In football, it’s important to have a direction to look for. Especially if you want to understand the game deeper than it’s ever done before. Due to this need, 2010s have seen the rise of “big data” in this sport; usually those were used in major American leagues (especially basketball and baseball), but now football seems to have borrowed this attitude.
Terms like “Expected goals” and “heatmap” are now common knowledge even among more common fans, not employed in the stats world. And that’s useful, because stats are another tool to read the reality of the match you enjoyed through a proper, although not definitive, instrument. And J. League seems to have started on catching up to this need… at least among his base.
I’d like to give a shout for Football Lab, whose Top XI at the end of the season have super-useful and a site that I’ve been seeing for the last 3-4 years despite the language barrier. In the last Summer, though, a new player appeared: J. League Stats, who can be followed on Twitter at @J1tokei. His stats-related tweets are terrific and they give me a new tool to understand today’s J. League.
Since I’ve become super-curious towards stats and the process behind them, I had the amazing opportunity of talking to him, in order to understand how his account gained traction among hardcore J. League fans after just two months of existence.
1. Where are you from and why exactly you fell in love with J. League?
I’m from Singapore! The J. League has always been a point of interest for me being a football fan from Asia. I believe I speak for many when I say Japanese football is seen as one of, if not the best in the continent in terms of quality and infrastructure.
Back in the early late 2000s and early 2010s, the J. League used to be a lot more accessible here in Singapore, with big TV channels such as FOX Sports broadcasting matches regularly. At the time, I was intrigued by the play styles of teams such as Reysol and Antlers, so I started following matches regularly. Due to a lack of interest, the coverage over here didn’t last long and let’s just say I had to get a little creative with how I went about watching games.
2. J. League isn’t right now among the top leagues of the world, but statistical approach could be applied even to other leagues besides the main ones. Why you decided to do that for J. League?
Like I said earlier, the coverage of the J. League in Singapore has been inconsistent over the years. To better acquaint myself with past seasons and lesser-known teams and players, I had to dig deep to find information and stats. Even now, the J. League is pretty far behind the bigger European leagues in terms of statistical coverage. But it’s definitely come a long way in terms of what you can find (duels won, successful take-ons etc.); I feel it’s important to archive and encourage the use of in-depth stats in a growing league with so much quality, talent and potential.
You see it in the Premier League and La Liga, fans appreciate players for the finer things that go unnoticed and get lost in the chaos of a 90 minutes-match. I’d love to see that in the J. League, especially with the amount of underrated talent that the J. League has lying around. A deeper understanding and development of niche areas of interest from fans will, in some way, contribute to the betterment of the league and community ultimately.
3. You signed to Twitter just in July of 2019. Why you were pushed to do that? And how it was the reception you felt in these two months?
To be honest, timing of that was circumstantial! I had been meaning to set up an account for a while now and ideally I could’ve done that before the season started… but here we are.
Twitter is undoubtedly the best platform for football discussion due to the convenience and malleability of its content. I’d long been aware of “J. League Twitter” and its existence as a growing community. I thought an account dedicated to the statistical side of the game would be a fresh addition as there weren’t and still aren’t many around. But mainly, it exists as a way for me to archive my thoughts and engage in discussion and it’s been brilliant in that regard so far.
In these two months, the reception I’ve gotten has been nothing short of wonderful. The support I’ve received from fans, journalists and writers has been very heart-warming. The reception to this style of statistical tweeting and discussion has been really good and interacting with all of these knowledgeable and opinionated users has only served to improve my own understanding of this facet of football.
4. Is it possible to discover something different through stats about a player? Many argue about the inability of stats of framing football in a precise way, even though – I’d add by my POV – that’s probably an impossible task.
Ironically, I’m of the opinion that statistics alone can never truly serve as an entirely accurate measurement of a player or match. Certain things – like spatial awareness and other situational attributes – just can’t be quantified.
What I think is that statistics should be used in conjunction with your own personal twist; your understanding of players and football as a whole. It should never quite be absolute. Statistics are fantastic in portraying how good a player is at certain things – passing accuracy, crossing accuracy and dribbling ability for example. No matter how you slice these things, a player having relatively good numbers in one or more of these areas has usually had a fairly good game. But using them in the right context is of utmost importance.
Therefore, to answer your question, yes they can be used to discover new things about a player you otherwise wouldn’t have known – given that you’ve factored in a reasonable understanding of his/her play style. A little example would be this one: a player that doesn’t make as many tackles as another isn’t necessarily less proficient in them. They could simply just be more conservative in the way that they defend. Those are the lines one should be thinking along, in my opinion at least.
5. Is there a player that you found yourself loving/admiring more after having discovered certain stats?
Absolutely. So many, in fact. This is usually dependent on their positions. Certain defenders who win a high percentage of their duels and boast a high number of passes completed to high accuracies are a personal favourite of mine. Ayumu Seko, for example.
Funnily enough though, I’ve also come to appreciate players whose stats aren’t necessarily impressive as a whole but display certain qualities that are a little harder to quantify. Kawasaki Frontale’s Ao Tanaka is the perfect example of that. When you look at his stats, you instantly get that he’s a pretty solid passer who is a little above average in most categories – nothing too extravagant.
But when you watch him play over the course of a couple of games, you start to see his spatial awareness, alertness and game reading ability come to the fore. He epitomises what you can’t capture with just numbers alone, particularly in the position that he plays in. I can’t stress what a big fan I am of him and I highly recommend keeping an eye on the 20-year-old.
6. Is there a J. League-related dream you’d like to pursue through your analytics?
I do have aspirations of covering Asian football in a more professional capacity and I’d love to take this further. But as of now I’m pretty satisfied with putting out content that my followers enjoy or simply find interesting. I’d definitely love to see a lot more interest in football statistics in Asia as a whole and I think there’s vast potential for it given the technological knowhow and talent in the continent.
This is nothing short of satisfactory. In the narration of J. League, I hope he’ll be a part of that. Meanwhile, let’s enjoy the company of stats and hope that the league will soon catch-up with this tool (alongside others). It’s gonna be a long ride, but together it may get shorter than we thought.
