Youth Soccer Rankings ?

There was apparently an outage/glitch with some of the data in SR as of last Friday. Much of it is recovered, and over time it will likely get back to right where it should be - but if a team you're following doesn't show the current year's schedule or is missing other games, and you can't find the games in the db to re-add them, send them a message and they will confirm and fix as needed. All of NorCal RL this season was one of those uploads that was lost, but as of today all should be back to normal; NL didn't seem to have issues. SoCal RL and NL both seem OK as far as I can tell, but I only spot-checked a few teams.
 
There's something that feels right (and satisfies any OCD tendencies), when a club sets up their teams ranked 1 through 5 or whatever for a certain age, and then the performance of the kids they placed and then developed on each team matches that ranking, so when looking at the club they are in number order in SR, with each team slightly stronger than the one rated lower, all named in order. It happens reasonably often, so coaches/docs do a pretty good job of assessing individuals and teams, and the team performance generally confirms that. But then there are other cases, where it looks like they threw a dart at the players and put them on a random team name, where the rankings/ratings make no sense at all. Take a look at this case, where there are 8 teams at this 2013 age group, and team number 7 is at the top, while team number 1 is near the bottom, and would be expected to lose to team number 7 by over 7 goals. One interpretation could be that obsessing over being on the "right" team at this young age doesn't matter much, and playtime/development is most important wherever. A more cynical interpretation is that this club isn't particularly good at assessing younger potential talent.

albion lv.jpg
 
RandomSoccerFan said:
There's something that feels right (and satisfies any OCD tendencies), when a club sets up their teams ranked 1 through 5 or whatever for a certain age, and then the performance of the kids they placed and then developed on each team matches that ranking, so when looking at the club they are in number order in SR, with each team slightly stronger than the one rated lower, all named in order. It happens reasonably often, so coaches/docs do a pretty good job of assessing individuals and teams, and the team performance generally confirms that. But then there are other cases, where it looks like they threw a dart at the players and put them on a random team name, where the rankings/ratings make no sense at all. Take a look at this case, where there are 8 teams at this 2013 age group, and team number 7 is at the top, while team number 1 is near the bottom, and would be expected to lose to team number 7 by over 7 goals. One interpretation could be that obsessing over being on the "right" team at this young age doesn't matter much, and playtime/development is most important wherever. A more cynical interpretation is that this club isn't particularly good at assessing younger potential talent.

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I literally just went through this exercise of looking at how to use SR rankings as a tool to gauge age group health for a given club. SR should considering making this a premium service. Essentially I created a spreadsheet with each team's ranking for each age group. I summed the deltas and normalized the numbers based on the total number of teams in the ranking selection per age group I think this could give a club a perspective into the health of their placements and perhaps identify some opportunities. This wouldn't cover the edge cases, but could definitely signal where there's an issue. I think more could be added by looking at schedule strength as well. I think this is a great way to use the data in SR without getting so hung up the rankings themselves.
 
Yep, I think it's silly for someone running a club to have access to this data and not choose to use it to both confirm previous choices, and make the same or different choices going forward to better meet whatever goals they have for the teams & age group.

I think Mark's decision to rank clubs against each other by only looking at the top team per age group, is probably the best way to display the strongest club. It doesn't matter if the club has 2 teams of that age group or 30 teams- how strong is the top one and would it be expected to beat the top team of the competing club. It probably is the best way to measure "which club has the strongest teams", and from that viewpoint it is probably the best way to rank clubs. But just having the 1 top team per age group isn't the goal of many clubs; I'd instead guess that it is the goal of a pretty small minority of clubs. Instead - their goal is to have plenty of teams of each age group to match whatever resources they have available and can provide. Setting the teams up properly initially and adjusting them over time seems to be a pretty important part of club management.
 
NorCalDad said:
I think more could be added by looking at schedule strength as well.
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I think showing schedule strength is a brilliant addition to SR, and provides an objective answer to the questions that are often brought up about what type of competition a team is really seeing. A team playing a stronger schedule vs. a team playing a weaker schedule really shows what they faced that season, and what their results represent.

But we need to be careful to not overemphasize that data as a new piece of information that would affect the rating itself - because it doesn't. It is just the average rating of the teams that the selected team saw, that's it. In other words, a team that is rated 45, but saw a schedule ranked 47, played harder teams than themselves - and they'd be expected to have a losing record. A separate team that is also rated 45, but saw a schedule ranked 43, played weaker teams than themselves, and they'd be expected to have a winning record. But if those 2 teams ranked 45 played each other - neither would have an advantage, and their projected score would be a tie. The 45 with the hard schedule isn't expected to beat the 45 with the weaker schedule, or vice-versa - their inherent rating is what it is. And it likely would be a pretty good game.
 
RandomSoccerFan said:
But then there are other cases, where it looks like they threw a dart at the players and put them on a random team name, where the rankings/ratings make no sense at all.
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At larger clubs with multiple teams in an age group, there's a lot more going on than just selecting the 1st, 2nd and so on teams. It's not like they have a single pool of kids and divvy them out. Geography plays a part (especially at the younger ages) and there are many cases where teams jump clubs, or clubs merge. When clubs merge, the relative rankings are often way off for a while because someone has to get the top slot and no one wants to reshuffle all the teams at once. Over time, this may balance out, but it's not like the club is working from a single pool of kids and ordering them.
 
All true - but if you're in a situation where the team that is named the number one team is actually the 5th strongest team in that age, and the number 7 team is actually the first team, it's more than just a geography problem or a club merger issue. Because at the heart of it, the parents (customers) of the club believe their kid is on the X team, and that has value to them, especially as the teams get closer to the pointy end. If it may as well be a random number, it isn't quite as valuable a concept as if the team names and levels actually meant that the club at least attempted to rate them during tryouts or other assessments.
 
RandomSoccerFan said:
All true - but if you're in a situation where the team that is named the number one team is actually the 5th strongest team in that age, and the number 7 team is actually the first team, it's more than just a geography problem or a club merger issue. Because at the heart of it, the parents (customers) of the club believe their kid is on the X team, and that has value to them, especially as the teams get closer to the pointy end. If it may as well be a random number, it isn't quite as valuable a concept as if the team names and levels actually meant that the club at least attempted to rate them during tryouts or other assessments.
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This is also why so many clubs use arbitrary colors. Everyone knows gold is better than black (or whatever), but no one writes it down anywhere so everyone feels like maybe they're the best.
 
Something is obviously wrong with this particular example. Maybe the team game results are getting mixed up with each other since they have so many damn teams in the same age group. Which state/club is this academy?
 
rainbow_unicorn said:
Something is obviously wrong with this particular example. Maybe the team game results are getting mixed up with each other since they have so many damn teams in the same age group. Which state/club is this academy?
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I agree. It's actually pretty easy to gauge talent sufficiently enough so that a result like this example would never happen. Yes, it's tough to gauge talent at the margins (10th best player versus 11th best player - usually a tough call) but you would never goof things up so bad that it looks random like this grouping.
 
rainbow_unicorn said:
Something is obviously wrong with this particular example. Maybe the team game results are getting mixed up with each other since they have so many damn teams in the same age group. Which state/club is this academy?
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Larzby said:
I agree. It's actually pretty easy to gauge talent sufficiently enough so that a result like this example would never happen. Yes, it's tough to gauge talent at the margins (10th best player versus 11th best player - usually a tough call) but you would never goof things up so bad that it looks random like this grouping.
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Nope - I thought the same thing, and then looked at the game sources directly. These teams are all correct - and they are incredibly easy to sort out, as they are all named Academy 1, Academy 2, etc. All game sources say nothing but the exact same name of the team. It isn't a case of wrong data being assigned - unless they are registering in tournament and leagues under random names as well. Check out the club's 2013B teams, it rhymes with Malbion Vas Legas. It's also the #1 ranked boys club and both club in that state.
 
Or maybe the I, II, III, IV, etc. designations are purely random numbers assigned to these teams and are not an indicator of what level they are. Maybe @VegasParent or @LVB have some Vegas insight here on Albion 2013 boys teams.
 
Beats me. Your guess is as good as mine. But all but one play in the exact same league, and Academy 7 (the top one), only plays tournaments, but joins the same age/level in the most recent tournaments as several of the other teams. Here's one view sorted by team name, and another sorted by rating, which also displays the league level. It still doesn't show a rationale or a reason for it being this way - and it still just looks incredibly random.

albion1.png


Albion2.png
 
Players statistics launched today. Should be interesting to see how it plays out - will see over the next season or two whether people find it useful or not.
 
Update SR on your phone. The link at the bottom that has shown player statistics for months, yet has been unavailable until now, is now available. You can enter in your own player, and keep track of their stats over time. Those stats can be shared with others, and compared over age groups, geographies, etc. It's a completely different workflow to how SR has worked forever in terms of automatically loading game scores from league and tournament sites, and instead relies on people entering their own stats in. I was skeptical when I first heard of it, but Mark and team have been incredibly positive on this addition for the past few months. We'll have to see over time whether it takes off or not.

Demos here:

www.youtube.com

USA Sport Statistics

With the most teams, the most results and the most accurate rankings, the Soccer Rankings App is the #1 stop for parents, players, fans, coaches, club managers, and recruiters. See rankings, results, player statistics, and game predictions for all youth soccer teams in the USA. Download the...
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
 
RandomSoccerFan said:
Update SR on your phone. The link at the bottom that has shown player statistics for months, yet has been unavailable until now, is now available. You can enter in your own player, and keep track of their stats over time. Those stats can be shared with others, and compared over age groups, geographies, etc. It's a completely different workflow to how SR has worked forever in terms of automatically loading game scores from league and tournament sites, and instead relies on people entering their own stats in. I was skeptical when I first heard of it, but Mark and team have been incredibly positive on this addition for the past few months. We'll have to see over time whether it takes off or not.

Demos here:

www.youtube.com

USA Sport Statistics

With the most teams, the most results and the most accurate rankings, the Soccer Rankings App is the #1 stop for parents, players, fans, coaches, club managers, and recruiters. See rankings, results, player statistics, and game predictions for all youth soccer teams in the USA. Download the...
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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This is what I saw just now.
 

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Make sure you have updated the app to the latest version. If iphone, pull down on apps from settings, and choose update all; if android, go to play store / manage apps and devices / updates. It should find a new version of SR (4.0.1), and update if needed. On the new app, the link to player stats is now live.
 
RandomSoccerFan said:
Make sure you have updated the app to the latest version. If iphone, pull down on apps from settings, and choose update all; if android, go to play store / manage apps and devices / updates. It should find a new version of SR (4.0.1), and update if needed. On the new app, the link to player stats is now live.
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Got it, thanks!
 
RandomSoccerFan said:
Update SR on your phone. The link at the bottom that has shown player statistics for months, yet has been unavailable until now, is now available. You can enter in your own player, and keep track of their stats over time.
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Let me get this straight. Parents will be able to arbitrarily enter in their own players stats that will factor into an individual player ranking? Yeah, I see no issues with that.
 
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