The early MLS shootouts started 35 yards out and they had a 5 second clock. Per the story I linked from Caitlin Murray, FIFA was/is vaguely considering shootouts starting 25 yards out with an 8 second clock, which seems like entirely too much time from that range. Read more

As far as I know, numbers for “foot other than the players dominant foot” would be very, very low, and mostly cases of people showing off. Read more

This is excellent, but Pirlo (who had some very good Panenka’s) to Pinto, and Pinto’s pointing celebration afterward is the gold standard for me.

I don’t think she’s played much at an outside back position for years, but she’s moved all over the place her whole career and it’s a fair point that she’s done it before. Read more

Since their loss to Australia, this is their record against top-10 teams (based on current FIFA rankings, I don’t have them at the time they played):
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No; we said clearly in the first blog that the schedule and format of this will vary; there are always going to be comments sitting around pending approval, on every article in Kinja, often for good reason. Read more

Very much agree with this, and had that comparison in a draft of another column. At some point I may look at “Things you can do to make a keeper’s life worse and score.” Read more

You can and it is very good.

It’s knuckling all over the place; even in the gif you can see it dip. This is oversimplification, and a soccer ball isn’t exactly aerodynamically the same as a baseball, but in general, the less rotation you see, the more it’s going to be knuckling unpredictably. https://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/08/science/secret-of-kn… Read more

This tremendously improved my weekend. Read more

Companies like Opta are collecting this exact kind of info, and a bunch of people, including some of what I linked, are trying to find smart ways to use it. This statsbomb video has a bunch of interesting potential applications. https://statsbomb.com/2018/05/statsbomb-data-launch-finding-better-goalkeepers/ It’s just… Read more

I debated between using “kicker” and “punter” there, and went with kicker because people seem to yell at them more, but I might have picked the wrong one. Read more

That is a fantastic picture.  Read more

Your run was extremely cool and not like anything else I’ve seen at a GDQ. Thanks for reading it. Read more

You’re absolutely right and I missed this during editing. Thank you. It’s been corrected. Read more

Of course I’m part of the problem. Read more

I rewrote that line for an hour, and all the other versions were bad, so thank you. Read more