Podcast: Boston Bolts’ Sean Napier, Greig Robertson on the usage of metrics

Boston Bolts' players celebrate a goal during a game. (Burt Granofsky/NESJ)

The latest guests on New England Soccer Journal’s “The Goal” podcast are Boston Bolts’ MLS NEXT Director Sean Napier and Director of Coaching Greig Robertson.

The Bolts are getting ready to resume the 2023-24 MLS NEXT season, and their coaches and directors have been using creative metrics and analytics to help in their player development strategy.

They joined host Matt Langone to discuss the innovative direction the club has been taking and the thought process behind it.

The full podcast can be accessed below and is available on all major platforms. If you enjoy it, please leave a rating and a review.

Here are some highlights from our discussion with Napier and Robertson:

On the thought-process behind using their own analytics:

Robertson: “Our job is to try and identify their strengths, and make them super strengths, and look at their weaknesses. How do we improve their weaknesses? We need to look at each individual player and see the areas. So, we’ve created five areas — we’ve got football skills, we’ve got football IQ, we’ve got football fitness, we’ve got football mentality, and the fifth one is a football initiative where the players take the responsibility. It has to be player- centered. It has to be player-driven. A lot of the things we say to the players, ‘you either do it or you don’t do it.'”

On looking beyond wins and losses:

Napier: “It’s now with the technology that we use and then the stats that we have available, the players are able to go in and measure their performance and they don’t necessarily look at the wins and the losses. You might lose a game or two, but you know what? We played really well. If it’s a center back, you can now measure your forward passes, your line-breaking passes, your possession, all those things. And you can say, no, we actually played well, but we made a few mistakes and we were punished for it. It’s realizing that it’s not the end result, but if we try and achieve these KPIs that Greig talked about having in place, then we’re more likely to get the win.”

On the advice the club provides players on the college recruitment process:

Robertson: “It’s an ongoing process, because if you put all your eggs in one basket for three games (at a showcase), you might only play one-and-a-half of those three games. In the one game you do play the full game, you might have an absolute stinker. I don’t think the college you would want to go to is only going to recruit you off of one game. We’re trying to educate people in what we actually do believe goes on through some research with good people within the college game.”

On the MLS NEXT pathway:

Napier: “I think in this region with the clubs getting the full pathway, it’s given more players the opportunity to play within MLS NEXT, which is a positive for them. But I also think there’s probably an element of it diluting the quality. Not that it should be more elite or anything like that, but I just feel like when you have so many clubs from U-13 up to U-19, and everyone looks for the (MLS NEXT) patch  … again, it’s given more players the opportunity to play, but at what cost?”

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