BUILDING A WINNING SOCCER TEAM ANALYSIS OF SOCCER STATISTICS
Open Access
- Author:
- Schultz, Jon William
- Area of Honors:
- Astronomy and Astrophysics
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Steinn Sigurdsson, Thesis Supervisor
Steinn Sigurdsson, Thesis Supervisor
Jane Camilla Charlton, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- soccer statistics
moral hazard
incentive contracts
soccer player market value - Abstract:
- Statistics are used in a wide variety of areas and have a broad range of uses. One such area in which statistics is extremely important and useful is in the arena of professional sports, including association football, known better as soccer in the United States. Like other sports, statistics recorded in soccer is often used as a base to evaluate players. This evaluation utilizing statistics is not only used to determine how good the player is, but also how much the player is worth or valued in the market of professional soccer players. The main issue is how the current statistics tracked in soccer contribute to the value of players and whether or not these statistics are accurate and meaningful. Furthermore, there certainly are statistics that are not being tracked that are influential and meaningful to the evaluation of a player’s performance and true value. However, the problem is that it needs to be determined how to accurately record these other meaningful statistics because they are not as obvious or as easily recordable. In addition, statistics are not the only measure or influence upon a player’s performance, evaluation, and value. So, the statistics used should be taken in context of other varying forces. There is a wide range of theoretical and other related influences that have an impact including moral hazard, contract incentives, team fitness, cheating, and pay inequality. Some of these affect what and how some statistics should be tracked, while others influence the overall relationship of players to the team.