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      FIFA Has a Plan for Africa. But Who Does It Serve?

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      Our experts separate fact from fiction in the talk about an African super league. Plus, a Champions League update, World Cup qualifying upsets and Erling Haaland’s next move.A couple of weeks ago, a tweet caught my eye. It seemed, unexpectedly, to reveal that a continentwide African Super League was under construction. Cross-border leagues, as regular readers will know, are something that this newsletter generally supports: They are the most readily available way of addressing soccer’s chronic financial imbalance.On the surface, notwithstanding the complex logistics, Africa is a prime candidate for such a venture. Many of the continent’s domestic leagues struggle to find investment, to retain talent, to compete for interest with the European tournaments beamed onto their television sets. Africa’s major clubs would, I think, be stronger together.There is, though, always a below the surface. As a rule, whenever I want to know what it is, I ask my colleague Tariq Panja, who spends so much time in the depths that he could be a submarine. For the last week or so, we’ve been exchanging emails on the subject. This conversation is the result.Rory Smith: Something strange has happened, Tariq. A few weeks ago, someone drew my attention to a tweet from Barbara Gonzalez, the chief executive at Simba, one of the biggest clubs in Tanzania, that seemed to reveal a plan that would change the face of African soccer: a pan-continental super league.But that’s not the strange part. The strange part is that it turns out it’s the brainchild of Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president. As a general rule, making sure you’re on the opposite side of any argument from Infantino is a solid strategy. But in this case my instinct is to say that, at least as an idea, this kind of makes sense.Please explain to me why I am wrong, so that the world can be restored to its axis.Tariq Panja: As with everything when it comes to FIFA — and typically FIFA under Gianni Infantino — the devil is in the detail. Or, in this case, the lack of detail.Infantino first announced his big idea for Africa in 2019, but it had been dormant until this random tweet (more on that in a minute). But when Infantino first went public, people inside FIFA say there was no business plan: just Gianni firing from the hip, claiming it could generate $200 million in revenue. That’s a big number as far as African club football is concerned, but there is no evidence of where it came from.To be clear: African already has a continental competition, the Champions League. Egypt’s Al Ahly won its record ninth title last year.Amr Abdallah Dalsh/ReutersIt reminds me of the time Gianni walked into a FIFA Council meeting and told the board to sign a document that would allow him to sell the Club World Cup to private investors (who turned out to be SoftBank). The members, led by European officials, wanted details. An internal audit found the event was worth considerably less than Gianni had suggested.Now, back to the tweet: It turns out FIFA officials were surprised, too. Barbara González walked up to Gianni at the Confederation of African Football Congress and asked to have her photo taken with him. Five minutes later, she sent out the tweet. Now I’m not saying a league in Africa is a bad idea, but surely there must be a robust plan before such a major project is undertaken?RS: If nothing else, you have to admire the chutzpah of that, not least because Infantino strikes me as precisely the sort of person who would fall for the old “as you were saying” ruse.There does, as you say, have to be a robust plan: economically, of course, but in a sporting sense, too. The basic idea strikes me as sound. Certainly south of the Sahara, African club soccer struggles horribly for investment. That means that the vast majority of nations that produce a constant stream of players for European clubs rarely see any of that talent on show in domestic leagues. That, in turn, hardly entices fans to go and watch games live. And that completes a neat but vicious circle, because it means that, yes, clubs struggle horribly for investment.A Super League would address some of those issues. A better television deal, if nothing else, would enable clubs to invest in infrastructure. That might help nurture young talent and keep it for a little longer. It doesn’t seem impossible to me that a Pan-African league might be able to rival one of the talent-generating leagues in Europe — the Netherlands or Portugal, say — for quality in a relatively short space of time.Of course, there is one thorny issue that I haven’t yet had the nerve to bring up. I reckon I could come up with a fairly cogent list of 20 or so African teams that would have a good case for inclusion, thanks to history or support or location. But I am guessing that Infantino and CAF, which is now run by a staunch ally of his, might have a different system in mind?Infantino recently helped an ally, Patrice Motsepe, win the top job in African soccer.Themba Hadebe/Associated PressTP: The little we know so far is that there is an expectation that participating teams would have to invest at least $20 million per season, for five seasons. For clubs in Africa, that is a significant outlay, and it suggests it would not be the most popular teams, so much as the ones that have the backing of wealthy benefactors. But again: Beyond the odd tweet and Gianni’s off-the-cuff remarks, we have nothing concrete.There are other ways of trying to come up with likely participants. You could use the CAF club coefficient, which is essentially a points system for clubs in the region based on their historic success. But that would mean a league dominated by clubs from wealthier North African countries, with only a dozen or so of the continent’s 54 countries likely to be represented.RS: That lack of representation would, I think, ultimately be unavoidable. For a tournament like this to be valid, there are certain clubs that would have to be included. Al Ahly and Zamalek from Cairo, would be names one and two. Both Raja and Wydad from Casablanca, and Esperance and Étoile du Sahel, the twin totems of Tunisian soccer.You would certainly need South Africa’s Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs. And you could throw Mamelodi Sundowns in there, too: It is owned by Patrice Motsepe, Infantino’s ally and the new CAF president. Simba, of Tanzania, clearly expect to be involved. TP Mazembe, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, would have to be.Congo’s TP Mazembe, in black, and Morocco’s Raja Casablanca would both merit places in any pan-African super league.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBeyond that, the continent’s powerhouse nations — Cameroon, Senegal, Algeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast and, particularly, Nigeria — would command at least one place each. Suddenly, the whole thing looks pretty full, even before thinking about Angola, Sudan and Ethiopia.TP: If there was a method to wrap this league into the existing pyramid, there would probably be far more buy-in. The idea that teams from across the region would have — at least in theory — a shot at one day making it into the competition would make the proposition far more palatable to those, even among the larger clubs, who are not enthused about it.Even then, there are the logistics of it: not only to create a level playing field, but a sensible calendar and schedule, given the enormous differences in weather and transport infrastructure across the region. Given the uncertainty and sense of unease among the African football community, there needs to be an urgent and transparent discussion about what this is, and what this is not. A series of clandestine meetings followed by a high-profile announcement that does not stand up to scrutiny is not enough.RS: There is, definitely, a back-of-a-cigarette-packet air to the idea. And worse still, it has the feel of something that is being imposed on Africa, rather than generated from within it. The problem of representation bears that out: this sort of thing is much easier to conceive if, deep down, you regard Africa as a single, homogeneous entity, grateful for your interest.And that — given Infantino’s apparent passion for the idea — makes you wonder what the purpose of it all is. Has it been suggested in an attempt to make African domestic soccer stronger, a challenging but essentially admirable aim? Or is there something else at play here?TP: There’s a suspicion that Gianni’s motivations may be less to do with securing the future of African soccer and more his hopes of creating a club competition that can rival and, eventually, overtake the Champions League. For that to happen, the expanded Club World Cup needs teams from all over the world who can compete with the powerhouses of Europe.Bayern Munich won the most recent Club World Cup. FIFA has plans to expand the event.Mohammed Dabbous/ReutersIn that light, Africa might just be the start, the canary in the coal mine. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but those involved should be clear about their intentions. And a defining project for the future of African soccer should be guided by those with skin in the game, no question, rather than a Swiss bureaucrat intent on a legacy project.RS: Ah, that’s a relief. I feel as though I am on much more solid ground now: the idea might have some merit, but the rationale behind it may not. That may not be good news for African soccer, which finds itself being used as a pawn in a broader power game, but it’s good news for my personal moral compass, because it means I don’t have to worry about being on the same side of an argument as Gianni Infantino.Pushing Back Another Bad IdeaNo one has proposed melting down the Champions League trophy to sell the silver. Yet.via ReutersThere was, just as there was always going to be, one last hurdle to clear. Most European soccer executives were expecting a blueprint for a new vision of the Champions League to be approved — both by UEFA, the competition’s organizer, and the European Clubs Association, Andrea Agnelli’s bad-idea factory — and announced this week.That had to be pushed back, though, when several of the continent’s major teams blew up the deal at the 11th hour: It turns out that actually they want to have final say on the competition’s commercial rights, too. Suddenly, it seems as if the new-look Champions League may end up being the lesser of two evils.Quite how that revamped competition will work is laid out clearly and concisely — and, crucially, in the form of a graphic — here. So clearly and concisely, in fact, that for the first time it is possible to say without fear of having missed something that this iteration of the Champions League will make the tournament immeasurably worse.Not, though, for the reasons so often given. Yes, there will be more meetings between the game’s superpowers, and for lower stakes. Yes, the whole thing is bloated. Yes, it will starve domestic competitions of oxygen. And yes, it still might serve to entrench the financial inequality that is the real enemy of the game’s ongoing health.But the main problem is much simpler: The redesign reduces the Champions League’s competitive integrity. It is, essentially, invalid to draw up a league table in which all of the teams play different opponents. It renders it meaningless. And it is quite likely that fans, who are not as stupid as they are taken to be, will notice.The Week the Tables TurnedNorth Macedonia’s Eljif Elmas, right, with Stefan Spirovski, after scoring the winning goal in a World Cup qualifier at Germany.Sascha Steinbach/EPA, via ShutterstockA few days ago, as England threatened to run up the score in a World Cup qualifier against San Marino, the poacher-turned-pundit Gary Lineker suggested it was time to admit that these mismatches — which characterize a substantial amount of international soccer — were of benefit and interest to precisely nobody.Instead, he said, perhaps it would be in everyone’s interests for some of Europe’s smaller nations to engage in a prequalifying tournament, playing one another for the right to face the continent’s elite, and England. The reaction — Do I really need to say this? You know what the reaction is, because it’s always the same reaction — was furious.To Lineker’s critics, those who accused him of trying to ghettoize soccer’s underdogs, what followed was karmic retribution. Luxembourg won at Ireland. Spain needed a late goal to avoid a draw with Georgia. Latvia tied Turkey. And, best of all, North Macedonia beat Germany, the country’s first loss in a World Cup qualifier for 20 years.It goes without saying that all of these results were welcome, impressive, and hilarious. But it does not mean that the idea Lineker espoused — one that has been around for years — should be dismissed.First of all: That is how qualifying works in Africa, Asia and North and Central America. It helps to thin the calendar a little, something that matters at a time when players are being run into the ground by all of the teams they represent. Second: The success of the Nations League has shown that games between smaller nations are more competitive, and therefore both more entertaining and more educational, than watching the same teams be steamrollered by the giants.And third: At the same time as all those shocks were rumbling through Europe, England was scoring five against San Marino, the Czechs ran in six in Estonia, and both Belgium and Denmark scored eight, against Belarus and Moldova. Worse still, a team managed by Frank de Boer scored seven against Gibraltar. Some of soccer’s lesser lights are competitive. Some are not. If only there was a way of selecting which teams fell into which categories.The Haaland ShakeDortmund, like everyone else, may have trouble holding on to Erling Haaland.Pool photo by Marius BeckerWe have been here before. On Thursday, it emerged that Mino Raiola and Alfie Haaland — respectively the agent and the father of Erling Haaland, the goal cyborg — were in Catalonia for a meeting with Joan Laporta, the freshly-minted president of Barcelona. The race for the hottest property in European soccer is, it seems, on.It is a move straight from the playbook that eventually led the younger Haaland to Borussia Dortmund, his current home, about 15 months ago. Expect Raiola and Haaland’s father to turn up in relatively short order in Madrid, too. They will almost certainly stop off in London after that: Chelsea harbors hopes of signing the 20-year-old Haaland. They may need two days in Manchester; they would not want to rush United or City.The fact that they are doing their due diligence on their client/son’s next home is, then, no surprise. More eye-catching is the fact that they feel Barcelona’s hopes of signing Haaland are valid, given that Dortmund has made it plain that it will not sell him for less than $150 million, and because Barcelona is, well, currently about $1 billion in debt.Laporta, clearly, feels he can make a deal work. Perhaps he can. Perhaps there is some way of shifting the money around enough for Barcelona to remain a viable candidate. The appeal is obvious: Signing Haaland would, almost at a stroke, turn Barcelona into major players again. But then so, too, is the problem: After all the club has been through, would it really be a good idea?The Final SprintAside from the virgin hope of opening day — and possibly the breathless frenzy of Christmas — this is the best part of the soccer season. The end of the March international break heralds not only the arrival of spring, but the start of European club soccer’s race to the summit. Over the next two months, closure will arrive.Better yet, this time around, we hit the ground running. The top two in both France and Germany will meet on Saturday: first, Lille visits Paris St.-Germain, the two of them level on points, and only a nose ahead of Lyon and Monaco. (I’ll have a story on Lille posting in a few hours.) No sooner has that finished, though, than RB Leipzig hosts a Bayern Munich deprived of Robert Lewandowski, and knowing that a win would close the gap at the top of the Bundesliga to a single point.RB Leipzig and Bayern Munich: back at it on Saturday.Pool photo by Alexander HassensteinIn England, meanwhile, the ultimate prize is off the table: It is a matter of when, not if, Manchester City claims a third title in four years. But the battle to finish second, third and fourth — and therefore obtain a place in next season’s not-yet-ruined Champions League — promises to be enthralling. My money would be on Manchester United, Chelsea and Leicester, in that order, but it’s so close that it wouldn’t be much of my money.CorrespondenceOnly space for one, this week, from Charles Knights. “I’m trying to figure out how much disappointment is warranted right now as a supporter of the United States,” he wrote. “How do you rate the U.S.A. men’s team’s failed attempts to qualify for Tokyo? There’s a lot of talk about the Olympics as a training ground for the next generation, but when I look at the U.S. squad, the next generation is playing senior friendlies in Europe.”This is only a personal perspective, Charles, and it is a distinctly European one: My view would, I think, be different if I was South American or African. But in the narrow context of soccer, I’m not convinced the Olympics matter particularly.The United States will miss its third straight Olympic men’s soccer tournament. Honduras is going to its fourth in a row.Refugio Ruiz/Getty ImagesIt is special for the players to win a gold medal, of course, particularly when it at least rivals the high-point of that country’s soccer achievements thus far (Nigeria in 1996, Cameroon in 2000, Mexico in 2012) or when it is Argentina (2004 and 2008), and the World Cup brings nothing but misery.But in terms of being used a signpost for greater things to come? In men’s soccer, no, not really. Put it this way: I had to check who won the gold at Rio in 2016. Turns out it was Brazil! They must have enjoyed that. It probably didn’t make up for what happened in a different tournament on home soil a couple of years earlier.Women’s soccer, of course, has historically placed much more importance on it — the cover of Abby Wambach’s autobiography describes her as a gold medalist, rather than a World Cup winner — but I wonder if that, too, will change with the increased focus on the Women’s World Cup. More

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      What Qualifies as Success at Borussia Dortmund?

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRory Smith On SoccerWhat Qualifies as Success?Borussia Dortmund’s business is winning matches and grooming some of the world’s best young talent. To do both, sometimes you have to put up with a few growing pains.Three of Dortmund’s crown jewels: Giovanni Reyna, Erling Haaland and Jadon Sancho.Credit…Friedemann Vogel/EPA, via ShutterstockDec. 18, 2020, 10:05 a.m. ETEven after Lucien Favre turned 60, he could still do things with a ball that left even some of European soccer’s brightest talents just a little awe-struck.He could juggle it as well as any of the budding superstars under his tutelage at Borussia Dortmund. He had tricks up his sleeve that some of them had not yet mastered. He could join in a small-sided training game — alongside Erling Haaland and Jadon Sancho and the rest of his squad, all more than half his age — and hold his own.Favre has always been a coach in the traditional sense. Some managers are characterized as motivators, rhetoricians and demagogues, urging their troops into battle. Others are portrayed as canny, scheming strategists. Favre is, to some extent, a throwback to what the role was when it was first conceived: He is, at heart, a teacher of technique.His training sessions — at Dortmund and at Nice and at Borussia Mönchengladbach, and all the other stops on his long and subtly successful managerial career — are regularly interrupted in order to amend some individual technical detail, to make a minor alteration to where a foot is planted or how a ball is struck or the way a body is shaped to receive a pass.It is a risky approach for a coach in elite soccer. In his time at Real Madrid, Rafael Benítez found that his interventions along similar lines were not warmly welcomed by his star-studded squad. They did not, several players made clear, need someone to tell them how to play soccer.Lucien Favre considered himself a teacher. Dortmund decided it needed wins more, so it fired him.Credit…Uwe Kraft/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFavre, though, never faced that issue at Dortmund. In part, that was because of his own, enduring ability. Those tricks in training games were not just evidence of a showman streak or a waxing nostalgia for his days as a player in his native Switzerland; they were a way of garnering respect, a sign to his players that he had something to teach them.Just as significant, though, the tricks were a testament to the profile of Dortmund’s squad. Favre was fired this week because a club of Dortmund’s stature could not tolerate yet another season drifting away from Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga title race. It most certainly could not accept the idea of a 5-1 defeat at home to Stuttgart, or a struggle to qualify for next season’s Champions League.Dortmund is, after all, Germany’s other superpower, a club that regards itself — in terms of finance and history and clout — as effectively the Bundesliga’s second in command. It is one thing being overwhelmed by Bayern; it is quite another to glance down the league table and have to spool through Bayer Leverkusen, RB Leipzig and Wolfsburg, too, before finding Dortmund.If Bayern Munich expects to win championships, Dortmund at least demands to be contending for them. Under Favre, in charge since 2018, that had not quite materialized. When it started to look like this season, too, might prove another false dawn, the cutthroat rules that govern Europe’s elite clubs kicked in, and the 63-year-old Favre had to go.But Dortmund is not like any other club of its size in Europe. Though Favre and the sporting director Michael Zorc had added a dash of experience to the squad over the last couple of years, reacquiring Mats Hummels from Bayern and signing the likes of Emre Can and Axel Witsel, it remains a tremendously young place.Haaland and Sancho might be two of the most coveted players in Europe, but they are both only 20, and Haaland has yet to complete a full year in one of the continent’s major leagues. Giovanni Reyna has emerged as a key part of the team over a similar time span, but he is still just 18.Youssoufa Moukoko, left, turned 16 in November. Within three weeks, he had become the youngest player in Bundesliga history, and the youngest to appear in a Champions League match.Credit…Olga Maltseva/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJude Bellingham was signed over the summer with one eye on a slow-burn introduction to the first team, only to force his way into Favre’s plans almost immediately. He is 17. Youssoufa Moukoko, a prodigiously talented striker in the club’s youth teams and regarded, already, as a natural deputy to Haaland, has only last month turned 16.This is Dortmund’s system: to recruit blue-chip talents from across Europe — and occasionally further afield — and to expose them to elite soccer, in both the Bundesliga and the Champions League, earlier than might be possible elsewhere. It is that reputation for trusting and empowering youth that the club emphasizes in its sales pitch to prospective signings.And it was that approach that made Favre, in some senses, the perfect coach for Dortmund. For all their very obvious talent, these are players who still need some instruction on the finer, technical points of the game. They have not, unlike Real Madrid’s squad, learned all they ever need to learn.They are all at Dortmund to improve, and to be improved, so that they can then be sold on, to make the leap to Real Madrid or Barcelona or one of the Premier League’s great houses (or, to Dortmund’s chagrin, to Bayern Munich). Favre fit not just Dortmund’s philosophy, but its financial model.Haaland and Reyna may not be long for Dortmund. The brightest young talents rarely are.Credit…Friedemann Vogel/EPA, via ShutterstockThe problem, of course, is that both are a little at odds with how the club perceives itself. Dortmund has more than enough quality in its squad to beat Stuttgart at home. Its team should not reasonably expect, for example, to find itself trailing Wolfsburg in the table, as it was when it changed coaches. Dispensing with Favre, by those simple metrics, was justifiable.But there is a cost to operating, as Dortmund does, as effectively a high-end finishing school for Europe’s next generation of stars. It means the squad must constantly be a work in progress, as players arrive, flourish and inevitably leave, to be replaced by some new prodigy.It means the emphasis must always be on attack — that, after all, is where there is money to be made — and the style of play must always be fraught with just a little risk. It means accepting a degree of oscillation in performance, the sort of problem Bayern almost never has, over the course of the season. It means riding out the bumps in any young player’s road.Dortmund should not find it hard to appoint a new manager. This is the club that Jürgen Klopp turned into the lodestar of the pressing game, after all. Many of the tenets of modern soccer orthodoxy are not just scoured into Dortmund’s soul, but emanated from here in the first place. It is, in that sense, to soccer in the 2020s what Barcelona was a decade before: the ideological home of the current iteration of the game.Dortmund has entrusted its first team to the assistant coaches Manfred Steves, left, and Edin Terzic, who won his debut as interim manager on Tuesday.Credit…Martin Meissner/Associated PressThere is a wealth of candidates out there, then, who share Dortmund’s principles, who play its soccer, who would fit neatly into its traditions and would be tempted by its prestige. Mönchengladbach’s Marco Rose is the early favorite, long since hailed by Klopp, no less, as a bearer of his flame. But there are others: Erik ten Hag, the mastermind of the resurgence of Ajax; Ralph Hasenhüttl, shining at Southampton; and the many other alumni of the Red Bull school of coaching, ranging from Adi Hütter to Jesse Marsch.Most would leap at the task. Dortmund offers the chance to work with a wonderfully gifted squad, to shape young players in their image, to craft a legacy for themselves. And, as both Klopp and Thomas Tuchel have shown in recent years, its profile and its potential is such that it can be a springboard for a coach’s own ambition.But whichever new manager takes the post will have to navigate the contradiction at the heart of the club’s identity. Is Borussia Dortmund’s ultimate purpose to win the Bundesliga, to collect a second Champions League crown? Or is its success judged not on the field but in the transfer market? Can the two ever run, truly, in tandem?Dortmund is an appealing job, of course. But that, as all of Klopp’s successors have found, does not make it an easy one.The Better Team Lost. The Better Team Also Won.Don’t let the smile fool you with José Mourinho. Always listen to the words.Credit…Pool photo by Clive BrunskillJosé Mourinho grasped Jürgen Klopp by the arm, pulled him close, and delivered the line. At Anfield on Wednesday night, the Tottenham manager told his Liverpool counterpart, the better team had lost. Only the width of a post had denied Spurs a victory it deserved. Liverpool had been lucky.In a way, in a year of such uncertainty, there is something comforting about seeing an old standard raised: Mourinho has spent much of 2020 actually being quite likable on Instagram, but it is reassuring to know that, deep down, he has not changed. He is still the recidivist fire-starter he always was.But that does not mean his assertion should be dismissed. Liverpool’s 2-1 win was a reminder that there are many ways to read a game and — this is the bit that is too often forgotten — it is possible that all of them are right.Mourinho, certainly, had a case: Spurs created four “big chances” — a measure used by Opta, the data provider, to describe occasions when a team might reasonably expect to score more than half the time. Heung-Min Son scored one; Harry Kane and Steven Bergwijn, between them, missed the others. Liverpool, by contrast, created none.The Expected Goals metric told much the same story: Spurs won that, too. Mourinho’s team went to Anfield with a plan and, bar some erratic finishing — one of those vagaries of soccer that can never be entirely controlled — found that it worked. Mourinho was not playing fast and loose with the facts.But neither was Klopp when he, predictably, disagreed. Liverpool dominated the ball. It dictated play for long stretches of the game. It had more shots. It had countless more opportunities to have shots.Expected Goals is a valuable statistic, but at its basic level it does not (and is not designed to) tell the whole story of a game. It does not capture, for example, the ebb and flow of pressure, how the current of possibility shifts between teams. Not every attack ends in a shot, but that does not make all of those attacks worthless in assessing a team’s performance. (There are metrics, like nonshot Expected Goals, that measure this.)Liverpool won that contest by a country mile. For much of the game, it felt as if Liverpool was the team on the cusp of a breakthrough. Spurs were not hanging on, but nor was their threat constant. So Klopp’s denial was not rooted in fantasy, either. The better team did lose. But also the better team won. It depends how you read it. And neither of those readings is invalid.Still Suspicion Holds You TightImagine thinking about gamesmanship at a time like this.Credit…Catherine Ivill/Getty ImagesIt is remarkable, really, how complicated soccer can make even the simplest thing. Introducing a rule allowing players who have sustained suspected head injuries to be removed from a game for their own well-being should not, really, be an especially convoluted process. It is the sensible thing to do. It is odd, if anything, that the rule does not yet exist.And yet here we are. The body that oversees the game’s Laws — always capitalize; people get very funny if you don’t — has mandated an experiment in which two concussion substitutes per team, per game are allowed. The Premier League, on Thursday, confirmed that it will give the idea a go.But still there are so many questions. Why two? Why not as many as you need? It’s unlikely that there will be several in a game, but you never know, do you? Why limit it? And, more pressing, why in the name of Santa Claus and all his gig economy elves has the Premier League felt the need to add a clause allowing the opposing team to make a change, too, if a concussion substitute enters a match?What are we saying here? That we have to assume teams will try to use this perfectly logical and utterly straightforward health measure for their own ends? That players will be falling over with fake head injuries to try to gain an edge? Do the executives who made that decision have so little trust in each other, and in themselves, that even player welfare cannot be left to chance?Oh, right. Yes.CorrespondencePlease gather around this giant whiteboard. We’re about to talk advanced statistics.Credit…Peter Powell/ReutersYou may remember Vincent Tjeng’s question from last week, wondering whether soccer had an equivalent to baseball’s Wins Above Replacement metric that I don’t fully understand but is basically a number applied to assess how much more likely a team is to win with Player X than it is with the average player in their position.Well, Vincent, the hive mind has found you an answer. A couple of executives at clubs got in touch to say that they have something along those lines, but it is all proprietary, so they’re not going to tell you precisely what it is, thank you very much. They take into account various performance metrics, position, time on the field and specific attributes, and provide a general idea of how much impact players have on their team.There is one possible, publicly-available candidate that several of you, including Avi Rajendra-Nicolucci and Brandon Conner, suggested: G+, which sounds like something you add to Chrome, but is in fact a metric designed by American Soccer Analysis.That’s all for this week. You will have noticed that next Friday is Christmas Day, which means that next Thursday, when we normally prepare this newsletter, is Christmas Eve. We had considered taking a week off, but rather than skip a newsletter, we have something up our sleeves instead to say thank you for reading during this strange, brief and yet also somehow endless year. (Note: It has no monetary value.) So if you’ve gotten used to reading the newsletter online every week, this is the day you may want to finally break down and subscribe.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More