After working on a player rating system for the last few weeks, I’ve decided to apply the model to the recent performances of the Socceroos during the 2019 Asian Cup.
Australia went out after a 1 nil loss to the hosts, UAE. They played five games all up with 18 of the 23 man squad seeing some minutes.
Danny Vukovic, Mitch Langerak, Alex Gersbach, Jimmy Jeggo and Mustafa Amini didn’t play any minutes so weren’t evaluated. Matt Jurman and Andrew Nabbout didn’t play enough so their scores won’t be added to the list. To qualify a player must’ve played the equivalent of one half of football.
The idea behind the rating system is to measure the value of a player while they’re on the pitch. The VPM (Value Per Minute) rating uses 36 stats from the game, 35 of them are used to reach a total score with the minutes per game stat used to reach the final value.
Eighteen of the stats will have a positive score, seventeen stats will have a negative score. There are four specific goalkeeper stats too. The pluses and minuses are used after each stat is given a weighted value based on things such as frequency of occurrence and a generalised consideration of the degree of difficulty.
The weight of a stat can be changed to suit a league or style of play. For the Socceroos, the values of each stat has been taken from the example of a league with a high possession and passing style of play.
With a high number of passes being played, the value of a general pass decreases. For example, completed lateral and back passes combine for the highest frequency of positive stats so they have the base value of 1. A forward pass, long pass, through pass etc will have differing higher values depending on their frequency. Missed back passes have a much higher minus value than a missed forward pass as well.
Red cards are the least frequently occurring stat so has the highest negative value avaialable. For outfielders, goals have the highest value and for goalkeepers, saves with reflexes have the highest value.
The VPM system is better applied to judge positionally and different stats can be added or subtracted if you wanted to have a more specific story to a position. The model we used here is a general one that can be applied across the board for any position and is designed to be as least biased to a position as possible.
Here are the VPM results for the 2019 Asian Cup Socceroos
Maty Ryan +6
Aziz Behich +4.2
Rhyan Grant +3.7
Josh Risdon +1.1
Milos Degenek +4.6
Trent Sainsbury +7.1
Mark Milligan +4.6
Chris Ikonomidis +8.1
Tom Rogic +7.3
Jackson Irvine +6
Massimo Luongo +6.1
Mathew Leckie +8.9
Apostolos Giannou +4.7
Jamie Maclaren +3.1
Awer Mabil +6.2
Robbie Kruse +1.9
*The scores have been rounded up to the nearest decimal point.
