Decoding and demystifying football

Mark Thompson

Research in Focus: xG Replication with American Soccer Analysis

What happens when you test out a piece of work from 2015 with new data? The 'Research in Focus' series turns its attention to an article that tried just that, from American Soccer Analysis

Manchester United says 'hello world' to data science

With news that Manchester United are hiring data scientists, Get Goalside looks at the directions a clean slate at a rich club could take you

The analytics revolution is history now

There’s only three ways to tell history. There’s ‘events, dear boy, events’ history, a focus on ‘important’ figures and/or ‘important’ events. There’s history of ideas, whether that be political or economic or societal. And there’s history of ‘the people’, those who might not have led

Research in Focus: Quantifying Finishing Skill

Research in Focus: Using data to identify unconscious bias

If you owned a big club, would you buy Ajax?

Some Get Goalside newsletters are very informative and verge on instructional; some are just weird blogs. This is one of the latter. With the recent death of Hilary Mantel I’m reminded of one of my favourite things about reading her Wolf Hall trilogy: characters can be two months removed

Ball control, space control, and why good teams play Pep-ball

Manchester City in the late 2010s and early 2020s. Barcelona and Spain straddling 2010. Sacchi's Milan. The Dutch of the 1970s. Hungary in the '50s. Scotland, in the late 19th century*. Every generation has its iconic teams characterised by their possession of the ball. *(From 'Inverting