Stat of the day: 14 The number of seconds between Rayan Cherki saying he's "not a stats guy" because he's "old school" and him reciting his goal and assist numbers last season from memory

The switch to a July-May season for the #MLS seems sensible for many reasons, and I think this is an important one: MLS matches are played in significantly higher temperatures compared to the top 🇪🇺 leagues. Also, judging by those recent CPL highlights, snow football looks awesome, bring it on

I don't know if the schedule change is good or bad but when MLS says 92% of fans support it, you have to wonder if they're basing the decision on junk data or hoping they can trick fans about what fans think

Garbs, buddy. Nothing about any of this is “fast”. You’re at ***BEST*** a year late on capitalizing on the biggest soccer event in this country. The one we knew about for a decade. I don’t think anyone is afraid of you going too fast.

England have found solutions to their problems in the attack (Harry Kane), press resistance in midfield (also Harry Kane), and distribution from center back (yep still Harry Kane)

Bruce Arena let his best player's option expire and then made him a new offer as an in-demand free agent. This is apparently only the second most fireable thing he's done in his last two jobs but we still don't know the first

Feel like soccer is lagging behind on this emerging art form

MLS is moving to multiple divisions and a playoff format where if you lose against good teams you drop down and play bad teams. What if they combined these ideas? Top teams play against each other in one division, and the losers drop to a worse division next season — could be really innovative

The England national team is wearing $100 electric crocs that Nike calls "a new way to connect body and brain," which probably sounds smart if your brain has been disconnected from your body

Farewell to the quote goat

Why not simply walk to the stadium from your hotel 23 miles away or take advantage of the many fine public transit options in Arlington, Texas

I'll never get tired of watching Pep try weird shit, especially when it's "Let's use Jeremy Doku as Andres Iniesta" and it actually works

I love this team so damn much

San Diego aren't the best team in MLS but they do play the best soccer

My hobby is collecting all the ways that MLS inventing weird new formats all the time breaks people's code

Absolutely insane goal in insane conditions in the CPL final. Absurd.

The Premier League is now 5 seconds of open play then 30 seconds of prepping for a set piece. We can fix this with rule changes: - Teams only get four set pieces per possession - If the set pieces are bad, the other team gets the ball - If they're good, they get four more - Let's call them "downs"

I feel sorry for every soccer league that doesn’t have playoffs

THE MOST AGGRESSIVE SET PIECE TEAM IN THE WORLD

Clear dive but they never call those

Now that everybody is caught up on long throws it's time to start talking about Dyche Zone free kicks

Mikel Arteta must be held to account for Arsenal's defensive crisis

Luis Diaz good lord

They call it open play because it's just a fun silly little thing you do before deciding the game on set pieces

Frank Lampard three seconds after cracking a joke in an interview:

Crystal Palace lost one of their best attackers every season for four years and somehow got better and more attacking. If gambling algorithms were involved we'd never hear the end of it

Barcelona considered all the ways to play good but not great soccer and figured they might as well do the one that feels the most like drugs

Actually it's LawnBallSport New York

As a result, any 𝐤𝐥𝐨𝐩𝐩𝐲 supported event data provider (IMPECT, Statsbomb, DataFactory, Sportec, Opta, Wyscout and Metrica), and tracking data provider (SkillCorner, Hawk-Eye, PFF / Gradient Sports, Signality, Sportec, Stats Perform, Metrica and TRACAB) can now all be easily loaded into 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐩𝐲.

The most important takeaway is that "the price of World Cup tickets is too damn high" is a winning campaign message

Pahlinha might have set a new record for A-xA on a pass

Van De Ven goal music video

Also as many red cards

The choice is yours - Game two of a three-game MLS playoff series that's scheduled to end after midnight on a Monday for some goddamn reason - A mug of sleepytime tea and a melatonin gummy

Every single MLS broadcast shows xG with no discernible relationship with reality, might as well save money and use a random number generator

Imagine how much cooler this would be if they were doing 35-yard running penalties

NEW: Five Asides - a compilation of posts on… - What I have(and haven’t) learned after USWNT’s experimental 2025 - Another reflection from Reyna - The NWSL’s latest test - An MLS original shuffles the deck - Football Manager 26’s first impression Read for free! open.substack.com/pub/jeffruet...

Unfortunately in trying to bring you cool soccer stats I have become a Startup Guy

I temporarily revived No Grass in the Clouds to write about the strangers on the Internet who are getting mad at the person I'm going to marry about an article I wrote six years ago: nograssintheclouds.substack.com/p/on-set-pie...

Really putting the whole "managers don't matter" thing to the test here

Go work with Jan in Bruges, hear they’ve got a great team rating model

No I’m pretty sure he plays in England

What a terrible way to find out my cofounder is part of the secret cabal of super agents on the dark side of football

People don’t talk enough about how Inigo Martinez was critical to organizing Barcelona’s offside trap because a dude in his mid-thirties really doesn’t want to have to run back

We need data on Gio's minutes spent giving interviews versus playing professional soccer

It's time for my favorite piece of content we do every year: our fan survey. This year, we're collaborating with over 20 independent outlets to try and get it out to as many people as we can! If you have even a passing interest in Major League Soccer, could you take a minute and fill this out?

a new Expecting Goals newsletter! a brand new team ratings system, Premier League power rankings, and all the details about how it works, why it works this way, and what I plan to do with it next www.expectinggoals.com/p/expecting-...

This is a cool little interactive but it's just ... not true?

The way Frenkie left Bellingham to go mark absolutely no one on the second goal was so pure, the man is simply too blond to defend