HexagonalBlog

Away for the holidays

Tomorrow I'm off to Florida to start my Christmas vacation.  I won't be able to make too many posts during the next ten days -- my parents have just a dial-up connection, and I'll be on the road visiting friends the rest of the time.  I might find time to make one or two relatively short posts, but I won't be back to regular blogging until January 4.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all my readers.  May 2010 be a CONCACAF year!

Part 2 of Fall 2009 playoffs in Central America

The playoffs in Central America are reaching the final phase.  Two champions were decided yesterday, and the remaining two won't be decided until the last weekend of the year. 

FAS are the new champions in El Salvador after defeating Águila 3-2 after extra time in a dramatic final.  FAS took the lead in the first minute, before Nicholas Addlery (ex-DCU and Puerto Rico Islanders) scored the equalizer for the Eagles.  In the extra time period, FAS settled the championship with two goals in a minute; first, an own goal by Arturo Albarrán off a free kick, and then a great finish by Juan Carlos Moscoso off an equally great pass by Gustavo López.  Addlery scored a second goal minutes later but Águila could get no closer.  FAS finish the 2000s with their sixth title of the decade and their 17th overall, both records in Salvadoran football.

The Torneo Invierno in Costa Rica will be decided between Brujas and Puntarenas.    Brujas scored an impressive 2-1 win away to Pérez Zeledón to win the series 4-2 on aggregate and appear in their first ever league final.  The win was the product of a good tactical plan and a PZ side that took too long to wake up.  In the other semifinal, Puntarenas lost 2-1 at Herediano but went through 4-3 on aggregate.  So the two teams in the playoff with the lowest point totals, who would not have even been in the playoff has a single table been utilized, will meet for the Verano title.  The final will be played over two legs on the 23rd and 28th.  

Municipal won their 27th league title after defeating Comunicaciones 1-0 over two legs in Guatemala's Apertura final.  The first leg saw Municipal defeat Comunicaciones away by the minimum, and in the second leg Panamanian 'keeper Jaime Penedo was the leading figure with two critical saves late in the game.  

In Nicaragua, Real Estelí weathered long periods with ten and later nine men to defeat Walter Ferreti 1-0 in the first leg of the Apertura final.  It really wasn't a good final as neither team looked likely to score.  Despite being up two men in the final 15 minutes, Ferreti could not muster any good chances on goal. The deciding match will be next Sunday.

World Cup Qualifying 2010 Review: The Second Round

[Continuing a multi-part review on the 2010 World Cup qualifiers.  In this post I review the second round.]

In the second round the World Cup qualifiers started for everyone else in the confederation.  For the Big Two (USA and Mexico), the second round is never going to be very stressing. At least, it shouldn't be very stressing.  USA put eight goals past Barbados in Los Angeles without much trouble, and the away leg in Bridgetown felt like a scrimmage.  The 1-0 scoreline was met with grumbles in a few quarters (some of whom commented on this site), but the first leg had made the second match unimportant.  Mexico, in contrast, made their first leg against Belize harder than it had to be.  It didn't help that Belize's 'keeper Shane Orio had a tremendous game to limit Mexico to just a pair of goals.  The series was put beyond any doubt in Mexico City, but it was the start of a very unpleasant ride for the Mexican national team.

Do MLS teams approach the 2-leg format differently?

I had been wondering for some time if the statistics for the two-leg format in the MLS playoffs were all that different from elsewhere.  The higher seeds have complained in the past about having to host the second leg at home, instead of opening the playoff series at home, which is what happens in all other team sports in North America.  So I decided to look behind the numbers of the two-leg format in MLS Cup playoffs since 2003 to determine whether higher seeds are disadvantaged by hosting the second leg.

Since the 2003 season, there have been 28 MLS playoff series that use the two-leg format.

Half of the first leg matches ended in a win for the home team.  Of those matches, the first-leg host has gone on to win the series 43% of the time.  The second-leg host was able to turn around the deficit 50% of the time, and one series (7%) went to a penalty kick tiebreaker.

If the first leg match ended in a draw, which happened in 32% of the series (9 matches), the odds for the first-leg host lengthened considerably.  In this situation, the first-leg host has won only 2 series (22%) while the second-leg host has won 6 (67%).  One series went to a penalty kick decider.

If the first leg match was won by the visitors (5 matches), the advantage swung decisively to the second-leg host.  They won 80% of the series with only one going down to penalties.

These trends are the same as those of the two-leg series in European club competitions, but the magnitude of the trend isn't as large in MLS.  In the UEFA Champions League, winning the first leg as host improves the chances of progressing (roughly a 63% probability of winning the series).  A draw or a loss shifts decisively the advantage to the side hosting the second leg.  Since the 2002-2003 season, on just four occasions (out of 106) has a visiting team won the opening leg yet lost the two-leg series.  A draw improves the second-leg host's chances of winning the series to between 63-75%.

So to conclude, what we're seeing in the two-leg series in MLS isn't all that different from what we see in Europe.  The biggest differences are the parity between competitors and the inexperience of MLS sides in killing off matches and taking full advantage of home field, which could explain why the probability of winning a series as first-leg host is lower.

I'll include the data later and say a lot more about it on Soccermetrics, but Typepad's editing tools are screwed up at the moment.

Atlante finish fourth at Club World Cup

CONCACAF club champions Atlante finished fourth at this year's FIFA Club World Cup, losing 4-3 on penalties to Asian champions Pohang Steelers after a 1-1 draw.  From reading the press reports, Atlante were unlucky not to win in normal time, as they hit the woodwork at least three times (all by Gabriel Pereyra). 

In the final, Estudiantes gave a gallant effort but fell short against Barcelona, 2-1 after extra time.  The winning goal was scored by Lionel Messi -- with his chest!  This year's Barcelona side have laid claim to being one of the best teams in world club football history; they won every competition that they participated in this year.

In the mail: Soccernomics

From a friend, I just received Soccernomics by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski, and I plan on reading it over the holidays.  From what I've heard about it, it appears to be a soccer-specific analogue of Michael Lewis' Moneyball.  The difference is that Kuper and Szymanski are looking at multiple issues in the soccer world at large, while Lewis is focusing on a single team and using it to examine broader issues.  When I finish it, I'll post my thoughts on it at this site and at my Soccermetrics site.

I receive offers to review products and books from time to time, and I'm still working out a policy with respect to that.  I'm not too keen on accepting advertising on my site (the ad revenues are so tiny that I'm not giving up much), and if I do agree to accept books or products to evaluate I would have to buy a post office box, which I haven't done yet.  Obviously one condition is that it has to be soccer-related, and CONCACAF-related is a plus.

Donovan a temporary Toffee

Everton confirmed that Landon Donovan will join the side on a 10-week loan, starting on the first of the new year.  There was interest from several European clubs to obtain Donovan for a short-term period, but Everton were always at the top of the list.  Everton have three players who will be away for the African Nations Cup next month, and all of them play either forward or midfield.  So there might be an opening for Donovan to play either in the Premiership or Europa League but he will have to fight for playing time.

Whether this is a one-off situation or the start of multiple loan periods remains to be seen.  I doubt the situation will become any clearer until (a) the end of the loan period, and (b) after the World Cup.

Fall 2009 Playoff Roundup in Central America

A lot of my posts have been on hold while I was finishing up a project for a course that I was taking.  Here's one of them -- a roundup of playoff action from the leagues in Central America.

• Marathón won their eighth league championship after defeating Motagua 2-1 on aggregate in the Honduran Apertura final played on 22/25 November.  Marathón was led by the league's leading goalscorer Jerry Palacios, who bagged 13 goals during the Apertura tournament.  (Palacios is part of the quartet of brothers who are all professional footballers; the youngest brother Edwin was tragically kidnapped and murdered last year.)  The Green Monsters have proven to be excellent openers; this is the third consecutive Apertura title they've won and the fourth in the last five.

• Municipal and Comunicaciones have played the first leg of the Apertura final in Guatemala.  Municipal were the #2 seed and defeated Heredia 2-0 on aggregate in the semifinals; Comunicaciones were the #5 seed and defeated Marquense 3-2 on aggregate in the first round and upset top-seed Xelajú on the away goals rule after a 1-1 aggregate draw.  Los Rojos scored a vital away win thanks to a goal by Martín Crossa.  What made the win even more impressive was that Municipal had to play close to 70 minutes with ten men.  The second leg will be played on Sunday as Municipal attempt to wrap up their 27th league title.

• The Apertura final in El Salvador will be disputed between FAS and Águila on Sunday.  Yesterday the league rolled out the new trophy to be given to the winner, either the 17th league title for FAS or the 15th for Águila.  Both sides were at the top of the table for most of the season and won their playoff matches rather comfortably; FAS defeated Vista Hermosa 2-1 over two legs and Águila saw off Firpo 3-0.   

• An incredible sequence of events in Costa Rica: Alajuelense's loss in the final matchday to Cartaginés and Saprissa's failure to win against Pérez Zeledón left the Big Two out of the playoffs for the first time since the start of the dual tournament format.  In the first round, Brujas swept aside the Verano champions Liberia Mía 5-2 on aggregate, while Puntarenas knocked out Cartaginés 3-2 over two legs.  The first leg of the semifinal round started yesterday as Pérez Zeledón beat Brujás 2-1 and Puntarenas defeated Herediano 3-1.

• The Apertura tournament in Panama finished on 5 December, and Árabe Unido defeated Tauro 3-2 in the grand final.  Both sides had to overcome difficult rivals in high-scoring semifinals: AU came back from a 3-0 first leg deficit to defeat Chorrillo 4-3, and Tauro played a thrilling 4-4 draw with Atlético Chiriqui to go through 7-4 on aggregate.  At the other end of the table, Alianza and Río Abajo play off on Saturday to decide who will be promoted to the Panamanian top flight.  Panama has an unusual football calendar -- the Apertura/Clausura tournaments follow the European calendar, but promotion/relegation is based on calendar year points and occurs after the Apertura!

• In Nicaragua, Real Estelí and Walter Ferreti will meet each other in the final of the Apertura, which will be played 20/27 December.  The league had a different format from previous tournaments -- there was a 14-game first phase among the eight teams in the Primera División, and then a six-match semifinal round between the top four teams.  In the end the story is the same, Real Estelí are in their ninth consecutive final.

• News from Belize is not easy to get (the Belize Premier Football League site has to be one of the poorest league sites that I've visited in CONCACAF), but from what I have been able to gather, FC Belize met Belize Defence Force in the BPFL championship earlier this month.  BDF won the title 5-2 on aggregate.

Donovan stakes his future in MLS

The re-signing of Landon Donovan to a long-term contract with the Los Angeles Galaxy is a major moment for Donovan, the Galaxy, and Major League Soccer.  It is good for the league to have the best-known and (arguably) highest-profile American player in the competition, and it's good to see the LA Galaxy commit themselves to keeping as much of their talent as possible.  But is it good for Landon Donovan?

I've stated in various posts my feelings of admiration for, and at times frustration with, Landon Donovan.  I feel that he should be tested at the highest levels of world football, which is in Europe.  But Landon Donovan is 27 years old.  If he was going to pursue a long-term career in Europe, he would have already been there by now.  And with 2010 being a World Cup year, it is imperative that Donovan get as much playing time as possible (and stay healthy, of course).  It's possible that he could get playing time at Everton, or PSG, or whatever European club he ends up being loaned to, but that kind of time will take some time to earn.  That leaves MLS.

For those of us asking if the level of play or the demands of the competition in MLS serve as good preparation for the international stage, we're about to find the answer during Donovan's stay.  A lot of people, from the Galaxy staff to the national team to the MLS front office, are hoping that the answer to that question is in the affirmative.

Atlante puts scare into Barcelona

It was brief, but for half an hour Atlante were living the dream.  They took full advantage of the one opportunity they had, but it was only a matter of time before Barcelona, with all of their stars, would retake the advantage.  Three goals from Busquets, Messi, and then Pedro secured the win for the European champions. 

Atlante did what they could, and put in an honorable performance for CONCACAF, but once again it will be another European-South American final.  It's almost as if the old Intercontinental Cup was in effect the world club championship.