Uh, Guys: Brentford Might've Just Solved Soccer
I wrote about the Premier League team that’s scored in the first 90 seconds of their last four games:
The team that scores first in a soccer game wins about 2.3 points on average -- that's not too far off the full three points from winning a soccer game, and that rate would come out to about 87 points per Premier League season, or just about the same rate as Manchester City over the past five seasons. So, if you were going to try to solve soccer, you'd try to find a moment in the game when you can draw up a play. And you'd want that moment to be as early in the game as possible -- before the other team gets a chance to score the first goal themselves.
In other words, you'd want to do exactly what one Premier League team has done, four weeks in a row.
Have Brentford discovered soccer's cheat code? What does it say about everyone else in the Premier League, and should other teams be following Brentford's lead?
Also, I was on ESPN FC Live on Wednesday to chat about Liverpool and other surprises from the start of the Premier League season. Did my brain short-circuit for five seconds at one point? Watch to find out:
Happy Friday, all.
Will I be a sicko for trying to implement Brentford-style kickoff routines with my GU12 rec team?
I think the free flowing read and react offense of soccer would help balance out over coaching in basketball and more plays built off basketball concepts would benefit soccer. But ultimately the creative spark in players must be cherished and developed because that creative spark is what separates teams at the highest level.
I know both sports already have an element of both involved, free flow and then set plays, but I think basketball would benefit from greater emphasis of certain concepts like "playing the way you face", getting off the ball earlier so the offensive players facing the defense could take advantage of the spaces they are facing and can therefore see and soccer would benefit from emphasizing "pick and roll" style actions more often. They do already with 1-2s and the like, but I think there's some low hanging fruit on how to create more effective and consistent attacks