The Double Pivot: Soccer analysis, analytics, and commentary

Latest Episodes:

What Remains of the Premier League Jul 09, 2020

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Has the top five race ended? Has the relegation chase ended? We break down Leicester-Arsenal and look at the teams remaining in contention for the top five and there's not a lot left here. At the bottom things remain more in doubt, but the chances we're talking Europa places in a week are pretty high.

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How Liverpool Won the Title Jul 01, 2020

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It's been inevitable for a while, but it was certainly not inevitable 12 months ago and even less so six years ago. How did Liverpool build a team to win a Champions League and Premier League trophy in back to back seasons? How do we tell this story, and how do we parse out the different causes, from business development to analytics to coaching and tactics to good fortune. It's an unquestionable analytics success story, and also one that takes on a different shape from many of those we're used to in American sports.

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Premier League Return: Part 1 Jun 19, 2020

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We walk through the whole Premier League team by team. And there's a lot of football coming and we want to help you out, so for each team we make the case that you shouldn't watch them. It gets harder as we go along.

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Timo Werner pod Jun 10, 2020

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He's going to Chelsea! Probably! But the podcast works better if we treat it as settled fact!
We break down what kind of player Werner is, how he might fit on this Chelsea side and within Lampard's style, and what this transfer indicates about the state of the football economy.
https://thecorrespondent.com/517/three-reasons-the-football-season-is-starting-again-money-money-money/4240227200-05001e50

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The Title Race That Was May 29, 2020

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We break down Bayern's victory over Dortmund and the effective end of the title race in the Bundesliga. And we discuss the new substition rules in soccer, how they're being used, and what we'd like to see from managers with this new resource.

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Bundesliga! Soccer! Games! May 20, 2020

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Time to talk about actual soccer games with actual soccer statistics. The Bundesliga is back and Dortmund and Bayern won and we spend a lot of time talking about Gladbach and Leverkusen's underlying statistics because of course we do.

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Sports, Education and Incarceration with Clint Smith Apr 30, 2020

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Caley is joined by poet, scholar, activist and wikipedia-confirmed Arsenal fan Clint Smith (@clintsmithiii) to talk about why he loves and misses sports (even Arsenal!), and about his academic work in the study of education and the way people who have been incarcerated make meaning through education.

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Newcastle's New Ownership Apr 23, 2020

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The Public Investment Fund of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has nearly completed its purchase of Newcastle United Football Club. We talk about what this means. Another ownership group in the Premier League driven not by a need to make profits but by a drive for soft power, sportwashing a reputation sullied by war crimes, murder and oppression. What will that mean for Newcastle and the Premier League?
George Caulkin's report in The Athletic: https://theathletic.com/1759832/2020/04/21/newcastle-takeover-bruce-charnley-transfers/

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Will soccer restart anytime soon? Apr 14, 2020

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We've reached the point of the pandemic where sports leagues around the world are scrambling to find ways to safely return to action. The Bundesliga is poised to make the first attempt in the soccer world, and the Two Mikes size up the odds against the Germans (and really, everyone else). Then they talk loosely about generational gaps and leaps before turning to lobsters and chocolate tortas (but not together, that would be gross).

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Spurs and Surveys with Brian Schaffner Apr 10, 2020

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Mike Goodman is joined by political scientist and Tottenham fan Brian Schaffner to go back over the season for Tottenham, because that's fun, and then they talk about the use of analytics in another field entirely, with Schaffner's political science / public opinion research.

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