Using Global Elo Ratings to scout undervalued talent for MLS.
Today I read an excellent article by Michiel de Hoog in De Correspondent about Brentford FC, and how they are run. De Hoog mentions how Brentford use a model that is not dissimilar to a European league table - ranking every team in Europe against one another.
A model like this can be created because of the links between the European leagues, thanks to the Champions (and Europa) League competitions. See De Hoog’s example below to understand how it works:
This got me thinking - could a similar model be used to improve recruitment by a front office in MLS? I think it could - especially considering that CONCACAF has a similar Champions League competition, meaning comparisons between teams in different leagues can happen.
To try and test my theory publically I’m going to need to find data, or a pre-existing model, that can help me show the usefulness of a tool like this. Onto the search…
After a quick Google I found a site by the name of ClubElo - which calculates Elo Ratings for the European Leagues. Sadly there are no other leagues outside of Europe here, although it may be useful to use for looking at teams climbing the ladder and the players on those teams.
Secondly I found Tom Worville’s MLS Elo Rating system on the American Soccer Analysis website. Pretty cool once again, but with only one years worth of data and a very simple method - explained here - it’s not that useful for replicating the aforementioned Brentford FC model.
Finally, I found an article ranking the Top 100 Soccer Clubs in the US and Canda, which also has a second part with a methodology. This lead me to find FootballDatabase. Something useful.
FootballDatabase has a constantly updating list of Elo ratings for every professional team in North, Central and South America. It also has a pretty in-depth methodology if you like that sort of thing. Below’s the top ten ranked teams for North America.
Sadly not an MLS team in sight, but the makeup of the top ten has no surprises in my opinion.
Liga MX is definitely MLS’s biggest competitor, with player’s moving there seen as a step-up on the career ladder (looking at you, Messers Gonzalez, Pereira Júnior and Villafana), so the inclusion of those teams does not surprise.
Costa Rican teams also aren’t a surprise inclusion, especially with Alajuelense and Herediano both reaching the semi-final of the Champions League this season.
So how can this be useful for a front office? A couple of pointers below:
- Putting all of this data into a database, alongside basic player information, you could have a useful starting point. For example fishing into teams 11–15 of the rankings shows CSD Comunicaciones of Guatemala - the only team from Guatemala in the top 25.
Considering this is one of the best teams in North America, and from a tiny footballing nation like Guatemala, I’m assuming that it won’t take much money to bring a player from this team or league into MLS.
Quickly eyeballing Comunicaciones’ squad and its goalscoring statistics, I can see 25 year-old Rolando Blackburn might be someone to pay close attention to. He has a decent goalscoring rate and is consistently playing on a top 20 team in North America. He’s also called Rolando Blackburn.
You could quite easily repeat this exercise for any team or position you wanted to fill - narrowing your search using the FootballDatabase rankings.
- Looking at some of the players that have come into the league recently, they have performed well and have lower wages compared to some of the leagues more established, but lesser talented, players.
For example, Johan Venegas recently joined the league from Alajuelense - the 6th best club in North America according to the rankings above. According to Soccerway, Venegas played a lot of the available games in his two seasons at the club.
Considering that there are 44 games in a Costa Rican league season (split into two separate leagues - the Invierno and Verano) Venegas featured in 67% of the minutes available to him (5330/7920).
Considering Alajuelense are a good quality side and Venegas has played a lot of minutes for them, he would be the sort of player that I would reccommend a side scout further through this type of analysis (which Montreal evidently did, with them signing him in August 2015).
Going back to the original point about wages - Venegas has a cap hit of just $120,000 (base salary) and is 27 years old. Referring back to the peak years I mentioned in my previous post Venegas is past the peak of 24 years old, but still represents significant upside compared to the ageing Justin Mapp (31) who had a cap hit of $187,000 last year.
Edit: Johan Venegas’ salary was paid down using Targeted Allocation Money to ensure he was below the Designated Salary player threshold.
Another example of a player like this would be Dairon Asprilla of the Portland Timbers. Asprilla entertained many a crowd this year with his trickery:
And he cost just $60,000 of cap space:
Asprilla’s previous side had the following Global, Regional and National rankings at the time of writing:
Although Alianza may not show up as a side that are performing well and should be viewed, they do represent untapped potential - greatly reinforced by Asprilla’s performance data with him appearing in a lot of games, similar to Venegas:
Potentially a system like this is being used by the Timbers already? That would explain why they reportedly spent $5million to buy Lucas Melano from Lanus to go from the 176th best team in the world to the 495th team in the world.
If you want to look for more examples of these, just check out the players coming into the league from the Transfer Flows data on Transfermarkt and compare that with the FootballDatabase rankings.
So to conclude:
- Once again, thank you for reading this piece and give it a share if you enjoyed it or get back to me with any comments or feedback.
- Secondly, evidently the FootballRankings is a public model but the methodology seems sound. If I was working within a team I’d look to either use this model myself and scrape the data or recreate the model using game result data. From the few examples I’ve given, it can help unearth some interesting players.
- Thirdly, a tool like this should by no means be used alone in recruitment. It purely helps to have an additional voice when making a decision - wisdom of the crowds and all that.
- Finally, the cap hit of players from these leagues seems significantly lower. Looking at Liga Postabon alone (the Colombian league), Orlando’s Carlos Rivas, Portland’s Dairon Asprilla, Dallas’ Michael Barrios and Houston’s Mauro Manotas all only cost their teams $60,000 last season - although this may potentially be coincedence and due to actual figures not being released.
Once again, thank you for reading!
Dollars and Decisions.
