Best Young Players In Dream League Soccer 2019
Bok Mull
A couple of weeks back, I started as blog series on developing data driven recruitment practices on a miniscule budget. In the first part, I used data from Transfermarkt to produce a rough league tiering system, and then checked some transfer trends between these tiers to identify potential target markets for a Veikkausliiga team.
To replace him, Inter have signed two players Joel Rodriguez, a 23-year old who arrived from the Spanish fourth tier, and Tobias Fagerstrm, who has moved back to Finland after having spent several years in the Hamburger SV system.
Rodriguez, in terms of profile, looks sort of similar to Kllman in 2022. Not a massive amount of shots, but generally from good locations. He seems to lack some of the secondary skills that Kllman has, though, with quite few dribbles and being poor in duels. He does, however, have good creative numbers to make up the difference. Note that Wyscout only have a limited sample of Spanish 4th tier games covered, so in terms of minutes played, the sample shown is roughly half of the minutes he played that season according to Transfermarkt.
Tavares was especially known for his abilities going forward. Although he could play in a variety of central midfield roles, he seemed to always have a knack for getting in or around the box, and making actions that affected the outcome of the game. Although HJK are yet to sign a replacement, there have been rumors of a contract offer for Dutch free agent midfielder Pelle Clement.
Squad construction is largely a question of resource optimization, in which the party doing the constructing needs to balance a large array of factors to create a best possible fit. These factors include: budget, playing minutes, short term squad quality, long term squad quality, squad cohesion among others. A successful squad construction is one that fits into the organizations short term objectives (e.g. league position) while remaining on track to hit long term objectives without overextending the organization financially.
Basically, for any individual league, an age curve will ultimately be strongly affected by player development, but also by availability. This will naturally also have some implications for people trying to construct squads in this environment.
What we can see from this graph is that the distributions are fairly aligned, but with an increasing gap between ages 24 and 33 (apart from ages 29 and 30). This essentially tells us that in this age range the median player is getting more playing time than their median quality would indicate that they deserve.
A league that struggles to retain its peak age players is a league in trouble. Peak age player availability can be displayed with one further graph, by measuring the proportion of the population in each age group.
For a team that can sign aging returnees, it is a valid strategy to do so. It is, however, worth bearing in mind that while the age curve for Finland might look skewed in the aggregate, individual players still go through the same symptoms of age related decline, so building a team around aging players might be destructive in the long term, especially if getting the player now means signing him on for additional years on similar wages with lesser expected output. Do not align wage with age, if a player is good and young, try to sign them up on a longer contract on proper wages. Try to avoid signing late-peak players from abroad.
Spotting talent like that is easy. You just open your eyes and your ears and you feel it. I had a similar experience on the opposite side of the same stadium a year earlier, when Teemu Pukki wrecked Schalke on his own. The significance of the moment is palpable, the energy in the stadium is raw and physical, like you could reach out and touch it. Moments like that become embedded in the football folklore, especially in a country like Finland where they are so rare.
The above graph shows how he has performed in the different metrics compared to the full sample of players since 2013 who have primarily played a similar role to him. The point of percentile ranking is to show, essentially, how many percent of the sample population have performed worse than him in that particular metric. A reminder: this is not compared to players his age, but to the full sample of attacking midfielders/wingers in the population.
A very difficult and multifaceted question. I know that player agents and scouts relate player level to league level, and that the low tempo of the Veikkausliiga can therefore affect the likelihood of a player getting a move to a better foreign league. The low tempo of the league can also make the players comfortable with a level of play which is far from what is needed in better leagues. Thus it is probably an issue that should be discussed through facts, as you did in your blog.
Another big theme is whether we are refining players in the right way from a physical and player position perspective at B-junior and adult levels. The answer to this question is unfortunately that we rarely are.
There are surely inexpensive things. The Veikkausliiga teams can surely afford to train for longer, as well as preparing for and recovering from training in a better and more diverse manner. Do more tactical training, use video more/better.
Another way to tell the same story is that average pass distance has decreased drastically since 2013. HJK, who had the shortest average pass length in 2013, would have been roughly on par with Ilves in 2019 for the second longest average pass length per team.
What grates me about this is that I feel like a stronger emphasis on the pragmatic side of the game would favor Finnish teams in the long run. Take set-pieces, for example. In Denmark, since Midtjylland started emphasizing that aspect of the game, practically the whole league has caught up. To me, that suggests that it should be possible to create an effective set-piece program just by analyzing the benchmark, investing more time on it on the training ground, and tracking the results to see what changes to make. Imagine, an additional 0.2-or-so-goals-per-game waiting to be added to your current total, there for the taking. Alas:
Yltupa, on the other hand, had some fairly pedestrian numbers, but showed some really nice flashes of ability during his brief spell at RoPS. He was, apparently, recommended to Ajax by Jari Litmanen, so it is unclear exactly how much they knew about him apart from the recommendation.
The same tendency can be noticed from the current Huuhkajat-setup as well. How many of the current regulars left Finland before making a Veikkausliiga or Ykknen appearance? I count Jesse Joronen (who had a loan stint at Lahti), Lukas Hradecky, Tim Sparv and Fredrik Jensen while Glen Kamara, Robert Taylor and Thomas Lam were naturalized, so started off abroad. The rest, at least to some extent, established a footing in the domestic leagues before pushing onward.
The #AskASocerPro show is a Live video podcast where 11 year MLS vet and Mental Strength Coach Quincy Amarikwa dives into the mentalities of highly successful individuals both on and off the pitch. In this weeks episode Quincy Amarikwa discussed about how has he adapted to training at #amarikwaacres, how important are drills, best way to increase your first touch and more.
But Jr. What's going on brother? A footballer's faith joined. If you guys can hear me. Okay. Drop some I'm in your head emojis and maybe spam that heart button. Cause I don't know how the, um, internet service is up here. Uh, John test one Oh one, John Hollinger 27 joined in Joe Jackson dropped in fly with captain Lucas, yo Pope, Virginia dropping the oui. I'm in your head and Moogie's what's going on, Joe? Um, it'd been an interesting last couple of days. That is for certain, uh, DC Eagles said what's hap what's happening Dara. Evra Johnny test one Oh one. You know what? You know what speaking, you know, it was speaking to me today. This was, or, uh, I can't flip them. So you can't see it anymore. Instagram change or yeah, Instagram live change that. But uh, my meme collection thing, I've just been collecting many experiences for, for the, the meme, the meme of vacation of the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, speaking of memes
There we go. Uh, that's what I was looking for. Um, yeah, what's been going on everybody as everybody's joining in, uh, you guys know what it is. It is the hashtag ask a soccer pro show. I'm your host 12 year pro mental strength league coach hall of fame, UC Davis hall of fame member, MLS cup champion, black players for change founder and mental strength, coach Quincy, America. You guys know what it is, is another episode of the hashtag S soccer show where we break down the MSL, AKA the mental strength league game of 4d chess, where either an active participant or you're steady in the game getting played every Thursday, 6:00 PM, PST 9:00 PM EST live on the at perfect underscore soccer Instagram account. We break down the MSL, um, with the, with the MSL lesion, right? Uh, we're we're a team and network of individuals who are looking to elevate each other so we can accomplish our goals because the MSL mentality is the mindset you need to accomplish your goals.
And, uh, this is your chance to ask questions of an over decades, long pro as well as ride that MSL wave because 2021 is the year of the frequency. Speaking of frequency, Quincy is a free agent, um, and going through that whole process, um, as well as all the work we're doing with BPC, um, our work with the us soccer foundation, uh, the work of being a dad, uh, with two little ones and a husband and, uh, yeah, business owner operator, trying to survive through the pandemic and COVID right. Ooh, the, um, the new normal that we are all, uh, getting accustomed to, but how is everybody doing? I'm seeing everybody's spamming the heart button, seeing some questions starting to come in. Um, and we can get started. We can get going today. I'm leaning towards, I think today might be a shorter episode. Um, we just got out to Morro Bay with the family, um, spending some time out here and going to go with the boys to get some ice cream, uh, before it gets too dark.
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