Hey! I'm back with more contents from the AFC U23 Asian Cup that I bet nobody asks for :) I have covered a few matches using data and a fairly tired pair of eyes at night. If you're interested, check them out! D1: www.talking-tactics.com/p/afc-u23-as... D2+3: www.talking-tactics.com/p/afc-u23-as...

The saddest four words in football that a player can say is “Am I allowed to?” That question comes from the fear of the reprimanding voice of generations of coaches. Their voice echoes in the heads of the players, afraid to make their own decisions. tacticsjournal.com/2025/10/19/a...

I’m once again really reminded of how shit most people’s media literacy is when they just retweet/regurgitate random unsourced rumors. I’ve had to go around across a bunch of different sites telling people it’s not coming from any reliable Japanese media Really tiring

Disappointing - but not surprising - to see so many low-effort aggregation accounts pick up a completely unverified rumor that no serious Japanese outlet has reported on. A little surprising to see allegedly serious outlets like @sweeperpod.bsky.social pick it up when they should know better.

Not trying to disrespect what Teo is doing, but Andrew ≠ Andreas, so not sure why he's calling Andreas Kuen as Andy Kuen, unless I miss Melbourne City's video of how to pronounce his name?

I've seen the rumour that Japan want to leave the AFC starting to make rounds here and on the other place, so I thought I should share this from Dan. Personally, I support the idea too, but if Dan hasn't broke the news/rumour, I would remain cautious over it.

It sounds a bit demoralising but I have a feeling that the league is sleepwalking towards its demise. There's very little financial investment going into football in Australia in general and there's no sense of direction of how to get out of this mess.

Just wrapped up a great conversation with @emsandersbbc.bsky.social about Japanese woso's WSL invasion! The podcast will be up on the BBC World Service later tonight but in the meantime check out her story.

gonna be honest, I don't know how this works, but I now have a place to share personal writing :)

Welcome new people, here are some soccer analytics and tactics accounts to follow if you're into that

Haralabos Voulgaris bought Spanish second division side Castellón after leaving the NBA and Dallas Mavericks. Now, he is slowly building a culture of data-driven decision-making (interview via @robbiejdunne.bsky.social for @optaanalyst.optajoe.com) theanalyst.com/articles/har...

“The amount of money that some clubs are willing to lose season upon season makes no sense to me” - Brighton owner Tony Bloom on the future of the Premier League & how his club will adapt (interview via @andynaylorbrighton.bsky.social for @theathleticfc.bsky.social) www.nytimes.com/athletic/669...

Best thing about this? The A-League Men dataset, which is unheard of for open data.

👉 Sign up for the first 𝐒𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐂𝐨𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐫 𝐗 𝐏𝐲𝐒𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐀𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐲𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 𝐂𝐮𝐩 to receive all relevant information via pysport.org/analytics-cup

@numberstorm.bsky.social Hi Andy! I can't message you so I thought I should ask here instead. May I use your mplsoccer as an inspiration to create a similar package using Plotly? I won't use the code but mainly the package's functionalities only. Thank you for your time!

Friday Stat Dump: Saves and Save % The analytics folk, me included, have for the past decade or so extolled the virtues of evaluating goalkeepers on something like goals against - post-shot xG (G-PSxG). I don't think that's wrong, per se, but, if that is the only metric, we've got some issues. 1/

We're hosting a new series of live webinars designed to share insights from some of the game’s leading coaches and technical experts based upon our in-depth analysis of the FIFA Club World Cup 2025. Register on the FIFA Training Centre👇🏻

We're hiring a Data Scientist at @arsenalfc.bsky.social to push the state-of-the-art in applied women's football research! careers.arsenal.com/jobs/6550595... Feel free to reach out with any questions 🙂

Project write-up finished! And with that, it's gonna be a project wrap and I will leave the dashboard to time. The link and the dashboard will stay online until Streamlit Cloud is shut down, but there will be no more support for it besides from fixing a few bugs. daryldao.com/portfolio/al...

Project write-up finished! And with that, it's gonna be a project wrap and I will leave the dashboard to time. The link and the dashboard will stay online until Streamlit Cloud is shut down, but there will be no more support for it besides from fixing a few bugs. daryldao.com/portfolio/al...

Atalanta's new signing at striker is averaging over 5 shots per 90 while cutting out the 30-yard bombs he was forced to take on a bad team last year. Meet Nikola Krstović, who appears set for a mid-career breakout: www.thetransferflow.com/p/meet-atala...

I suspect Ben Torvaney isn't on here, but I'd be remiss to not mention an old blog post of his on the value of bad chances in certain contexts, as it was applicable to Krstović during his time with Lecce and was discussed in the piece. Hope you enjoy! www.statsandsnakeoil.com/2021/01/24/a...

I have been working on a new USA Soccer stat hub for a couple of months now in Tableau, as I grew increasingly dissatisfied with what I put together at the start of 2025. It's *finally* ready for public consumption. The images here don't show the half of it: public.tableau.com/views/MLSAdv...

Just want to say a quick thank you to anyone who has given the app a try! I do have a lot to say about why I decided to make the app and having to battle my own thoughts in the process, but I will do a long write-up to explain everything soon. But I really, really appreciate your support ❤️

It's probably time to give this project a full release huh? From the league that brought you Sam Kerr, Kyra Cooney-Cross and Mary Fowler, if you want to find the future and past Matildas, let FBRef's data and this Streamlit app be your best friend! alw-recruitment-dashboard.streamlit.app #woso

Just a heads up but I've been aware of Streamlit's over capacity issue. It didn't come up during development and I did not think about the problem while I got the app up and running. I am working on a fix and will get that online asap, for now, I'll keep the app online by rebooting it a few times.

It's probably time to give this project a full release huh? From the league that brought you Sam Kerr, Kyra Cooney-Cross and Mary Fowler, if you want to find the future and past Matildas, let FBRef's data and this Streamlit app be your best friend! alw-recruitment-dashboard.streamlit.app #woso

On the tenets of NWSL roster-building and why you can extrapolate a strategy that *probably* has a good chance of working: statesidestats.substack.com/p/the-econom...

One regular day/international break of Asian football. That's all I ask for. Will never happen.

4 goals scored after 3 matches from 4.71 xG, and 5+1 goals conceded from 5.78 xGA. There are obviously patterns to how the Young Socceroos scored and conceded goals here, but my opinion about their performance is, they weren't very good overall, even against Cuba.

Hanoi FC have appointed Australian legend Harry Kewell 🇦🇺 as their new head coach! The former Liverpool & Leeds star brings both Premier League & international pedigree to the #vleague1 #VLeague #HanoiFC #Vietnam #football #BREAKING

After the first two matchdays of the U20 World Cup, I've had my eyes on a few players that have performed well so far. The first two names on my watchlist are Paul Okon-Engstler and Rion Ichihara, and I analysed why they are good here! www.talking-tactics.com/p/paul-okon-...

After the first two matchdays of the U20 World Cup, I've had my eyes on a few players that have performed well so far. The first two names on my watchlist are Paul Okon-Engstler and Rion Ichihara, and I analysed why they are good here! www.talking-tactics.com/p/paul-okon-...

Vizhub 2, Electric Boogaloo, @harrisoncrow.bsky.social goes east to breakdown maybe the most interesting MLS conference in a decade www.americansocceranalysis.com/home/2025/9/...

The more I watch the Young Socceroos, the less convinced I am about Sebastian Esposito tbh

This is SCOUTED50 2025/26. The third edition of our curated selection of breakout talents ranked from 50 to 1 by friends, colleagues and peers. Discover the future of football, now.

Today is the day.

As part of the same body of work, we also analysed goal threat across the various phases of set plays, allowing us to go beyond first contact and traditional analysis and explore the impact of maintaining a longer threat from set plays 👇🏻 www.fifatrainingcentre.com/en/game/tour...

For the past year or so our team at FIFA has been working hard to develop our set play analysis. Here’s the first article on defensive strategies using this new methodology from our post tournament analysis of the FIFA Club World Cup 👇🏻 www.fifatrainingcentre.com/en/game/tour...

Just wanna say a quick thank you to anyone who chose to sub to my blog, and also to the people who check in every now and then! I will try to get back to writing a bit more once I'm finished with the Streamlit dashboard and get back some downtime, so please bear with me 🙏

Rewatched Japan vs Egypt yesterday and Rion Ichihara once again caught my eyes. Definitely felt he looked a lot better since the U20 Asian Cup, very calm and collected on the ball, and his long passes were a joy to watch.

I've been hanging out here and this news doesn't feel as big as it is on the-other-place, but as a Southeast Asian, this is probably one of the biggest scandals that has happened in the region since Timor-Leste's registration incident.

Clearances offer benefits defensively (they can help a team regain shape), and offensively (they can kick-start counter-attacks). I looked at past and present examples, tried to review their effect, and how analysis can lead to extended topics. theconventionalplaymaker.wordpress.com/2025/09/26/w...

Finished off part 2 of my U20 World Cup preview. I covered every team in the tournament with some basic background and a few players to watch, which ended up around 4700 words. open.substack.com/pub/500wp90/...

Holly McNamara for AFC Player of the Year, you say? 👀

Sergio Busquets announced today that he’ll retire at the end of the season. I wrote my first eulogy for his career so long ago that he outlasted the newsletter’s website, so I’ll just post it here

Plotly charts for Streamlit? Yes please!

I couldn't resist my temptations, so here is my quick preview of the four Asian teams who will be playing at the U20 World Cup starting this weekend! I tried to cover their style of play using notes from the U20 Asian Cup and analyse their squad and players. www.talking-tactics.com/p/u20-world-...

I couldn't resist my temptations, so here is my quick preview of the four Asian teams who will be playing at the U20 World Cup starting this weekend! I tried to cover their style of play using notes from the U20 Asian Cup and analyse their squad and players. www.talking-tactics.com/p/u20-world-...