Podcast 165: Sports analytics in Football

In our weekly podcast, we talked to Sarah Rudd who runs http://www.onfooty.com/, a site that specializes in deep analysis of football data. Sports analytics have been used extensively in American sports for a while now. But it is picking up rapidly in football. More and more teams are employing full time sports analysts if not teams of analysts to analyze even the minutest of the details of what happens in the 90 minutes on the the pitch. You may follow Sarah on twitter at @onfooty

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Segment#1 : Headlines  29 min

1. Champions League (tuesday games) recap
2. Why makeshift defences might not work for Barcelona in the long run
3. Did Valencia miss out a chance of taking all three points at Genk?
4. La Liga round up: Betis and Valencia have started off very well
5. Málaga have opened at home against Granada in impressive fashion
6. The bizarre episode of Caparros leaving his job at the swiss club Neuchâtel Xamax after the club’s Chechen owner brought guns into the dressing room

Segment#2 : Interview with Sarah about Sports analytics

1. Introduction and background of sports analytics
2. Discuss Sarah’s article about where the talent comes from in La Liga vs. the English premier league
3. Sarah’s award-winning analysis paper on possessions at different areas of the pitch, how to rate them and how it impacts goalscoring opportunities.
4. The Castrol performance index and how La Liga teams stack up on this index. Check out Sarah’s supplementary post  on this topic.

We hope you enjoy this pod and let us know what you think.

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