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Eliot McKinley

@eliotmckinley.com

Soccer nerdery at American Soccer Analysis and (occasionally) Massive Report. Throw-in aficionado. he/him eliotmckinley.com

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Latest posts by Eliot McKinley @eliotmckinley.com

Is Celantano moving in the summer? Seems to be the only way this makes sense.

05.03.2026 16:40 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

And this assumes shootouts did not happen.

05.03.2026 16:17 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Adding in all MLS games, 2026 has the highest home advantage to start a season - just edging out 1997 and 2000.

05.03.2026 16:08 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

I pulled some data via @americansocceranalysis.com's {itscalledsoccer} and while home advantage has never started out so high in an MLS season since 2013, it is not quite the highest ever (only 98.41 percentile).

I suspect this is an aberration and it will bounce around just like it always has.

05.03.2026 15:37 πŸ‘ 23 πŸ” 6 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 1
Atlanta United could get worse

Atlanta United could get worse

02.03.2026 18:35 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
A graph showing what percent of 2025 minutes are returning in 2026 for each team in the NWSL. Seattle Reign has the most, with 90.5%, and North Carolina Courage has the least, with only 58.8% of 2025 minutes returning. The league average is around 75%.

A graph showing what percent of 2025 minutes are returning in 2026 for each team in the NWSL. Seattle Reign has the most, with 90.5%, and North Carolina Courage has the least, with only 58.8% of 2025 minutes returning. The league average is around 75%.

With only two weeks left before the 2026 NWSL season kicks off, check out which teams will look most similar to and which teams will look most different from their 2025 counterparts!

Returning minutes graph for @americansocceranalysis.com.

27.02.2026 16:54 πŸ‘ 12 πŸ” 4 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
2026 MLS Season Previews β€” American Soccer Analysis β€” American Soccer Analysis

If you want to catch up, you can find all the previews here

www.americansocceranalysis.com/home/categor...

20.02.2026 19:35 πŸ‘ 10 πŸ” 5 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 3

It's actually the half season loan of Ayo Akinola for a half season spot.

20.02.2026 18:28 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

While there could be a few more changes, this incorporates all the recent moves (Salloi, RBW, Dorsey, Carmona, Elie).

This season has the highest roster turnover since I started tracking this prior to the 2019 season, but there are no statistically significant differences in any of the seasons.

19.02.2026 16:46 πŸ‘ 26 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 3
Truck with a "Fuck Andy Beshear" decal on the back window

Truck with a "Fuck Andy Beshear" decal on the back window

I saw this truck in Nashville in June 2020. Based on that, I assumed that Beshear must have been doing a good job with Covid.

18.02.2026 16:02 πŸ‘ 7 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

It was from a campaign video. The image file I have was created on July 1 2035 so probably sometime around then.

18.02.2026 12:12 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Zohran: Just take a look at this graph

Zohran: Just take a look at this graph

Still haven't found a use for this, but it is a great template.

17.02.2026 23:50 πŸ‘ 28 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 9

Dema Kovalenko!

17.02.2026 17:39 πŸ‘ 4 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 0

Since I wrote this @michaelarace1.bsky.social interviewed with Henrik RydstrΓΆm where he answered:
- #Crew96 will probably play 3 CBs because that's what the team knows- but may go to back 4
- Zawadzki is CB for now
- Habroune can play as AM, 8, or 6

creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/...

17.02.2026 15:57 πŸ‘ 15 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 2
Post image

@akeaswaran.me made this neat graph of a quick strength of schedule model. Really interesting to see how relative difficulty between the front and back parts of the season may drive narratives. Neville might find his seat pretty hot, while Varas is my pick for COTY winner w/ a likely hot start.

17.02.2026 00:10 πŸ‘ 64 πŸ” 18 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 7

I’ve written some articles that took months of research and writing on nitty gritty soccer analytics topics. But nothing has ever come close to being as popular as my transformer-based QSMNT tweet generator shitpost from back before ChatGPT was a thing. www.americansocceranalysis.com/home/2022/6/...

15.02.2026 14:13 πŸ‘ 30 πŸ” 3 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 1
A big ass truck

A big ass truck

A big ass truck that hates Andy Beshear

A big ass truck that hates Andy Beshear

The British mind cannot comprehend.

12.02.2026 19:49 πŸ‘ 10 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
a group of young men are standing in a park and dancing . Alt: damn, paul
11.02.2026 18:58 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

You'd think that hating soccer would disqualify someone from running Major League Soccer. Given their actions it appears that not only it doesn't, but it is a qualification for getting the job.

11.02.2026 18:12 πŸ‘ 37 πŸ” 3 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 1

I do hate that Seattle invented the MLS fandom tSNE neighbor cluster.

09.02.2026 12:57 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Post image

That said, I also love the neighbors of the American Soccer Community.

09.02.2026 12:42 πŸ‘ 9 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0

The thing with tSNE dimensionality reduction is that it preserves local structure in the data (dots in a cluster are close to each other in high D), but global structure are not (the larger cluster positions don’t really mean anything).

More modern dimensionality reduction techniques try to fix.

09.02.2026 12:36 πŸ‘ 7 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Fancy Stats commissioned a bunch of articles about the 2018 World Cup from American Soccer Analysis writers.

I will not apologize for any contribution I have made to the shift from open play to set piece scoring.

www.washingtonpost.com/news/fancy-s...

04.02.2026 16:30 πŸ‘ 11 πŸ” 3 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
ASA Show - Arman Kafai Recaps ASI Conference and MLS Roster Shenanigans Podcast Episode Β· American Soccer Analysis Β· 02/04/2026 Β· 1h 17m

Pod drop: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a...

We talked to @armankafai.bsky.social about the ASI Summit and some of the top tier research going on there. Then we got weird on MLS roster rules.

Available wherever you get pods.

04.02.2026 14:20 πŸ‘ 10 πŸ” 4 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Engel, Kamara, Kubo, Orellano, and Yedlin are the big ones. I did miss that Powell is coming back so it will increase a bit once I fix that.

30.01.2026 16:19 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Now updated for some errors and recent moves.

Orlando with a big drop with Alex Freeman and Luis Muriel departing.

Seattle at the top after I corrected for the re-signing of Stefan Frei.

30.01.2026 15:51 πŸ‘ 11 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 1
Seattle fixed

Seattle fixed

Good catch - I had him not retuning when his contract expired and didn't update after he returned.

26.01.2026 16:30 πŸ‘ 9 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 2
Returning minutes don't matter

Returning minutes don't matter

I still need to update this for last season, but there isn't really a correlation between returning minutes and any real or expected results.

26.01.2026 16:17 πŸ‘ 7 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

I do have that and will do a comparison before the season starts. But things don't seem too different.

26.01.2026 16:13 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

With less than a month until the 2026 MLS season starts, rosters are getting finalized.

Chicago, Austin, Columbus, and LAFC are largely running things back.

Toronto FC finally decided to rebuild after years of bad results, returning fewer than 50% of minutes from 2025.

26.01.2026 16:12 πŸ‘ 31 πŸ” 6 πŸ’¬ 6 πŸ“Œ 4