I Refuse to Let This Stand

How can the New York freaking Times vouch for this:

"Even so UEFA, the governing body of European soccer, has gone statistic mad at Euro 2008. Part of it is that UEFA makes more money from Euro 2008 than it really knows what to do with and part of it is advances in technology and computing software which allow these statistics to be gathered and organized and, lets be honest, give it some neat toys to play with. Large swathes of the competition’s official Web site, have simply been handed over to the nerds."

First of all, you're talking about UEFA's website, Mr. Peter Berlin. Frankly, who gives a shit. There are much more important things to talk about during this championship--the resurgence of the Croatians despite a rough opening game and the loss of their top striker Eduardo, the overwhelming attacking play of the Netherlands and Spain, the futures of two key members of the Portugese team, Big Phil Scolari and Mr. Ronaldo--than the technology deployed by UEFA, not at the games, not on television but on a website that you can visit voluntarily. And one which really contains no information of actual importance; certianly there are hundreds of websites like the Guardian which are much closer to required reading than UEFA.com is.

But, technology and having more money than you know what to do with. That's what you're complaining about. Cool. I've got a perfect example for you. ESPN has that new stupid ESPN View or ESPN Angle or whatever the fuck they call it where they can go 360 degrees. That is like porn to them. It's not really that useful, it's technology that they pioneered like 4 years ago in golf (and I think I've seen it on MNF too). But, cut to Tommy Smyth and Derrick Rae doing a 360 degree view of two men going up for a header with Tommy saying, "Close your eyes cause here it comes!"--talk about a technology fetish.

But you're going to talk about stats on a peripheral website? Alright man, go with God.

Your many salient points include:

1. "Some flashy graphic invention is dedicated to telling us that Eric Abidal, the French left back, passes the ball often to the player just ahead of him, the left midfielder, Florent Malouda. Surprise!"
2. "Cristiano Ronaldo, who takes Portugal’s free kicks, likes to shoot a lot. Big surprise!"
3. "The player page allows you to search for individuals not only by name, position or country, but also by height and age. Why would you do that?"
4. "Sweden’s average age is 29.15 (or 29 and two months) and Russia’s 26.15. The average ages of the 16 squads are separated by just 3 years. And, if conventional wisdom is right and a player’s prime is between 26 and 30, then all the squads fall broadly in that range."
5. "TV producers have caught the stats bug. They are particularly enamored of the technology that allows UEFA to measure how far any player has run in a game."

Alright, so those are five things that make you angry enough to write an indignant anti-stats article for the Times Goal Blog. And your editor was like, "Right on man! Stick it to them. Couldn't agree with those five absolutely right-the-fuck-on points more. Publish that shit!" Let's see where you might be wrong.

1. That is actually really cool and if you don't see that, you are stupid/don't like soccer. It is absolutely awesome that we're finally going to get some quantifiable information on player tendencies. Sure, it's stupid in the case of Abidal and Malouda but how cool would it be to see to whom Cesc Fabregas makes his passes in an Arsenal match? I'd love to understand how he builds an attack, know how many passes forward and backward, left and right he makes. How much better could I understand my favorite team if I had that information? (It turns out that the passing stats setup is not very user friendly and is not super useful and perhaps this is what Berlin is talking about. If so, cool. But I don't think that's what he's doing--I think he's saying "WHY WOULD I WANT THAT INFO" which is super-dumb.)
2. Of course Ronaldo shoots a lot. You're doing that stupid cherry picking thing like you did with Abidal and Malouda. Hey--here's a thought. I'm pretty sure it doesn't just tell you that he shoots a lot; in fact, it probably tells you how often he shoots on target, how often he scores, how often he passes up shots and passes for assists. In fact, after looking at the website, I now know that Ronaldo leads the tournament with 7 shots on target and in total shots with 13. From that, I can discern that he was probably trying a little bit too hard but he did have a goal and an assist last game so he's likely settling in. THANKS UEFA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
3. Those are hardly even stats. And I might like to know if I was having an argument with a friend over who is taller: Martin Harnik of Austria or Eren Derdiyok of Switzerland (I'll let you guys check out the website and figure it out for yourselves). Or if I wanted to make an informed argument about who's going to have an advantage in the air in a given game. You know, whatevs.
4. That's kind of dumb--it's probably more important to have good players than young ones. But I do think that younger sides like the Netherlands and France have an advantage over a team of grandfathers like Italy.
5. He argues ostensibly that what you do matters more than how you do it--i.e. smarter players make big plays without running much. But how that's an argument against TV producers (mind you, we're talking about a website so what TV producers are doing in the article, I don't know) catching the stat bug, I don't know.

If he was arguing that teams shouldn't be picked (exclusively) by these (sometimes) arbitrary stats, maybe he'd be on to something. Or if we was arguing about some mainstream media outlet, maybe I could get on board. But, he's criticizing a random smattering of stats (and some non-stats) on a third rate website.

I guess my conclusion is: what is the point of this article?