New ECNL Website
- Thread starter VanMan
- Start date
SoCalGirlsSoccer
BRONZE
Definitely not complete yet. They also don't have the two different divisions for Southwest Listed...I assume what I am seeing is Sonora but it could be Mojave...or a mix...I dunno.
futboldad1
PREMIER
both are listed on the same page when on a desktop....mobile app shows each one separate....nowhere is it mixed ....but no doubt ECNL tech not the best
It might be ECNLs attempt at making screen scraper software not work as easy as before. This is probably why there's more info in the ECNL app. (I'm not aware of any app scraper solutions although I'm sure something exists)
The ranking app that everyone likes so much is probably just a website screen scraper that dumps game info into an XLS. Once all the data is in a single database + normalized you can define predictions and sell to parents.
RandomSoccerFan
GOLD
Doubtful. It's just another front end to the same information with a wonky interface. A web designer thought it would be more fun to have a pull-down selection. But all of ECNL scores are still available on the totalglobalsports.com pages. If you look at SR, it shows you the data pages that it's pulling the game data from. Here's an example:
Total Global Sports
Another:
Total Global Sports
These are all hyperlinked right from pages like this:
Total Global Sports
making it pretty straightforward for any gadget to pull in the data at scale. That app does this for hundreds and hundreds of different score locations - the ECNL ones are on the easier end to grab. One example that might be on the other end could be the MLS Next migration to Kitman Labs, where it is as of now still unclear if scores will be available online at all to the public.
I have wondered if your opinion on any of this is colored by the fact that City appears to have pretty frequent issues naming their specific teams, locations, and affiliates, with the impact being any aggregation effort is going to be suboptimal (City SC, City SC San Diego, City SC San Marcos, Southbay, Temecula, Carlsbad, etc.). In SR - that means City SC at the club level means City SC Carlsbad - but also includes City SC San Diego teams, as well as teams that don't call themselves City SC Carlsbad. Similar deal with Temecula. None of it has to be terribly complicated - it just comes down to reasonable consistency in team registration names for leagues and tournaments - which then leads to better information about each individual team and the clubs as a whole. Some clubs are pretty darned good about it (check out MVLA, or Los Gatos), others clearly don't prioritize it (check out the various Rush clubs, or Legends)
But yes - that's essentially all the app is, right? It's the largest collection of recent game data, assigns incoming game data to existing team entities as best it can - creates new team entities if it can't match an existing, then does pattern matching to predict future outcomes based on past outcomes - with pretty astonishing and verifiable accuracy. From what Mark has shared - there have been concerted efforts from day 1 of YSR to make it challenging for his team to collect the data quickly/easily - but there is enough public benefit for each individual team/organization/league to post schedules/scores publicly and electronically - that most issues are pretty straightforward to overcome, though some sites can be more difficult than others to code for.
SoCalGirlsSoccer
BRONZE
I must be doing something wrong then...I only see Sonoran on desktop...is there a drop down im missing for Mojave?
SoCalGirlsSoccer
BRONZE
I can see standings for both but not schedules.
RandomSoccerFan
GOLD
If you can see standings, and you're on the TGS page - just click on your team name in the standings table. Then click on Schedules. It then shows you the full year upcoming schedule for that team.
EDIT: Or just click here: https://public.totalglobalsports.com/public/event/2837/schedules-standings
I'm indifferent to City + how they name their teams.Doubtful. It's just another front end to the same information with a wonky interface. A web designer thought it would be more fun to have a pull-down selection. But all of ECNL scores are still available on the totalglobalsports.com pages. If you look at SR, it shows you the data pages that it's pulling the game data from. Here's an example:
Total Global Sports
public.totalglobalsports.com
Another:
Total Global Sports
public.totalglobalsports.com
These are all hyperlinked right from pages like this:
Total Global Sports
public.totalglobalsports.com
making it pretty straightforward for any gadget to pull in the data at scale. That app does this for hundreds and hundreds of different score locations - the ECNL ones are on the easier end to grab. One example that might be on the other end could be the MLS Next migration to Kitman Labs, where it is as of now still unclear if scores will be available online at all to the public.
I have wondered if your opinion on any of this is colored by the fact that City appears to have pretty frequent issues naming their specific teams, locations, and affiliates, with the impact being any aggregation effort is going to be suboptimal (City SC, City SC San Diego, City SC San Marcos, Southbay, Temecula, Carlsbad, etc.). In SR - that means City SC at the club level means City SC Carlsbad - but also includes City SC San Diego teams, as well as teams that don't call themselves City SC Carlsbad. Similar deal with Temecula. None of it has to be terribly complicated - it just comes down to reasonable consistency in team registration names for leagues and tournaments - which then leads to better information about each individual team and the clubs as a whole. Some clubs are pretty darned good about it (check out MVLA, or Los Gatos), others clearly don't prioritize it (check out the various Rush clubs, or Legends)
But yes - that's essentially all the app is, right? It's the largest collection of recent game data, assigns incoming game data to existing team entities as best it can - creates new team entities if it can't match an existing, then does pattern matching to predict future outcomes based on past outcomes - with pretty astonishing and verifiable accuracy. From what Mark has shared - there have been concerted efforts from day 1 of YSR to make it challenging for his team to collect the data quickly/easily - but there is enough public benefit for each individual team/organization/league to post schedules/scores publicly and electronically - that most issues are pretty straightforward to overcome, though some sites can be more difficult than others to code for.
The reason what you're describing occurs is because City (just like Surf) licenses out their name to different clubs. There's no specific rules for how clubs licensing the City name define team names.
I deal with numbers all day long. I understand predictive analytics + what happens when applied to youth sports. Personally I don't like defining winners and losers this way. I prefer watching games + players + coaches + getting a feel for where they're strong and weak.
Many parents have complete faith in the app + you can tell that they feel XYZ game is a foregone conclusion if the app prediicts it.
If this is truly how you feel why even go watch the games?
RandomSoccerFan
GOLD
I understand why you might feel that way, but I just as strongly feel that you're missing the point and either misunderstanding or intentionally ignoring the benefits. App or no app, data or no data, the same reality is the same reality. The feel of an upcoming game can be predicted to a high degree of accuracy before the game is played. The only difference is either having the knowledge or choosing to cover one's eyes and ignore the available information. It's like trying to intentionally ignore the league standings table or an upcoming opponent's record - while also treating every upcoming game, tournament, scrimmage, exactly the same with the same expectations, same level of urgency, or level of complacency. Some might say they can block all of that out - but I find it somewhat unlikely.
But using that knowledge as a substitute for playing the game itself would be completely pointless - and it's the actual playing of the games that drives the data to allow the knowledge/data to be created and changed over time. It's a silly rhetorical question, but I think you already knew that. It's terrific fun when a game is supposed to be a challenging loss, and instead the team snags a victory. It's not going to happen often - but when it does, it's memorable. Same going the other way - an unexpected loss can lead to some probing questions about what went so wrong against expectations, and what can be learned for the next time.
For individual games, having an idea about the likely outcome can help with roster choices. Does it matter if our primary goalie is sick/injured, is this a good game to call up some kids from 2nd team to get some playing time in a higher bracket, is it OK if we have a smaller number of subs, are all questions that may have different answers if the team is favored to win by 4, tie, or lose by 4.
For tournaments - having an idea about what the brackets might look like, and confirming that our teams have been placed fairly, is probably the strongest indicator about whether the team, the club, and the parents will consider the tournament a positive experience in hindsight. If we know that we've been mis-bracketed - having that discussion with the TD ahead of time is so much more useful than complaining afterwards. This isn't hypothetical - 6 weeks back one of our teams was in this exact situation, realizing that a team of a questionable age group and a rating +5 over every other team was placed in their bracket. 1 email to the TD with this info, and that mismatched team was pulled into a more appropriate bracket (and that team won their bracket, and our team won our bracket, against inarguably better-matched teams).
For season by season decisions, deciding when to move brackets and by how many (Silver/Gold/Premier/NPL/etc.) is something that has been incredibly helpful over the years when augmented with YSR (and now SR). It's one thing for our coaches to have a feel for "yep, they're ready for the next step", but it's another thing entirely to take the current rating and place it side by side with the ratings of the actual teams in the proposed higher brackets. Again, I'm not describing a hypothetical use case - I'm describing what's actually been done successfully over the past few seasons over multiple teams, giving teams (and coaches) confidence to jump a bracket or two successfully, when without that data it's possible they would have stayed pat in their current bracket that they were more comfortable with. And those pre-season predictions for the new brackets have been scarily accurate at the end of the following season - with our teams generally falling right where their initial ratings had foretold.
This past season, in our region, and in our age groups, the ratings data was pretty illuminating - in that a team roughly in the middle of the standings - would be expected to finish in the middle of the standings whether they played NPL, State Premier, or Gold. The swing from top team to bottom team in each, has a wide overlap with the bracket both above and below. Which meant there's no real reason to play down - may as well play up and see the most challenging teams and have the most interesting games - and that's exactly what we're seeing so far in the early days of this season. Potentially surprising footnote - the NPL bracket in this region/age has a higher average rating than the equivalent ECNL bracket, and the top 2 NPL teams would both be expected to win the ECNL bracket outright. But MLS Next quickly overtakes both within the next age bracket, as most would expect (and would be right).
The app takes past performance + uses that to predict future results.
Here's where it breaks down. Say you know from watching games that the way a team is playing isn't going to work against better teams? Is this baked into the prediction? What if a team is playing very well but it's obvious the current players are maxed out + their competition is not even close to maxing out? What if a coach or key player left the team. Maybe certain teams do well locally but don't travel well? Etc etc etc.
I know that over time the numbers will reflect how teams address adversity. But, I want better info sooner. Specifically the type of info that's not reflected in numbers by themselves. This is why I prefer watching teams + defining an opinion based on what I see vs past results.
Just an FYI when the app predicts something like +5 for a certain team I do think there's margional value in not pairing up these kind of teams. Unfortunately this limits crazy upsets + worse teams won't get to understand how good really good teams actually are. Sometimes even occasional blowouts can have value.
RandomSoccerFan
GOLD
Of course it's more enjoyable to watch games than watch screens, and to define individual opinions based on all the inside information available. It's just delusional if you think that the inside information you described means you'd be expected to have superior predictions over time, covering more than 1 or 2 teams at most. It's the similar type of overconfidence of those who swear that they can reliably find a faster shortcut than google maps or apple maps because they've driven the area for decades and aren't going to be beat by a gosh-darned computer box. For better or worse - youth soccer turns out to be incredibly predictable, even if that realization feels icky or dehumanizing.
There's zero advantage in having tournaments with terribly mismatched teams. It's indicative of poor quality tournament directors, a less-attractive tournament not having enough applicants, or both. Of course there are still going to be blow-outs from time to time. But when going in there's a 95% chance of a blow-out - there's no reality where that can be expected to be a better option than a fairer pairing for anyone involved - the winners/losers/clubs/parents/refs/spectators.
I think it's delusional to use previous results alone to say with 100% confidence XYZ will happen in the future. Youth sports change all the time results from 1 month ago, sometimes even 1 week ago can be meaningless.
Regarding blowouts I think they're valuable as long as it's not happening all the time. Sometimes good teams need a confidence boost. Conversely sometimes poor teams need to experience what good teams actually play like this way they have an idea of how they need to improve if they want to get better.
What I specifically don't like about the app is the parents and players shopping for wins use it as a way to figure out where to play. As with blowouts sometimes being on a poor team helps players to appreciate when they play on a better team.
The ECNL app predicts games? I'm so confused.
RandomSoccerFan
GOLD
If this is actually true:
you'd realize that this:
is a completely inaccurate and intentional misunderstanding of what you're reading to pose a strawman argument. You're not debating in good faith, and I'm not sure you ever were. Nobody is claiming that with 100% confidence that they can predict the future. Math is telling you, and proving it to you, that it can in fact be quite accurate. Either you deal with numbers and you understand this, or you're full of crap and you don't. I give you the benefit of doubt and believe it's the former and just stubbornness, but you-do-you.
You're in luck - that's called league games. Almost all leagues are going to have each team play every other team in league, from the strongest to the most embarrassingly level of bad. Everyone has a good chance of a few blowouts per season - it's just if the team's on the bottom end, it's pretty clear which way the score will point. Investing the time and money for travel tournaments to find out they are structured in a way to make any of the games more useless than they could be should be frustrating to coaches, teams, and all others involved who know that there could be a better outcome for all.
If you think teams are shopping for easy wins by intentionally choosing weaker teams to play - I'm on board. Those teams suck. It's the same hatred for teams going to tournaments and intentionally playing down for medals. But the existence and use of the app is neither the cause nor the effect of this. Having more information about your own team's expectations versus an opponent's expectations can support fairer and more worthwhile competition.
Carlsbad7 posed that the changes in the ECNL web/app interface were a clumsy attempt to make it harder for SR to see the results.
you'd realize that this:
is a completely inaccurate and intentional misunderstanding of what you're reading to pose a strawman argument. You're not debating in good faith, and I'm not sure you ever were. Nobody is claiming that with 100% confidence that they can predict the future. Math is telling you, and proving it to you, that it can in fact be quite accurate. Either you deal with numbers and you understand this, or you're full of crap and you don't. I give you the benefit of doubt and believe it's the former and just stubbornness, but you-do-you.
You're in luck - that's called league games. Almost all leagues are going to have each team play every other team in league, from the strongest to the most embarrassingly level of bad. Everyone has a good chance of a few blowouts per season - it's just if the team's on the bottom end, it's pretty clear which way the score will point. Investing the time and money for travel tournaments to find out they are structured in a way to make any of the games more useless than they could be should be frustrating to coaches, teams, and all others involved who know that there could be a better outcome for all.
If you think teams are shopping for easy wins by intentionally choosing weaker teams to play - I'm on board. Those teams suck. It's the same hatred for teams going to tournaments and intentionally playing down for medals. But the existence and use of the app is neither the cause nor the effect of this. Having more information about your own team's expectations versus an opponent's expectations can support fairer and more worthwhile competition.
Carlsbad7 posed that the changes in the ECNL web/app interface were a clumsy attempt to make it harder for SR to see the results.
You win have fun with your numbers
RandomSoccerFan
GOLD
SoCalGirlsSoccer
BRONZE
This was super helpful btw, exactly like before the website update.