"We Had a Chance to Win" - Every Coach in History

Crew Head Coach (and Sporting Director, because it seems we must say that) Gregg Berhalter recently stated something of the curious kind that Mr. Adam Jardy rightly and keenly picked up on in his "Covering the Crew" blog over at Dispatch.com.

“There are very few games – actually I can’t think of one game where we didn’t have a chance to win the game,” Berhalter said after Monday’s training session at the Crew’s facility in Obetz.

Not sure if Berhalter is a mad genius or more just a thinker of a man with recording device in front of him. There's probably only a few people that have actually watched each Crew match this year and fewer still that know enough about the sport to say, "hey dude, yer wrong"

Looking at it that way, he's a mad genius.

For me, the Jury is deliberating on the the genius part, but what is undeniable to me is the Berhalter the Thinker side of things. Has the Crew been in most games this year? Yeah, okay. Sure they have. But you could also say that about Robert Warzycha coached teams the past few years as well.

Did you know that only three teams have lost more than half their games by more than one goal this year? I guess now that I write that, it seems pretty abstract. Even still. That'd be New England, Chivas USA and the godawful Houston Dynamo. Everyone else keeps it pretty close (which is the point of bringing up the abstract).

Major League Soccer is designed to do just this, so no real surprises here. Does make it boring as shit though. This is something I've thought a lot about over the past few years. Do I really want things to be close every year? Do I want a Warzycha and McCullers to have a chance each year? For you NFL fans... do you want a Mangini or Shurmur with a shot each year? How about those Cavs fans out there and Mike Brown. Byron Scott? Are you willing to look past and accept failure because the happen to be coaching in the city you happen to live in?

It becomes more of an philosophical type question if you continue down this path. Do YOU - as a person whose identity is so wrapped up in city - want to believe you have a chance to win a championship year in and year out no matter the incompetence or do you want to see your favorite sport played at the highest possible level, excellence and hard work rewarded.

It's an argument that reminds me of the famous Jacques-Louis David painting "The Death of Socrates." I was learned (rightly or wrongly) that it was Socrates pointing to the Divine. All the gods, or singular god, that he believed in. It was meant to be defiant. Stating that the purpose in life was to that of something higher, something not of humankind and that striving for the divine was the purpose in life.

Continuing with art history course, with Raphael's "The School of Athens" you again see this theme as Aristotle walks with Plato, both trying to reason whether or not that greatness was with the divine and not as reasoned here on earth.

What isn't unanswered - is that most of what teams in MLS strive for - is not anywhere close to what Socrates, Aristotle or Plato wrote about. No. MLS is looking more to build the perfect cheap labor. That TV stand you find at Walmart or Target - because you are willing to settle.

From this standpoint, there is something that interests me. It is that this Walmart / Target model is based on your willingness to settle for crap products. High sales good. Low... bad. They also look at customer satisfaction, though. Can't sell things that fall apart, right?

NET PROMOTER SCORE

Or NPS. I like the idea. Throw out the average scores (close games) in favor of just the bad and good. In soccer I see it as the 1-0 or 0-1 or Draw type games. The close ones that Berhalter talks about. NPS tries to quantify that by just taking the low and high. Lose big, win big. Toss the rest. Let's look at who has done that then.

Who has won more by two or more than lost, per match played. I use a percentage as the "promoter". It's the percentage of more +2 games won as overall games played.

Team	2+ Loss	2+ Win	Diff in 2+	Games Played	"Promoter"
L.A. Galaxy	0	4	4	18	22.2%
DC United	1	5	4	19	21.1%
Colorado	2	5	3	20	15.0%
Sporting KC	1	4	3	21	14.3%
San Jose	0	2	2	18	11.1%
Toronto FC	1	3	2	18	11.1%
Seattle	2	4	2	19	10.5%
FC Dallas	1	3	2	21	9.5%
Real Salt Lake	2	3	1	20	5.0%
Philadelphia	2	3	1	21	4.8%
Portland	2	2	0	21	0.0%
New York RB	3	3	0	20	0.0%
Columbus	3	2	-1	21	-4.8%
Vancouver	2	1	-1	20	-5.0%
Chicago Fire	2	0	-2	19	-10.5%
New England	7	4	-3	20	-15.0%
Montreal Impact	6	2	-4	20	-20.0%
Chivas USA	7	2	-5	20	-25.0%
Houston	10	2	-8	20	-40.0%

Not sure where this gets you, true reader (track it for yourself over here). Consider it the anti- "we are in most games" coach speak quote you always hear. This (like NPS metric) throws out those games and treats them as not important. The point is to be better than your opponent, not the same.

What is above are teams that win more by two goals then lose. Seems a good measurement of quality this far into the season, I guess. At least to me. Might not be Socrates, Aristotle or Plato but it's what we got here in Columbus.