Serie Analyst POD: Recent Episodes
Nick Pacchioli
This week we dive into the philosophical clash that may result between the ultimate barrier builder - Massimiliano Allegri - and the destroyer of all movable objects - Gleison Bremer. Can Bremer effectively join a squad that has become renowned for its lack of aggressiveness in defense? Is Allegri potentially going to change his style? How will this all work out? Join me and my guest Nicola Santolini to dissect this class in ideas!
Romelu Lukaku is heading back to Inter, so it had me thinking what sort of upgrade he'll bring to the Nerazzurri, and even deeper - how much of an upgrade is he over Lautaro and Edin Dzeko. As I explain my Monte Carlo methods to assess finishing, I am then fortunate to be joined by Enrique who has laid out an interesting and extremely useful method to analyze strikers beyond finishing. Spoiler alert, there are other methods to assess their skills beyond finishing!
After a few week hiatus, we're back with our deepest in depth interview yet! I'm joined by Davide (@undervalu) to discuss recruitment philosophy, organizational strategy, and how the importance of a plan is what can make analytics successful for a football club.
This week I come to you from Las Vegas, and we talk all thinks gambling! I'm fortunate to be joined by Kicks and Picks Podcast host and founder, Nick Dianni. Nick gives us a great introduction into football handicapping, how it differs from betting in American sports, and some interesting prop bets and season bets we can look at this summer.
Also I dive into some penalty taking trends, and why it may not make sense for a keeper to just randomly choose a direction to try and save the shot.
In this week's episode I am lucky to speak with Alberto Laucello who guides us through a growing in prominence and extremely valuable statistic - post shot expected goals. We discuss what it means, how we can assess shot stopping skill from it, and determine if certain players can get 'lucky' over a given year. Plus I take a deep dive into the relationship between wage bill and salary. Is it the end-all-be-all of table placement in Serie A?
In this episode I was fortunate to have the opportunity to speak with Chun Hang. Chun first caught my eye with his excellent and thorough scouting report on one of Serie A's best young wingbacks - Wilfried Singo - but the conversation flows much deeper than that. From discussing football and analytics in Malaysia, the work he has done to try and push analytics to the forefront in his home country, plus the required rigor to create in depth scouting reports, we touch on everything for this episode! Enjoy!!!
We made it to double digit episodes! This week I am lucky to be joined by Cliff Esmiol as we both go through our Season's best XI, discuss our methods, and see where we differ and where we are the same!
Welcome back to another episode in which we dissect potentially two Champions this year. One already crowned in AC Milan, and one that may be in a few days time - Roma.
Join me as I look at a few data points that suggest how everything clicked for Milan this year. Also I am fortunate to be joined by Steve from Chiesa di Totti to examine what Roma needs to do to get past Feyenoord in the UEFA Conference League final.
Welcome back to AP Statistics where we dive into figuring out the odds that Fiorentina, Roma, and Atalanta have of advancing to European competition next year. Spoiler alert, it wasn't easy! Also we delve into different expected goal differential metrics and ascertain which has had the most success in explaining what has happened in Serie A this year.
Pardon the terrible pun (I couldn't help it), but in this week's episode we dive into some goalkeeper data, multi-variable linear regression, and predicting keeper save percentage based off available data. I get a huge assist from data extraordinaire Ben Griffis to walk us through his recent goalkeeping save model.
In this week's episode I dive into which players are the most and least ambidextrous in Serie A. Also, I had the fortune to speak with a Calcio data advocate, Marco Lai, as he explains what xThreat is to us.
Not only is the Serie A title race heating up, but the fight for safety is getting spicy. Salernitana has three consecutive victories, and have given themselves a puncher's chance of staying in Serie A next year. Also, from the episode last week where we looked for a Robin Gosens replacement, this week I look at attackers who may be better suited as wingbacks or fullbacks.
This week I'm joined by the fantastic Atalanta Vegas as we try to deconstruct what Atalanta needs to do to replace the output it now misses from the dynamic Robin Gosens. Additionally, has any one lost more points in the final minutes of the match than Torino? Doubtful!
This week we deep dive into some defensive rate statistics, specifically why Inter's defenders perform so low on the defensive scale? It led to a great discussion and thought experiment as to why stats do not always tell the whole story, and the subsequent drive to ask more questions. To help answer those questions I recruited the help of the great Uncle Sharma who consistently puts out great content on Youtube about his beloved Interisti.
It's fitting that the second episode talks about 'Youts.' Joe Pesci would be proud. This week I had the pleasure of welcoming Frank of SerieA_Aust to discuss this weekend's match action, some interesting youth names coming up through Italy, and then a comparison to Italy's allotment of minutes to young players versus the other top European Leagues
This week we'll take a deep dive and compare how fouls are called in Serie A versus the other top leagues in Europe, and try to answer the question: does officiating in Serie A set teams up for failure once they reach the European stage?
Also we'll take a trip over to Liguria to look at one of the hottest teams in the league, and the new coach that has Genoa playing way over its head!
Hello and Welcome to the Serie Analyst POD. I wanted to do a quick introduction to the new podcast and get everyone excited for what will surely be an insightful ride into the world of calcio and data.
Feel free to drop me a line serie.analyst.pod@gmail.com with interview ideas and discussion topics, or you can find me on twitter at SerieAnalystPOD.
Happy listening!