Hello, Hello, everyone, and welcome to MLS Assist.

I'm your host, Joe Lowry, and today we're digging into the analytical side of Major League Soccer,

with a conversation between myself and John Mueller of American Soccer Analysis.

John is a cleanup hitter in ASA's all-star lineup of brilliant contributors.

He knows tactics, he knows data, And most importantly for today's show,

he knows all about goals added, a fascinating new metric developed by ASA. What is goals added and why

does it matter? Let's find out. I am here with ASA's John Mueller. John, thanks for coming on. How are you

doing? Thanks for having it. I'm doing great or as great as you can do in quarantine.

That's relatable. John, I'm really excited over as great as you can do in quarantine. That's relatable.

John, I'm really excited over the course of this episode to flesh out goals added and to dig into what it is, how it works, and how it's going to impact the future of both Major League Soccer and Soccer around the world.

So to sort of start out, what is goals added?

And how is it different from some more well-known metrics like XG or XA,

which we've talked about on the show before?

Yeah, so Goals Added, I mean, Goals Added is literally the most exciting public stat out there.

Coming in strong.

I like it.

I feel like I'm exaggerating, you know, ASA's work product here, but it is literally the best publicly available stat.

And what it does is it captures the effect of every touch, any kind of touch on the ball,

anywhere on the field, captures the effect of those touches on that team's chance of scoring

and its chance of conceding after the next turnover.

So that sounds kind of abstract, but think about it on a conceptual level, right?

What's the point of soccer?

...