[scrrr]

I think nowadays such analysis plays a big part in sports. For example when Germany's football team beat Argentina in this year's World Cup I couldn't help but think that the German coach knows something the other coach (legendary Diego Maradona) doesn't.

[dpapathanasiou]

"For example when Germany's football team beat Argentina in this year's World Cup I couldn't help but think that the German coach knows something the other coach (legendary Diego Maradona) doesn't."

I agree with you in general, but that's not the best example you could have used there.

Maradona spent most of the tournament boasting about not needing a gameplan, and saying things things like: "Nobody ever told me where to play. So I shouldn't have to tell Messi where to play, either".

[philwelch]

I wonder what Pep Guardiola (Messi's coach at Barcelona) thought about that remark. Messi, like many players[1], has played significantly better for his club than for his country.

[1] The entire England squad, for example.

[spinchange]

I lack specific examples or links, but had heard a few years ago that U.S. pro sports franchises like the Boston Red Sox and New England Patriots, to think of two, use a lot of "Quant" analysis in addition to traditional coaching methods. I'm sure everyone is doing it across pro sports now.

[ybot]

Interestingly enough, Bloomberg has started offering "Quant" tools to MLB teams: http://www.bloombergsports.com/proofferings/

They specialize in providing data and analytics on financial data. Clearly they didn't think it was too much of a leap to go from analyzing securities to analyzing baseball players.

As far as specific links, the Red Sox employ Bill James (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_James), who is a fairly famous statistician, to help them run the team. He invented Sabermetrics, "the analysis of baseball through objective evidence". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabermetrics)

[pchristensen]

The MIT Sloan Sports Conference http://www.sloansportsconference.com/ is a mix of fan/stats/business people discussing numerical analysis of sports.

Bill Simmons (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/simmons/index ) has interviewed his friend Daryl Morey of the Houston Rockets about this.

One interesting point is that there is no "salary cap" for sports statisticians, so rich teams are not restricted about what they spend on numerical analysis. Morey hinted that several (most?) NBA teams spend in the 7-figures on it.

[eru]

Interestingly the German coach was never an extra-ordinary player himself. But he is very well respected as a coach in Germany.