Monday, October 13, 2014

The Evolution of US Soccer; how player race and background has changed over the years






Although the United States had qualified for the 1990 in Italy the beginning of the Modern Era in US soccer began on June 18, 1994. When Alexi Lalas and his ginger beard led the denim clad Americans out on the field for a 1-1 draw, a revolution began. The 1990 team featured players still in college and many playing for semi-pro teams. In 1994, over half the team had been playing together for the US Soccer Federation leading up to the cup and zero college kids. That is not the dynamic shift that needs to be talked about. That team that found a way to qualify for the round of 16 featured 7 foreign born players, was 90% white, and whose hometowns had an average median income of $74,737. Jurgen Klinsman’s use of players whose fathers were in the military and had children with Europeans isn’t exactly new to American soccer; 2 players on that 1994 team were born that exact way.
Since that 1994 World Cup the United States Soccer Team has seen a drastic change in who makes up the team. Not only has the team become much more diverse in terms of ethnicities of the players but it also brings in players from parts of the countries that were completely ignored in 1990. As you will see, not only has the level of American soccer improved, but so has their utilization of American citizens. Those latter probably has a lot to do with the first.

Where The Players are From
The usage of foreign players by the United States is an interesting story, in 1994 and 1998, managed by Yugoslavian Bora Milutinovic and American Steve Sampson respectively, the US brought 7 players born outside of the United States. This can be chalked up to the fact that American soccer was very weak at the time and to fill out the roster they needed to find anyone they could to play for the stars and stripes. Bruce Arena managed the United States for the 2002 and 2006 World Cups. When the US made an incredible run to the quarterfinals in 2002 they brought 5 foreign players, 3 of whom had been to the 1998 World Cup. After 2002 however there seemed to be a revolt against foreign players as Bruce Arena announced that Pablo Mastroeni would be the only foreign born player in the 2006 squad. The 2010 team managed by Bob Bradley again only included foreign player, Benny Feilhaber, who was born in Brazil but who grew up in Scarsdale, New York (median income of over $200,000), was not exactly your typical immigrant.
When Jurgen Klinsmann took over the team in 2011 following the US’s embarrassing loss to Mexico in the ’11 Gold Cup Final, he made it a point to find as many players as possible who held US Citizenship. When the US took off for Brazil over a quarter of the team (6 players) was born somewhere other than the United States and many more had parents who were immigrants. This was the highest percentage since the 1998 World Cup.
The book Soccernomics explored how England rejected middle and upper class players from their squads. Only 5 of 34 players that the authors were able to establish an occupation for their fathers from the 1998, 2002, and 2006 World Cups came from middle or upper-middle class families. Soccer in the United States actually tells the complete opposite story as only 1 player on the 1994 roster came from a hometown that had a median income below the national average. That one player was Mike Sorber from St. Louis, Missouri, who went to a catholic high school and then went to private St. Louis University when soccer scholarships were not abundant, so he probably was not very lower class.
As the years went on more and more middle class players were included on the national team but it was not until 2006 that there were players who came from “poor” cities on the team. Both Eddie Johnson and Clint Dempsey come from towns with a median income below $28,000. The inclusion of poorer players caused the average median income for the players to drop below $65,000 for the 2006 and 2014 World Cups. The 2010 team had an average median income of $72,000 but if you would exclude Feilhaber, who as mentioned earlier came from a very ritzy neighborhood, the average also drops below $65,000. This is a stark contrast to the second and third world cup teams of the 90s, who averaged $75,737 in 1994 and $77,561 in 1998.


Who the Players Are
72.4% White
16.4% Hispanic
8.7% White Hispanic
12.2% non-Hispanic Black


Those are the demographics of the United States. The closest the US national team has ever come to representing the actual number of whites in this country was 2006 when 66.6% of the team was white. The 2010 team was exactly half white and both the 2014 World Cup squad and the squads for the first three post world cup have had more minorities than whites.
When the US took the field for the 1994 World Cup Cobi Jones was the only black member of the team. The other nonwhite member of the team was Earnie Stewart, who had one black parent and one white parent. Everyone else on the team was white. 5 members of the team were white Hispanics but the first appearance of someone with indigenous blood did not occur until 2002 when Pablo Mastroeni appeared on the World Cup roster. All indigenous players for the US had come from a Latin American Country until 2014, when Deandre Yedlin (who is a mix of Latvian, Black, and Native American) impressed the world with his performance in Brazil which led to a contract with Tottenham.

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

How the United States' 2014 World Cup compares to 2010

Jurgen Klinsmann has come under fire for the USMNT's performance at the 2014 World Cup. The main reason for the lack of confidence is that the US fared no better during this year's version of the cup than in 2010; both exits in the first stage of knockout rounds in extra time. Those critics don't realize that they are comparing apples to oranges when debating the US performances in both 2010 and 2014. The USMNT faced different schedules each time; "group of death" for 2014 and a relatively easy group in 2010. To see which World Cup was more impressive we will see how international oddsmakers expected them to do in each edition.

As you can see by looking at the above image (plus you know how to read odds; the lower the number, the better the odds are of that event of occurring) the US was expected get 6 points in the 2010 group stage (good enough for second place) and then win their Round of 16 match against Ghana. However, what actually happened was the US won the group (on goal differential against England) with a mere 4 points and were eliminated in extra time by Ghana.
On the other hand, the 2014 Von Trapps overachieved greatly. The oddsmakers expected them to leave Brazil without a single point. Jurgen and the boys were able to pull of the upset against Ghana and were a mere sixty seconds of doing the same to Portugal. All said, the US took second place in the group with 4 points (plus beating Portugal on goal differential). Even in the Round of 16 with their extra time loss to Belgium the US overachieved by pushing the game into extra time.
This concludes that despite the US leaving as early in 2014 as they did in 2010, they had a much better showing in 2014 due to their tougher schedule.

Saturday, June 14, 2014

Analyzing the 2013 NBA Free Agent Market

Determining the worth of a Free Agent since the 1970s when free agency entered the NBA. Obviously since both players and General Managers are human their will be contracts that break away from the market standard. By using basketball-reference.com's Win Share statistic and the per annum salaries of players that signed contracts during the 2013 off season we are able to estimate how many million dollars each win share is worth. Even though we were able to find the average amount of money spent on a win share we found that the correlation between win shares and salary is there but we weak with an r-score of only .729. The approximate value for a win share is $1.28 million.
Players like Chase Budinger (injury), Andrew Bynum (injury), Jon Leur, and Wesley Johnson (that bad) were thrown out of the study.
To get a betterlook of how free agency money is distributed let's break it down by position:


As you can see Point Guards are the most underpaid and Centers are overpaid. Examples of this are DJ Augustin of the Chicago Bulls who signed a deal worth $1.3 mil a year despite having 2.8 win shares during the 2012-13 season for a $/WS ratio of $.46. On the other end of the spectrum Dwight Howard inked for $22 mil a year with the Houston Rockets despite only having 7.6 win shares the season before, making him the second most overpaid player. 

Point Guards
Chris Paul was hands down the best player to ink a deal during the 2013 off season but only signed the second biggest contract at $21.40 mil a year. This is quite a bit of money but still falls short of Howard's contract, a player that had about half as many win shares as Paul. The only point guard to be in the top ten of over paid players is Chauncey Billups, who joins his Detroit teammate Josh Smith in the ranks of most over paid free agents of 2013. But what really defines the point guard position is that 3 of the bottom 10 players  in terms of difference between $/WS and the league average were point guards. This includes Nate Robinson who only makes $2 mil a year despite having 5.9 win shares in 12-13.

Shooting Guards
Shooting Guards along with power forwards were the most accurately paid players in the league with a position $/WS of $1.26 mil. Tyreke Evans of the Pelicans and OJ Mayo were both in the top ten in terms of being over paid. Evans makes $11 mil a year despite only 4.4 Win Shares in his contract year. Monta Ellis joins those to at 11 in terms of being over paid. The biggest steal among shooting guards was Nick Young who is making $1.15 mil a year despite 2.3 Win Shares in his contract year, this is most likely due to him expecting to be Kobe's backup in the upcoming years.

Small Forwards
There are three Small Forwards who find themselves to be in the top 10 in terms of overpaidness (it's a new word folks) and they are Andre Iguodala of the Warrior, Earl Clark of the New York Knicks, and Josh Smith of the Pistons (Joe Dumar had a really bad off-season.) Smith actually led the 2013 free agent class in difference between worth and salary. Metta World Peace was the biggest steal for small forwards signing for $1.6 mil a year despite 4.6 win shares the year before. Another New York small forward (although in Brooklyn), Andrei Kirilenko is also in bottom 10 for getting what they are worth.

Power Forwards
Let's just say that no power forward is underpaid (the most underpaid was Carl Landry who was only a measly $.23 mil under the average compared to $.99 mil for Andray Blatche). The average $/WS for the position was $1.25 mil. At the same time that none were underpaid none were drastically overpaid with Jason Maxiell only earning $.11 mil over the league average.

Center
While they are the most overpaid position with Dwight Howard, Chris Kaman, Josh McRoberts, and Zaza Pachulia all showing up in the top 10, their fellow big-man Andray Blatche got the shortest end of the stick during the last off-season.

Now you may have noticed that the most overpaid players tended to be some of the better players in the game; now this got me thinking. Are the third or fourth win share more valuable than the first two. Another group of people in the overpaid category are players with relatively low win shares; this makes me think that league rules regarding veteran salary minimums causes older players to be worth more. First this I'll show a quick graph that shows how different age groups' $/WS compare to the league average.

So it turns out that I was wrong that veterans would be overpaid since the salary floors would cause them to be paid more so than they deserve. These observations are actually easily explainable. The first three groups are players either entering their second or third contract so it can be expected that players might be paid as much for potential as they are for production (Especially the 20-29 year olds.) The veterans are underpaid since their performance can only be expected to decline.

Now what about the idea that win shares become more valuable as the amount a player has increases. This would fit in well with the SuperStar wage theory (where top performers in certain fields earn drastically more than those only slightly less desirable then themselves.) 
Frow what I can tell players with low win shares have exaggerated $/WS because of salary floors. The 8-14 Win Share range is a little odd since only 3 players fell in that range and two of them, Tiago Splitter and David West were in situations where they would have to take discounts to stay with their current team. If you combine them with the 7 to 7.9 range their is sort of a player demand curve to be formulated. But their is still the question of why 6-6.9 are so drastically underpaid. 

So the demand curve looks like a W and this is my theory. Players in the 6-6.9 range are role players on good teams that are willing to take pay cuts to play on contenders. Also, there win shares are probably inflated since they are surrounded by superstars. Players in the 4-5.9 range are role players who have decided to have elevated roles on poorer teams (taking money over wins.) Now if you take the superior end of this demand curve, the 7-14 range you'll see that players are worth about 1.4 mil for each win share. So for elite players like Lebron James and Kevin Durant they are probably worth up towards $30 million in a salary capless league.