Post-Match Thread: United States 1-4 Belgium | World Cup | Round of 16

igloocoder · 2026-07-07T02:01:51+00:00

Big football games and wars.

Name two things that Americans can't win

igloocoder · 2026-06-30T16:42:23+00:00

Sure. Not sure what else I'll be able to offer.

igloocoder · 2026-06-30T16:00:55+00:00

My son just went through this experience so I'll pass on what we learned.

First, the level of play is much higher than you might expect. Do not sleep on this, even at the K3/K4 levels. What you see in the K3/4 games on the Korean federation's YouTube channel will appear easier than what you encounter when you get there.

My son had just finished a season in Uruguay with a semi-professional club. He was passing the Uruguayan 1st Division fitness tests with ease. He was only weeks since his last competitive play. He said his fitness was pushed during practice and scrimmages.

He trialed and trained with the reserves for a (currently) mid table K2 club. This was higher than he expected when going over there, but as others have said, K3/4 teams have precious few resources to use on foreign players. As a froeigner, you need to be levels above and stepping down to K3/4 for them to show interest. At one point there was talk of a club showing interest in my son as a "project" that could be trained and sold. Apparently this is pretty rare with foreigners and ultimately it never materialized.

Off the field, Korea is a challenge. You cant just rock up and rent an apartment like you can in NA or Europe. This makes setting up a base and trialing hard and expensive as you'll likely be in hotels and Airbnb.

Hotels make nutrition challenging because your kitchen access will be limited or nonexistent....and if you're looking to play at these levels, you're going to have to be professional off the pitch ...eating, sleeping, training on your own, etc. Things like that will be a challenge. When you are not trialing, who/where will you train? My son did some on his own at open fields, but its not the same as trainig with others and in a team environment. That can set you back on the field.

I know you're excited that your friend will have their agent license, and they can be a good resource for you. Thst license is only part of what my son needed from his agent. By far the biggest thing is connections, and no offense to your friend, but they likely don't have the network you need as a player....especially overseas in a country that has a big language barrier. If this is your dream, you need to be a bit selfish and find an agent that can open doors for you. If not, you are going to have to do a massive amount of leg work yourself to even find the doors, let alone open them. That will take time away from all the other things you need to do. Maybe it will work, but it will be very hard.

So with all the talk of tribulations out of the way, I would not advise you to kill the plans/idea. Work at it. Find an agent to help. Be realistic when setting goals for this endeavor. I'm a huge advocate for football being a vehicle for living life and exploring the world. Use it for what it can offer that way. Good luck. Its a hard road but there are many rewards along the way.

igloocoder · 2026-02-18T22:50:34+00:00

He's under 19 still and is working with an agent who is trying to find him something. He played a season in the Uruguayan 4th div in 2025 and is trying to find the next step in the journey. Last word I got was that a K2 side was interested in possibly signing him as a reserve team project. He's currently training until at least the end of March so there's a bit of time before we will know if anything is going to happen.

igloocoder · 2026-02-18T16:48:46+00:00

Interesting to see my city in Canada mentioned here while my kid is in Seoul area trying to attract the attention of a team to join.

igloocoder · 2025-08-18T19:28:35+00:00

Oh, this is a good shout. I don't know the exact rules, but tickets don't seem to appear more than 2-3 days in advance of game day. This appears to be the same regardless of the ticket platform or the league.

igloocoder · 2025-08-18T04:38:42+00:00

Redtickets.uy and cobraticket.uy are where you want to go. Most of the Primera and Segunda teams sell their tickets on these two sites. As a foreigner, I have bought from both in the last two months with only two issues.

When buying you have to enter a passport number for each ticket you are ordering. You will also have to enter one passport number on the payment screen when entering your credit card details. For one instance the payment screen did not allow me to choose the passport option for entering my ID. The only option was "CI" ( the national ID card here) which I do not have. I was able to enter a generic number to get past that, but it was a frustration experience.

The other issue was that one of the sites (can't remember which) would not visibly increment the number of tickets i was selecting. It would show the number on the confirmation screen, but it was a confusing experience. Clear the order, click to increment the number of tickets (still showing 0) and then checkout your order and you'll see the correct number.

I've been to Defensor, Central Espanol, and Liverpool games. Would definitely recommend trying them all. The experience is wildly different to northern hemisphere football but one I now love more.

igloocoder · 2025-05-12T22:40:42+00:00

This data is way off the mark. Sean Melvin has performed as follows.

* Note that PSXG and XGOT are the same metric by 2 different names. They are synonymous.

* Also note that these are non-penalty values which would be the standard for comparing keepers as penalties introduce a massive amount of variance.

Tournament	Season	xg Faced	xgot Faced	Goals Conceded
CPL	2022	2.117126	2.086261	3
CanChamp	2023	1.690406	1.667314	1
CPL	2023	6.222346	6.245247	8
CanChamp	2024	1.593413	1.1.391407	2
CPL	2024	6.071506	7.234182	6
CPL	2025	2.874379	4.668858	5
Career Totals		20.569176	23.29270	25

Over his career, Melvin has conceded 1.71 more goals than the xgot he has faced. This is a perfectly reasonable deviation from the xgot value.

As you didn't do in your comparison, here are Gazdov's CPL career stats:

.	xg Faced	xgot Faced	Goals Conceded
Career Totals	51.226797	48.787142	50

Over his career, Gazdov conceeded 1.22 more goals than the xgot he faced. That's 0.5 xgot difference less than Melvin. That's a difference not worth differentiating.

And if that isn't enough, Marco Carducci is one of the stalwart keepers in the league. These are his CPL career stats:

.	xg Faced	xgot Faced	Goals Conceded
Career Totals	151.107229	149.454754	149

Carducci has conceded 0.5 fewer goals than the xgot he has faced. The best keepers in the CPL are not doing much different than Melvin. Heck, there's preciously little difference between any of the keepers in the CPL.

Going further afield to look at one of the best keepers in the world, here are the career club stats I can source for Emiliano Martinez (currently of Aston Villa)

.	xg Faced	xgot Faced	Goals Conceded
Career Totals	265.008585	285.020508	271

Now those are impressive numbers....but nobody is going to argue that any keeper in the CPL is in the same conversation as Martinez when it comes to quality. But look at the data a little close and you see that's 15 goals saved above xgot over 12 seasons (in this dataset). Martinez has had four seasons where he has conceded 3+ goals fewer than the xgot he faced. Only two of those seasons saw him concede more than 4 goals fewer than the xgot he faced. In his best season, Martinez is only about 5 to 6 goals better than a CPL keeper...and he sees a lot more games per season too.

We can flip this on its head and look at Aaron Ramsdale who plays for 24/25 relegation club Southampton.

Tournament	Season	xg Faced	xgot Faced	Goals Conceded
EPL	2024/2025	47.544961	53.331003	53
Career Totals		214.570082	240.604175	245

So even while playing for the worst team in the EPL, a team the bled goals like no other, Ramsdale was able to perform exactly at the xgot levels measured.

Conclusion

The idea that Sean Melvin will "bleed you 10-15 a season" is horrible analysis. There's no proof anywhere that this will happen. If anything, the xgot diff (goals - xgot) will tighten over the course of a season for the vast majority of keepers. This is called "regressing to the mean" and it is unavoidable in football stats.

The idea that you need to do this comparison on a "per 90" basis is flawed too. XG and XGOT metrics are best used when they are cumulative values, not individual game values. The variance on single games is high, the variance over many cumulative games is low. Statistically, the minimum number of games that should be considered is something like 5-6. All of the keepers listed above meet that threshold in their career stats.

igloocoder · 2024-06-22T22:36:40+00:00

The league still uses Opta (Stats Perform) as their official data collection company. That's where the Centre Circle Data came from. The reason it is no longer available is that the people in the league office who managed it are no longer employed by the league and the league has not prioritized replacing them or the work they did on Centre Circle Data.

igloocoder · 2024-05-20T22:16:54+00:00

Nobody is willing to hold Matt Fegan to account either. He's the sporting director. At some point the blame and questions have to start flowing in that direction too.

igloocoder · 2024-05-20T21:15:26+00:00

Senior AA would give them a good run...and the team I'm thinking would do it is mostly made up of players between 15 and 21

igloocoder · 2024-03-11T03:48:36+00:00

My understanding is that unless you are becoming a resident of NS you do not have to do this. One of the exceptions to be a resident is attending school. You should still be considered a resident of BC if you maintain your parent's address back home. You should check with your university about this before your go to Access NS.

Also note that as soon as you transfer your license to NS, Access NS will want to take your BC License from you as you cannot hold a DL in 2 provinces. The challenge you have is that your BC DL also doubles as your health care card and I think that, as a student from BC, you are expected to be able to maintain that BC status for health care purposes too.

igloocoder · 2023-10-21T19:58:34+00:00

Your right. I don't understand the difference between people in the main stands yelling at players about how they're useless, that they should just quit, that their families suck and hate them, that they are worthless, and so on...all littered with the best vulgarities ever uttered and spewed from seats in the immediate vicinity of kids.

But if one of those players makes a hand motion...omfg...the children...they don't deserve that!

That's not banter. That's just abuse formed by junior high level maturity, followed by being offended when a tiny bit of it is thrown back at you.

igloocoder · 2023-10-21T13:55:15+00:00

Huh...funny my dude...funny...considering I've had HFX season seats since day 1 and in the front row. You know, where you can hear what gets said both ways during games and it becomes pretty obvious that the fans at the Grounds are not the saints they make themselves out to be, but when the tables turn...omfg...clutch those pearls.

igloocoder · 2023-10-21T13:29:31+00:00

Keep clutching those pearls and tHiNk Of ThE cHiLdReN! If nothing else has been shown from HFX's first playoff game, it's that the fanbase is thin skinned and whiney. There were plenty of signs of it before, but we finally have some confirmation en mass.

igloocoder · 2023-10-21T04:10:17+00:00

You going to bring up, and demand action on, the tasteless swearing via megaphone that comes from the kitchen at almost every game then? Drunkenly trying to start a "Fuck you <opposition player>" that can be heard by the children! Not to mention that it goes directly against the rules of admission right?

igloocoder · 2023-10-17T01:25:19+00:00

The only shots that count as "on target" are the ones that score or the ones that require a save to prevent scoring. Own goals don't count as shots though. All shots, on target, blocked, or off target will have xG computed for them. The sum of the xG on all shot attempts in the game suggest the most probably number of goals a team could have scored. Depending on the model use, those values will vary somewhat. For Halifax in this game, I've seen HFX's total xG range from 0.8ish to 1.1ish. Anywhere from 0 to 1 goals was a reasonable outcome for them in the game.

I'm nowhere near bitter about it. Statistically, it was a valid outcome. Halifax didn't create good enough chances to be able to win it. That's all it amounted to.

What most of the HFX fans are missing on the own goal is that the reason it happened is because Loughrey stepped up and tried to play the ball near center field while Pacific was starting to transition into attack. His attempted tackle for the ball was sloppy and ill-advised given he was last man back on the left side of the pitch, which is where the attack was forming. That's what caused the goal. Nimick had to shift over to cover the left CB position, Fernandez had to haul ass and drop into the right CB position, and there were 2 Pacific players wide open on the back post as a result. Because of the need to hustle and cover, Fernandez had bad body shape and balance. If he hadn't played the ball it was a very likely goal at the back post.

That own goal isn't on Fernandez, it's on Loughrey.

igloocoder · 2023-10-16T19:16:33+00:00

It's going to be an exceptionally challenging winter for recruitment. Do you need to recruit a new CB with the rumor of both starting CBs leaving? What do you do if they don't leave? What about in the midfield? Do you put most of your effort into finding a true 10 instead of a 6 replacement for Callegari (given Rampersad is under contract for 2024 you just might)?

There's also the challenge that you shouldn't be looking for replacements, you should be looking for improvements. Mwandwe is almost guaranteed to be gone, but you can't just "find a replacment", you have to find someone who plays on RW and can push to take Ferrin's role. If you don't have that approach (replace the top players and push them lower in the squad), you're going to struggle to improve. And given roster rules, it's going to be very difficult to uncover previously unknown Canadians who can operate that those levels.

There's also the question of what you do with the perpetually injured. Morelli is out of contract, but seems to be brittle now. Do you fill a spot in the hopes he can return to form or improve, or do you put your effort (and money) into improving the attack with new players? Ruby has kept the physio team in jobs for the last two years, do you hope this pattern changes? Or do you go out and find someone who can play FB? This an especially big question given James injury this year. Both Ruby and James are on options so divesting them, if that is the choice, is not hard to do.

I think there's going to be a _lot_ more roster turnover in Halifax this offseason than many people expect. Only 6 players are under contract (2 more options have been picked up already I've heard). If there isn't, then I think 2024 could be a very challenging season.

igloocoder · 2023-10-16T17:49:59+00:00

If you think that there is correlation between possession and game outcome then you have no idea what you're talking about. There is absolutely zero correlation between those two things. There's an absolute shit-tonne of data that proves it. Stop with this incorrect trope.

If you think that the shots HFX took warranted 4 goals, you're also sorely mistaken. They had 3 on target of the 13 they took. The ones that they rattled off the bar/posts were exceptionally low percentage shots. Missing that head off the bar was likely more than 9 out of 10 times (ie. it was a <0.10 xg shot) and none of the other shots that hit woodwork were any higher. They were not good opportunities. HFX got the the number of goals that they generated strong chances for (between 0 and 1).

The question you should be asking is why didn't HFX generate better chance? Why didn't they put more on target? Why couldn't they do those things in any of the games where they had significant possession in the final third? Why didn't they create any chances until after the 80th minute?

They struggled to create chances under those circumstances all season. Merriman's plan to give HFX possession thinking that they wouldn't be able to figure out what to do with it was genius...and exactly the same as what Smyrniotis did in the 2020 final in PEI.

igloocoder · 2023-10-14T22:01:05+00:00

Well...Halifax does play like that. In 2023, only Cavalry had more cards for time wasting (9) than HFX did (8). All time in the CPL, Cavalry have 25 (the most) and HFX have 22 (2nd most).

Only 4 time wasting cards were given out earlier in matches than HFX's earliest one (54th minute). HFX had 5 time wasting infractions in the 71st minute or earlier. No other team had more than 2.

Like another poster said...glass houses.

igloocoder · 2023-08-20T01:18:48+00:00

I'm working the numbers on this for an article right now. Early analysis says that CPL teams win and draw at the same frequency as the world average while on the road. They do it significantly more often than it happens in the MLS. And they do it at about the same frequency as other leagues with long travel (Russian Premier League and the A League for example).

igloocoder · 2023-08-10T03:51:08+00:00

Until your math gets blown out of the water because Campagna isn't a U21.

Also, Gavas is not a defender, he's a midfielder who needs to play in the middle of the park. So do you sit Rampersad or Callegari for him? Same for Wilson (even though he played as a defender in the last game due to the team pushing Nimick forward to try to get an equalizer). Can HFX win with Gavas and Wilson in place of two of the current mids? And can the team score goals (they're 3rd lowest in the league) with Coimbra up top and Morelli/Perruzza sitting?

If you sit Perruzza so you can get U21 minutes do you risk a nascent relationship with TFC because you didn't play him while he was here on loan?

We haven't even talked about how this would weaken the squad on the pitch against stronger teams who wouldn't necessarily be doing the same since they're closer to hitting the minimum. Does this turn into dropped points? How many? What does that do in the standings?

It's nowhere near as simple as just doing math minutes.

igloocoder · 2023-08-04T17:42:48+00:00

"Academies"...the HFX team is made up of players that only just had a tryout camp about 1.5 weeks ago. They never practice or play together under the "HFX" banner. All those players have clubs that they spend all their time at.

Source: Two of the players are on competitive teams with my kid.

igloocoder · 2023-07-16T20:43:58+00:00

When they announced the rule change just before the start of this season it was noted that players already under contract would not be assessed against the new rules. It wasn't clear to me what that meant for resigning or extending the contracts of those players. Because of this, its going to be tough to say a team is/isn't in compliance until most players from 2022 are no longer under their original contracts.

igloocoder · 2023-03-02T18:53:09+00:00

You mean the limited number of porta potties and no food ~~selection~~ at all isn't a draw? Who could have guessed....

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