Moneyball, from Liverpool to Montreal | The press

This is the story of a soccer club that chained unhappy transfers and defeats. His frustrated supporters were convinced that the owners were disinterested, too busy pampering their other team, 5,000 kilometers away.

Then, one day, the owners announced a great reconstruction. The team was now going to be led by a sports committee. We were going to bet on the algorithms. Probabilities. Advanced stats. Get up and remove hats and caps to warmly welcome the team’s new star: Excel!

CF Montreal?

It is true that it looks like him.

But no, this story is that of Liverpool, between 2012 and 2023. It is told of the interior with brilliant in the test How to Win the Premier League.

The author? Ian Graham, ex-director of the club’s scientific research. A nerd. A gifted. A hard head, too. “I have already ranked in the fourth percentile of a psychological test evaluating kindness,” he says. And the sample was a group of science students in science, a group that is generally not renowned for its kindness. »»

His story is both funny, brilliant and informative. There are 13 anecdotes in the dozen. Think about MoneyballSoccer version, without the family melodrama or the garrochage of chairs against the walls. Even as the star of MoneyballBilly Beane, makes a short appearance. He plays the scientists between the Spurs of Tottenham and Ian Graham. Because it is to the north of London that Graham tests his first ideas, before being recruited by Liverpool.

The story may take place in England, it is impossible to avoid parallels with the CF Montreal.

Of course Liverpool is richer. Mohamed Salah earns more money alone than all CFM players combined. Historically, the Reds wage bill has always found itself in the first third of the Premier League. Except that in 2012, the club was unable to compete financially with the largest sizes on the continent, hence the need to rebuild.

A paid decision.

In a decade, Liverpool went from eighth to England to European champion!

How did Liverpool do it?

The new owners, who also owned the Red Sox in Boston, first invested in a department of advanced statistics. This strategy had proven itself in baseball. The Red Sox had just known their most beautiful sequence in 100 years by applying the concepts of Moneyball : Target the underestimated players and pay them under the market value.

If you have read or seen Moneyballyou may remember that the Red Sox had submitted an offer to the Director General of Athletics, Billy Beane. He preferred to stay in Oakland. In Liverpool, there was no question of letting the best analysts slip away. Ian Graham’s seduction operation is one of the best chapters in the book.

The owners then changed the way of making decisions. From now on, to approve a transfer, recruiters, statisticians and the head coach must all get along. Since last summer, the CF Montreal has also been betting on management by committee. Luca Saputo, principal director of recruitment and sports methodology, is part of the decision group. If the composition of the committees in Liverpool and Montreal varies slightly, the principle remains the same: several heads are better than one.

Afterwards, mayonnaise did not take the first time. The first years of the Committee in Liverpool were painful. Ian Graham candidly recounts his numerous clashes with head coach Brendan Rodgers, who was headed.

For example, using players with other positions than those for which they had been recruited. Printing of deja vu, here. Remember the former head coach of CFM Laurent Courtois, whose tactical choices discouraged his bosses last spring. It was not until the hiring of Jürgen Klopp at the head of Liverpool, in 2015, that everyone grants his violins.

The recipe for success?

Ian Graham does not do any sidelines. It reveals all the ingredients. He is not content to fly over strategic choices; He dissects them with more stats than there are in the annual report of a multinational.

What strikes is the finesse of the data.

Take the goalkeepers. We generally basically base our assessment on the average of goals granted. It is the equivalent of observing the moon with the naked eye. Experts linger “expected goals” (expected goals). We can compare this to look at the sky with binoculars.

Liverpool analysts? They take out the total. A gigatelescope: the PSXG, for Post-Strike Expected Goals. Basically, it calculates the guardian’s performance according to his positioning, that of the shooter and the shooting trajectory. The statistical analysis was decisive in the recruitment of the goalkeeper Alisson, reveals Ian Graham.

So let’s compare the statistics of the CF Montreal goalkeeper, Jonathan Sirois, to those of other MLS holders.

This allows us to take a different look at the recent acquisition of a new goalkeeper, Thomas Gillier.

Formulas like this, the book is full of it. For attackers. For field environments. For defenders. The early threat (expected threat), For example. Liverpool analysts cut the ground in the middle of small pieces to measure the value of a pass, a drible or a race leading to a chance to count. Their work demonstrates a great correlation between this statistic and the position in the classification.

It is much more relevant, argues Ian Graham, than the percentage of possession of the ball. Interesting little note: During the recent hiring of Efrain Morales, the CF Montreal insisted on the young defender’s ability to “start the first reminders”.

In his test, Ian Graham also analyzes the strategies of the transfer market. In Liverpool, it was quite simple. We were looking for talented players underestimated by the other teams. So potentially cheaper.

Ideally, they were under the age of 24, to allow a resale in a few years.

The harvest was fruitful: Mohamed Salah, Roberto Firmino, Sadio Mané, Fabinho, Georginio Wijnaldum, Andrew Robertson, Virgil Van Dijk, Joël Matip and Alisson – all acquired between 2015 and 2019 – were in the alignment from Liverpool the evening of his triumph in the Champions League. A single player from the club academy, Trent Alexander-Arnold, began the match alongside them.

Ian Graham shows that with ingenuity, audacity and investments, we can catch up with the richest, and even exceed them. It’s inspiring. It is encouraging. We also close the book by wishing that one day, the leaders of our local clubs explain their decisions with so much transparency.

Volunteers?

I am all ears!

How to Win the Premier League : The Inside Story of Football’s Data Revolution

Ian Graham

Century

312 pages