RandomSoccerFan
PREMIER
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Youth Soccer Rankings ?
- Thread starter dawson
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RandomSoccerFan
PREMIER
Very. A higher rated team will beat another rated team 82% of the time. A higher rated team in the top 100 nationally will beat another team in the top 100 nationally 75% of the team. Does that mean every ranking from 1 to 2000 in each age group is exactly correct and will predict who wins the next game with 100% certainty? Of course not. Something that could do that would be science fiction rather than an actual rating system. But anyone claiming they are terribly inaccurate is either intentionally obtuse or doesn't understand how probability works.
Someone hadn't linked Koge's win from last month as of yet, but when you do so you can see how well they did in the finals. They overperformed in all 4 games (all 4 marked green), and in doing so upped their own rating/ranking significantly.
That said, the 05/04 rankings (and soon, the 06/05 rankings), are probably the wonkiest in terms of making sure each team has all of their games (and none of anyone else's games) correctly assigned per team, since it's when the age groups shift from 1 per year to 2 per year. Some teams keep individual year teams, some go to two years, some go to two years but keep the name of the single year. There is none of that complication for every other group from U9-U17.
RandomSoccerFan
PREMIER
Mistype. I meant 2 years per age group (U18/U19), not the other way around.
Also, the U19s get all kinds of messed up in the second half of the year as kids either commit to colleges or drop out. My U16 son had to double play with the U19s at the MLS Next Showcase in Dallas because they didn't have enough kids. I mentioned this to a college scout and he said that there some clubs don't even bring their college-committed players to the year-end tournaments because so many drop out at the last minute.
And while we're here, I think one of the reasons the predictions for the top 100 teams are less accurate than the rest may be that at that level, many of the best players are playing up. Atlanta United's U16s, for example, moved their 2 top players up for most of the season, but then brought them back for MLS Next Cup which they won. LAFC will sometimes play an entire team up against lower league teams (play, the U15s in a league game against the U16s) which doesn't get reflected in the rankings (meaning, to the ranking algorithm, they look like the U16s even though they're really the U15s).
And while we're here, I think one of the reasons the predictions for the top 100 teams are less accurate than the rest may be that at that level, many of the best players are playing up. Atlanta United's U16s, for example, moved their 2 top players up for most of the season, but then brought them back for MLS Next Cup which they won. LAFC will sometimes play an entire team up against lower league teams (play, the U15s in a league game against the U16s) which doesn't get reflected in the rankings (meaning, to the ranking algorithm, they look like the U16s even though they're really the U15s).
RandomSoccerFan
PREMIER
Yep - the more the team makeups are variable, the more the results will be variable.
This may be accurate or not, depending on how the teams are entered and how the results can be captured from the specific tournament systems. In many (most?) situations, if the Strawberry Bunnies 2008 team plays up in the 2007 bracket for a tournament, they are still called the Strawberry Bunnies 2008, the GotSport reference team # is tied to that 2008 team, and when the results are pulled into SR, it will show up as results for the 2008 team correctly. However - if they instead enter the tournament as the Strawberry Bunnies 2007 team and there is no tie to a GotSport reference # when they sign up, and they are playing in the 2007 bracket, it is likely the results will come in as 2007. No idea how LAFC specifically handles this when they sign up for various events - whether they are playing the U15 teams against the U16s, or they still play as the U16 team - but it's mostly (entirely?) made up of U15 kids for that tournament.
This isn't for tournaments, but for league games. Others can speak to this more, but LAFC will sometimes roster, eg, all 08s for an 07 game. There's no way youth rankings could know (unless they're parsing individual game rosters - which I'm pretty sure they aren't).
RandomSoccerFan
PREMIER
All SR is doing for these rankings is looking at the game results and tying them to the team entity. If LAFC is still calling it their 2007 team, but decided to only have 08's play on it that weekend - you're right, it's still the 2007 team and that team's results would be tied to the 2007 team ratings/rankings. There is no knowledge of roster details. If the 08's are not as strong as the 07's (perhaps likely, but maybe not universally true), the rating might be somewhat lower than it would have been otherwise if they were only playing 07's as the team name suggests.
Code
GOLD
If the club is rostering younger players on the 2007 team, it is still a 2007 team. The app compares team results not players, so I don't see how it is an issue. My question is where is LAFC playing all the 2007 players if the 2008's are displacing them for a league game? Seems like the club is either benching an entire roster worth of players, or the club registered more teams in league than they have players to roster. Or the third possibility, the source of the claim is exaggerating the scenario, and only a few 2008's are guesting to fill in roster gaps. Either way, the results of the registered team, belong to that team, even if it is a hodgepodge roster each game. I wouldn't expect a team that has constantly changing roster to perform very well regardless of the age difference. Once they reach U15, they are all basically on equal footing anyway (U15-U19) and it is more about knowledge, skill, and ability and not age.
The issue is that it lowers the rank of the '07 team and when the actual '07 team plays (at an important tournament or playoffs, say) they're better than their rank suggests.
They're playing the '06s or getting the day off. There are a lot of games in an MLS Next season.
Nope. I've seen it happen where the entire 08s played up and so did the 09s. You'd have to ask the LAFC parents how often they do this.
I disagree. It's pretty rare that a club's U19s won't beat their U17s and 17 > 16 and so on. Yes, there are exceptions where a club has a particularly good or bad team in one age group, but for the most part age and size still matter. One way to see this is to look at the teams' ratings.
RandomSoccerFan
PREMIER
LAFC 2007B is a 53.70
LAFC 2008B is a 53.51
For what it's worth, those 2 teams are essentially interchangeable, from a predictions standpoint. LAFC 2006B shows slightly better at 55.61. And the 05/04's are only a tinge better at 56.01.
While it is true that when different players are on a team different results can be expected, keep in mind that the predicted results as already scored/reported are based on the existing data, with all of its foibles, as is. It's all taken into account. If the data were perfect, it's possible the predicted results would be a shade better. How much better? That's a complicated and fully debatable point, but it's quite possible that it wouldn't change as much as one might expect.
LAFC 2008B is a 53.51
For what it's worth, those 2 teams are essentially interchangeable, from a predictions standpoint. LAFC 2006B shows slightly better at 55.61. And the 05/04's are only a tinge better at 56.01.
While it is true that when different players are on a team different results can be expected, keep in mind that the predicted results as already scored/reported are based on the existing data, with all of its foibles, as is. It's all taken into account. If the data were perfect, it's possible the predicted results would be a shade better. How much better? That's a complicated and fully debatable point, but it's quite possible that it wouldn't change as much as one might expect.
Isn't that what we'd expect if the teams were routinely swapping rosters...?
RandomSoccerFan
PREMIER
Perhaps. What it is saying is that however they populate the rosters for the 2007 and the 2008 team, they end up with a team that is roughly equivalent. Could mean that 2008's are playing on both of them and it's essentially the same team, or it means that the players on 2007 and 2008 in aggregate aren't dramatically different. What it really means in practice though is for opponents meeting either the 2007 or 2008 teams, that is the level of play that they should expect over time.
Code
GOLD
I guess I am not convinced these should be considered different teams. If the club is managing the younger rostered player availability to meet requirements for a registered team that needs players, I don't see how it should be considered a different team. But it doesn't matter what I think. You can easily have more than one team on the Soccer Rankings app. Someone just need to go into the paid pro sections and separate the results according. If there are enough recent games for each roster, they will become separate teams in the Ranking App. I've seen a couple teams do this. The funny thing is that the separate team rankings usually migrate to be very close to each other after a few events.
Soccer Dad & Ref
SILVER ELITE
Anyone check Surf Cup’s brackets to see how well they seeded teams? Did they seed it again to ensure their teams have higher success rates, or did someone there actually use the rankings and ratings to seed it properly?
Code
GOLD
Well, you got me interested enough to take a look.
I dug into the G2007 Brackets, because I am familiar with those teams. Surf Cup absolutely did not seed them properly. But, who knows, there is still time to fix it. . I don't want to hijack this thread into age group specific debate so I posted the analysis into a new thread. https://socalsoccer.com/threads/2023-surf-cup-seeding-sh-how.21160/
Code
GOLD
Doesn't look like they used leagues as a seeding tool either. Of course the Best of Best bracket will be ECNL heavy, but there really is no correlation between league and bracket that I can see.
I heard one of the 2nd bracket g2010 ECNL teams coaches told parents that they were close to being placed in the 1st bracket but just missed out because of their league record.
If this is true it implies that somehow league records apply to the bracket Surf Cup places teams in. Also, if they "just missed" getting into the 1st bracket some kind of number ranking algorithm is being used.
Or maybe by "just missed" Surf Cup was being literal and that clubs dart just missed the board.
Venantsyo
GOLD
in the Girls 09, for example there are a couple DPL teams that according to YSR ranking could be in Best of the Best(1st) and instead they are in super white (3rd) and white (4th).