Post Script Podcast

Jun 04 2024 8 ep. 67 mins 43
Post Script Podcast artwork

A podcast about how the internet changed soccer analysis

postscriptpod.substack.com

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Episode 8: Slap Shot

Jun 04 2024 78 mins  
In 2011, James Grayson witnessed a turnaround in the fortunes of his local football club. In the first half of the season, Lincoln City had teetered on the brink of relegation from League Two, but then they sacked their manager, brought in some new players, and went on a tear in the winter, winning six games out of seven. Instead of writing about how his team had saved their season

Episode 7: Pro Vercelli

Nov 10 2023 68 mins  
In Episode 7, we couldn’t wait any more: we had to talk about our favorite sportswriter, Brian Phillips, whose weird, beautiful soccer blog Run of Play ran from 2007 to 2010 or so.In 2008, Phillips fell victim to a classic blunder: he got addicted to Football Manager. His yearlong series on the travails and triumphs of his FM team, Pro Vercelli, is a fun look at a video game that

Episode 6: In the beginning (again)

Aug 04 2023 71 mins  
In Episode 6, we find ourselves once again at the start of things, talking about the seminal work of Jonathan Wilson and Michael Cox. Where do you even start telling the story of how soccer is played? How should you describe the inner workings of the game, and what should your evidence look like? Wilson and Cox’s different approaches to writing about soccer inspired a generation

Episode 5: Pep Guardiola, proto-tactics blogger

Mar 14 2023 62 mins  
In the summer of 2006, a recently retired Pep Guardiola was obsessively watching the World Cup and writing about it for El País in an era when newspaper columns were going online. The way he described the game pointed the way to a richer, more detailed tactics writing — one that raises interesting questions for data analytics, too — but the English-speaking world would need ye

Episode 4: The lost city of Stat-lantis

Mar 01 2023 74 mins  
From 2011 to 2012, when Arsenal bought the company, the StatDNA blog was a soccer nerd Atlantis. With one of their first posts, they gave a treasure trove of event data to the world for free and announced a research competition. In one of their last posts, they announced that they'd hired the winner of that competition, Sarah Rudd. In between, they basically completed the next deca

Episode 3: If it wasn't blogged, did it even really happen?

Oct 17 2022 60 mins  
Episode 3 follows the story of Ian Graham, who started as a researcher for a groundbreaking soccer analytics newspaper column and rose to become Director of Research at Liverpool FC. Along the way, he spent some time in our blogging circles and introduced what may have been soccer’s first public possession value model, hidden in plain sight.Blogroll* Daniel Finkelstein, The Fink

Episode 2: Imagining a soccer analytics

Sep 19 2022 54 mins  
In Episode 2, we travel even further back to 2009, when Howard Hamilton starts what may be the first soccer analytics blog (there are many beginnings). Inspired by Michael Lewis’ Moneyball, he thinks about what a similar approach would require in a sport like soccer — and decides it’ll never work.Blogroll* Howard Hamilton, Soccermetrics: Moneyball and Soccer (January 2009, fi

Episode 1: The spiritual birth of soccer analytics blogging

Sep 12 2022 68 mins  
In the first episode of Post Script, we travel all the way back to what Tiotal Football calls “the spiritual birth of soccer analytics blogging,” when a couple of people writing about soccer data started a conversation.Blogroll* Sarah Rudd, On Football: On offensive production — creating vs. finishing (January 2011)* Chris Anderson, Soccer by the Numbers: Creating chances v.