TownieDeac
words are futile devices
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2011
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And I cannot prove it but I know for certain regardless that scouts of top-tier teams don't look at a damn StatsBomb radar chart when they consider if they would recommend a player to their manager or not.
And one would be fired if they tried to show on one of these radar charts that a player improved from their Year 23 season to their Year 24 season. Because no fucking shit they did, otherwise, why bother caring about the player in the first place?
Probably not since scouts aren't the same as data scientists. But a data scientist may very well use a radar or any such Statsbomb visualization, like a passing model, xG chain, etc. when talking recruitment with a football director or technical director. I don't know if you're knocking radars as a viz, Statsbomb as a company, or statistics in general with this rant, so it's tough to really argue against.
And you can glean a lot from a radar year over year. Like, if goal numbers dip but you're seeing more assists and pressure regains and tackles and deep progressions you can guess the player was asked to do different things for the club. And you can do all this with dozens or hundreds of targets from a desktop rather than trying to scout the globe. Nobody would try to do it with scouts alone or data scientists alone, and it seems foolish to me to knock either approach.