Soccer analysis, analytics, and commentary with hosts Mike Goodman and Michael Caley
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The US Men's National Team has a new coach. He's a good one. We look back on the trajectory of Pochettino's career, his tactical ideas, and what it might mean for the USMNT. Support the Show.By Mike Goodman and Michael Caley
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The one with Chelsea. Also Everton and Fulham and the previews of the rest of the league will be available to subscribers on the Patreon. Support the Show.By Mike Goodman and Michael Caley
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All 20 teams in the Premier League and it starts here. We're going in alphabetical order and talking about how it could go right and how it could go wrong for AFC Bournemouth, Arsenal, Aston Villa, Brentford and Brighton. Support the Show.
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Victor Osimhen and the Summer That Isn't Happening
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39:27
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We keep waiting for the summer transfer window to shake out and it keeps not. The best example of this is how Victor Osimhen is not only still a Napoli player but does not seem to be particularly close to becoming a player on another big team. We have some theories about what's slammed the breaks on the transfers. Support the Show.…
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A reasonably comprehensive 2-1 Spain victory ends the Euros. We break down how Spain got it done and why England never managed to click into gear the whole tournament. And we look to future for the top European sides, what questions do we have heading into the next World Cup for England, Spain, Germany and France? Support the Show.…
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Well those were certainly four football matches. Another discussion of what's wrong with England, why the Netherlands struggled with Turkiye and what it might mean for the semifinal, and then there's the other semifinal! Why Portugal-France was so bad, an elegy for Portugal's wasted tournament, the big Mbappe question, how Spain barely survived, wh…
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The Copa America is over for the USMNT after just three matches. It was pretty dumb. We consider what we learned, if anything, from this tournament and what the US should do now with limited competitive matches before 2026. And some bonus Uruguay and Italy takes. Support the Show.By Mike Goodman and Michael Caley
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Double Pivot Picks the Euros, Part I: Weak Side Bracket
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37:15
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England and a number of other countries. What's wrong with England and why they're still the favorites, some depressive Italy/Switzerland takes, Netherlands pretty good, and accountability for our Lawnball picks. Support the Show.
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The favorites mostly keep winning, but all the different ways they're winning are worth some discussion. England, Italy, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, and Switzerland, a lot to whip through! Support the Show.
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Euros Preview Blowout (with Grace Robertson): Part I
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32:46
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We've got a full Euros preview for you in three parts. Part 1 covering groups A and B is right here with takes on the highly competitive Group B of Spain, Italy and Croatia, on the enigma that is Germany and Nagelmann's plan to make them even weirder, and I guess Switzerland is there too. You can read Grace's newsletter at graceonfootball.com. Supp…
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Worst Contracts of the Premier League Draft, Part I
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38:50
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The double-correspondent triple-podcast blowout draft commences. We are joined by Salacious Gossip Correspondent Joel Wertheimer (@wertwhile) and Financial Shenanigans Correspondent Skanda Amarnath (@irvingswisher) to draft the very worst contracts in the Premier League. Support the Show.By Mike Goodman and Michael Caley
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Barcelona, Juventus, Bayern and Chelsea appear to have lined up their managers. It's not exactly what we expected. Some takes on how the managerial market has changed in the last few years as well as our skepticism about these choices for most of the clubs involved. Support the Show.By Mike Goodman and Michael Caley
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Fullbacks and the Rise of Five Guys Tactics
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37:13
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We talk briefly about the Champions League final and then take a question from the discord about fullback / wingback transfers which segues into a longer discussion about trends in buildup structure and pressing in top level football and the diverse expectations of wide defenders in these systems. Support the Show.…
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A mailbag question on what the team of the season is, excluding players on the richest clubs, prompts a discussion of what "non big six" should mean anyhow, and then we get moving on talking about some great striker seasons. Support the Show.By Mike Goodman and Michael Caley
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Arne Slot and the state of Liverpool with Grace Robertson
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41:44
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We are joined by Grace Robertson of www.graceonfootball.com to discuss Liverpool, who have chosen a manager. What do we know about Arne Slot, what's intriguing and what's worrying, and how do we think Liverpool are approaching the current transition? Support the Show.By Mike Goodman and Michael Caley
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We've been doing our Champions League match breakdowns for subscribers, and this week it's the free podcast. Pretty good match! Support the Show.By Mike Goodman and Michael Caley
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A lot is happening right now in the administration of the game of football. There's a proposal for a Premier League salary cap, and we discuss what exactly this means, why it's so very different from PSR, and whether it stands any chance of succeeding. And there's the government regulator, which we have both become convinced will not happen in the …
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In Which We Refuse To Construct Narratives
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28:56
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A big weekend in the title race, Liverpool and then Arsenal lost winnable home matches in succession and it was highly dramatic, but it seems far from obvious to us that we learned much from the drama. Support the Show.
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The club is in an odd spot. They're at risk of relegation, and worse, relegation would probably be a death sentence for Everton Football Club as an operation. But they're also pretty good? With some valuable assets to sell? And a good manager? If it weren't for everything else... So we discuss how we would approach the problem of running Everton. S…
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We take questions from the mailbag on how we watch games, on Jeremy Doku and Brennan Johnson, and then we end up building an entire theory of the intersection of player development and modern tactics in the development of really fast guy wingers. Support the Show.By Mike Goodman and Michael Caley
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Part Two of our conversation with official Double Pivot Financial Shenanigans Correspondent Skanda Amarnath (@irvingswisher). And while there are a lot of important details, there's a simple takeaway. Chelsea's PSR crunch is significantly worse than has been generally reported. Support the Show.
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There has been a lot of news about the Premier League's PSR with the Everton points deduction, reports of violations at Nottingham Forest, and all the stories about how clubs are seeking to get into compliance with these regulations. But we think the actual news here has not been well explained in much football media. So we called in an actual fina…
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A little check-in on the ol' title race. Support the Show.By Mike Goodman and Michael Caley
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We finally have the guest who can help us do the Barcelona finance pod we needed. Jon Sindreu of the Wall Street Journal (@jonsindreu) helps explain the books, the league rules, the levers, and even what the heck Barca Vision is. Plus we talk about the Barcelona football team a little bit even. Support the Show.…
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Solidly beaten by Leverkusen in the top of the table clash at the weekend and then a shocking loss away to Lazio in the first leg of their Champions League knockout. So what's wrong? And separately, how impressive were Leverkusen? Support the Show.
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Big Matches in Germany, Spain and the Champions League
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The Champions League will kick back off in a week, and we take a look through the top teams remaining and whether anything has changed since we last considered them. And at the same time, two of these teams are playing potentially title-deciding six pointers (Bayern against Bayer Leverkusen, Real Madrid against Girona) and we preview those matches …
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It's another Trivote episode as Grace from the Grace on Football newsletter joins us to discuss Klopp leaving Liverpool, how we expect the search to proceed from here, and why this situation resembles the period leading to Brendan Rodgers' hiring. We've also got Goodman and Grace taking on the question of Thomas Frank. Subscribe for Grace's takes a…
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We take your questions on Andre Onana and Mark Flekken, goalkeeper stats, why financial regulation has come so late to European soccer, and expected goals modeling. And because the questions came from the Double Pivot discord, many of the questions have already been answered so we also discuss some answers. Support the Show.…
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Jordan Henderson has found his way out of the Saudi Pro League and Karim Benzema is hunkered down in Mauritius searching for his own escape. What's gone wrong with the Saudi Pro League? And how is it implicated in much larger economic and geopolitical dynamics and the broad political outlook of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? Support the Show.…
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The Future of Manchester United (with Grace Robertson)
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47:57
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There is not much hopeful that can be said about the present Manchester United side. But the club is still massively wealthy, a nearly unparalleled cash generator, and they have a new part-owner in Jim Ratcliffe who will now control football operations. What do we think is coming next for United? Subscribe to Grace's newsletter: https://www.graceon…
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The big bets of Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali on their new and innovative methods of running a football team have been tested by another half-season of Premier League football. Where do they stand? What do we think they should do in the January window? Support the Show.By Mike Goodman and Michael Caley
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For the holiday, an unlocked premium episode on the European Court of Justice, the Super League, and the future of the business of European soccer. Support the Show.By Mike Goodman and Michael Caley
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Premier League Title Race and Liverpool - United
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36:53
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City keep dropping points. Liverpool also dropped points against United in one of the most tactically bizarre matches of the season. Arsenal did not drop points. But now they're both ahead of City, and we take a look at the three teams most likely to win the Premier League. Support the Show.By Mike Goodman and Michael Caley
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The launch of fbref.com has changed public soccer analytics, and we sat down to interview Sean Forman, the president of Sports Reference, about the website, how it came to be, what he learned about soccer analytics from building it, and about their new Stathead feature (stathead.com). Support the Show.…
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Thomas Frank and the Path to a Big Managerial Job These Days
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39:06
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The Premier League is holding serve so we're talking about a more general subject. Where do you go if you want to progress up the table as a manager? Thomas Frank has done an excellent job at Brentford, but exactly where does he go next and what is likely to be open to him? Why and how has the managerial market changed in the past decade? Support t…
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Just How Bad Is the Bottom of the Premier League Table?
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40:43
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The relegation race, such as it is, is defined by the historic weakness of the promoted teams and the 10-point deduction taken by Everton. We put the weakness of Sheffield United, Luton Town and Burnley in recent historical context and talk about how we remain relatively unconcerned about Fulham, Bournemouth and even Everton despite those teams bei…
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777 Partners and Everton with Liz Hoffman
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36:23
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We are joined by Semafor's Liz Hoffman, who has broken all the big 777 Partners news in the last week, to talk about what she discovered, what her business and finance reporting means for Everton Football Club and what we still have to learn. Read Liz's reporting (and sign up for her newsletter) here: https://www.semafor.com/newsletter/11/15/2023/7…
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Shady Cypriot Banking and Chelsea Football Club
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40:54
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Roman Abramovich hasn't been owner of Chelsea for a while but he's back in the news with a big leak of documents from Cypriot banks where he did his shady banking. We take stock of what these stories actually mean, what they tell us about how oligarch football team ownership functioned, and whether there will be any consequences for Chelsea. On the…
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Everton, Brentford, Arsenal, United, Bournemouth, West Ham, Brighton, Liverpool and more. Support the Show.By Mike Goodman and Michael Caley
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The Derby gives us the opportunity to do the United pod that's been needed. An impressive win for City (who attacked!) but the real story coming out of it is how bad United were and how fully in line with their performance this season that is. Why is it so bad and can it get better? Support the Show.…
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He Can't Keep Getting Away With This: The Newcastle Story
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40:28
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Their numbers are so good. Drill down a little and their numbers are so weird. And this was true last season too except they were weird in a completely different way! What are we to make of this? Support the Show.By Mike Goodman and Michael Caley
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The Double Pivot Discord Fixes Football: Part I
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We asked for your galaxy-brain ideas to fix the game of football and you delivered. We discuss proposals to fix video review and the offside rule, as well as the multi-ref system. Support the Show.
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The best team in the world lost again. Does it mean anything? We talk about how City and Arsenal approach their weekend clash, what we can glean from the data about City's attack not quite clicking, and how we think it could get fixed. Support the Show.By Mike Goodman and Michael Caley
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They got a big call wrong in an unusually straightforward way in Spurs - Liverpool. So what's to be done? We talk about what this means about refereeing and VAR, the prospects for positive change and the profound structural limits on organizing toward it. Support the Show.
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Spurs and Arsenal played to a more or less fair draw, but given our priors this leads to different kinds of questions about Spurs and Arsenal. Why isn't Arsenal's attack quite clicking? Can Spurs keep taking these risks in possession? And we talk about the tactics of the game and stuff. Support the Show.…
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Schedule Adjustments and the Premier League
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42:52
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Caley did an analytics. Talking about Chelsea, Newcastle, Brentford, Brighton, Forest and the bottom of the PL table in terms of their schedule-adjusted numbers. And stick around for the appendices. For reference, Caley's xG table: https://twitter.com/MC_of_A/status/1703908497543356705 Support the Show.…
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There's some interesting stuff going on under the hood at a few Premier League teams. Have Crystal Palace's young attackers taken the leap? Can Man City really be this conservative? Have you seen Brentford's xG difference? And is Ange Postecoglu magic? Support the Show.
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Looking back on the window that was. How PSG ended up doing reasonable business, the disaster at Fulham, and all the maybe / maybe not business at the top of the Premier League including Liverpool. Arsenal, United and Spurs. Support the Show.By Mike Goodman and Michael Caley
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It's just three weeks in and there are too many takes about the Premier League. We walk through most of the top teams in the Premier League, look at some numbers, and consider whether there's anything here to be learned just yet. Support the Show.By Mike Goodman and Michael Caley
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We're only two matches into the Premier League season but it's already clear that the new midfield/fullback tactics are creating some wild, Bundesliga-esque matches. What's going on, and is this why midfielders have gotten so incredibly expensive? Support the Show.By Mike Goodman and Michael Caley
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