.

Maybe, I'm just playing out different options.

GA hasn't made any statements so nobody knows what they're going to do and the DPL statement was only a commitment that they'd do what US Soccer defines.