So, there's this guy named Steve. Here's a description of him: "Steve is very shy and withdrawn, invariably helpful, but with little interest in people or the social world. A meek and tidy soul, he has a need for order and structure and a passion for detail." I'll throw in one more clue: Steve lives in the United States.
Now that you know a little bit about Steve, try to answer these questions: Is Steve more likely to be a farmer or a librarian? And: Is Steve more likely to be a farmer or a salesman?
Got it? OK -- and here's why you (probably) got it wrong. Although he certainly sounds like a librarian, Steve is way more likely to be both a salesman and a farmer. To be specific, he's 83 times more likely to be a salesman and 22 times more likely to be a farmer. Why's that? Well, there are a lot more farmers and salesmen than librarians in the United States.
- O'Hanlon: Why the Ronaldo/Messi era is over
If you've heard this story before, you probably read it in "Thinking, Fast and Slow," the book by Nobel Prize-winning behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman. I bring it up to make the following point: We suck at predicting things.
And so, rather than try to tell you what is going to happen in the 2022-23 season right now -- at the beginning of July -- I wanted to point out a couple of outcomes that seem incredibly unlikely at this point in the summer but probably aren't as unlikely as you think.
Tottenham win the Premier League
We'll start with the most likely of these outcomes.
Most likely, you say? I thought, you know, Liverpool and Manchester City were arguably the two best teams in Premier League history. And didn't they both just sign the one type of player they were missing: gigantic, athletic, domineering center-forwards?
Yes, that is all true. They lapped much of the field on both points and goal differential:
And neither one was much of a fluke, as their underlying numbers were way ahead of the chasing pack, too.
On top of all that, you might now be thinking: "Tottenham weren't even third in winning points, scoring goals, or creating and preventing chances." Once again: All true! However, there was one major inflection point in Tottenham's season: They changed managers on Nov. 2, replacing Nuno Espirito Santo with Antonio Conte. And here's how those points and goal differentials look in the final 28 games of the season:
So, Liverpool and City remain ahead, but not by as much, and now they're trying to fend off Tottenham rather than Chelsea. From an underlying-number perspective, Chelsea and Spurs both had nearly identical xG differentials once Conte was hired: plus-26 and plus-25.9, respectively.
All right, so we've established that the gap between Spurs and the top two isn't as big as the full-season totals suggest, but it's still pretty big. So how could it shrink?
From the Liverpool and City point of view, we've seen massive points total swings for both clubs in recent years. From 2018-19 to 2019-20, City went from 98 down to 81 points. Not to be outdone, Liverpool went from 99 points in 2019-20 to 69 in 2020-21. Even within this duopoly of multiyear dominance, both teams have experienced a wide degree of variance from season-to-season. While you can easily explain an unlikely scenario that would tank one of their point totals -- bad finishing (City in 2019-20), injury crisis (Liverpool 2020-21), stuff like that -- the problem for the rest of the league is that it probably has to happen to both teams at the same time for anyone else to have a shot.
However, there's a growing body of work that suggests that Conte is uniquely capable of aligning the stars all on his own. In his first season as Juventus manager in 2011-12, he not only guided the club to their first Serie A title since re-earning promotion to the league in 2008; they were also the first team to go undefeated in a season since the league expanded to 20 teams. Then, he led a relatively untalented Italy national team to the quarterfinals of Euro 2016, beating Belgium and Spain, and taking Germany to penalties. He followed that up by winning the Premier League with Chelsea the following year, notching 93 points (the same as City this past season) just a season after the club finished 10th. And then, most recently, he won Serie A in his second and final season with Inter Milan, ending Juventus's nine-year run atop the table. (Or, you know, the same one that he started.)
To make an unlikely title run, though, you also need a couple of individual players to go wild at the same time. It's hard to envision a world where Tottenham's expected-goal numbers are better than either Liverpool or City, so they'd need a few guys to both produce a ton of shots but also to turn those shots into goals at a way-above-average rate.
Well, per FBref, Harry Kane and Son Heung-Min ranked third and fourth, respectively, in non-penalty xG plus expected assists per 90 minutes. The only players ahead of them were Liverpool's Mohamed Salah and Diogo Jota. And while Kane had the first poor season of his career in terms of finishing, both he and Son had previously been two of the most consistent finishers -- converting their xG into a significantly higher number of goals -- of the past decade. They're both at the tail end of their primes -- Kane turns 29 later this month and Son hits 30 later this week -- but what if they both have career years at the same time? Add in the potential for some regression from at least one of the top two, Conte's track record of immediate success, and a group of Premier League and Champions League-proven summer signings, and you've got a team that isn't built for the future. No, if everything goes right, you've got a team that can win right now.
Neymar wins the Ballon d'Or
Neymar? The guy who nobody wants? Him? You sure? That dude? Yes, we are talking about the same guy.
Last week, ESPN's Julien Laurens reported that Paris Saint-Germain were happy to let Neymar leave and that the 30-year-old might also be happy to leave himself this summer. As new Chelsea owner Todd Boehly seemingly attempts to sign every attacker that he's seen his kids play with on FIFA, or as he scrolls slowly down his scouting spreadsheet sorted by the number of Instagram followers, the Blues have unsurprisingly been liked with the Brazilian forward. The issue, of course, is that Neymar is one of the highest-paid players in the world and very few clubs, if any, would be willing to pay him the same amount he's making at PSG. So, unless Neymar agrees to a large pay cut -- and PSG doesn't try to recoup too much of the €222 million they paid to acquire him -- his pool of suitors is going to be tiny.
So, today, let's just say that Neymar will either be playing for Chelsea or PSG next season. The most likely outcome is that he stays, and the second most-likely outcome is that Boehly can't resist making a big splash as interim director of football at his new club. Neither outcome, though, has too much of an effect on the prediction above.
How do you win the Ballon d'Or? In a year without an international tournament, you need to put up gaudy attacking statistics and win a major trophy with your club team. However, in a year with an international tournament, consistent performance seems to matter way less than winning trophies.
Jorginho finished third in last year's voting, in large part because he won the Champions League with Chelsea and the Euros with Italy. But other than maybe his immediate family members, no one else, in their heart of hearts, actually thought that Jorginho was one of the three best players in the world.
In 2018, Real Madrid finished 17 points behind Barcelona in LaLiga though, as they do, won the Champions League anyway. No one considered Luka Modric the star performer of that season; he didn't even play 2,000 league minutes. But then Croatia made a run to the World Cup final -- aided by an easier draw and shootout wins against Denmark and Russia -- and Modric was suddenly a Ballon d'Or winner.
Neymar, meanwhile, is the master of consistent inconsistency. Despite the generally toxic conversation around most of his performances, he's one of the best players of his generation. Other than Lionel Messi, no other player has been able to score goals, create chances, move the ball into the penalty area, and progress the ball up the field -- all at an elite level like him. These are facts. Also facts: The guy hasn't even played 1,900 minutes in a league season since he left Barcelona, five years ago.
Put another way, the analyst Michael Imburgio created a model called "DAVIES" that estimates how many goals a player adds to his team's performance with his on-ball actions. Among the 20 best seasons across the Big Five leagues since 2017-18, Neymar doesn't appear once. However, on a per-minute basis, Neymar has four of the 12 best seasons. In other words, he's a truly elite player when he plays; he just rarely does.
While that would disqualify him from Ballon d'Or contention in most years, it won't matter in this one. Guess who's the favorite to win the 2022 World Cup later this year? It's Brazil. And on top of that, PSG are third-favorites to win the Champions League, while Chelsea are sixth. Are both of those things likely to happen? No, but could they? Absolutely.
Villarreal win LaLiga
This is where we're starting to get some pushback against the fabric of our conceivable reality. Across betting markets, Villarreal currently sit right around +5000 to win the LaLiga title for the first time. That, very roughly, converts to a 2% chance or 1-in-50 odds. Sounds long, sure, but here's a list of things of things that are less likely to happen than Villarreal winning the Spanish league: Getting struck by lightning, finding a four-leaf clover, getting audited by the IRS, being ambidextrous, finding two yolks in a single egg.
One-in-50 things happen all the time. Well, precisely, they happen 2% of the time. So, what makes Villarreal a worthy outside candidate for the LaLiga title? Three things:
First, they were better than the table suggested last season. Despite finishing seventh -- closer to relegation than to first place -- they produced the third-best goal differential and the fourth-best xG differential in LaLiga. Although their run to the Champions League semifinals surprised everyone, come the end of the campaign they were one of the best teams in one of the best leagues in the world. Teams that win fewer points than their goal and xG differentials suggest in a given season tend to win more points the following year.
Second, Real Madrid's defence ran hot all season. They conceded just 31 goals from 48.7 xG. Goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois is really good, but he's not that good. On the other side of things, striker Karim Benzema put together a Ballon d'Or-worthy season at the age of 33; he did everything in a way he never had before. Madrid's entire starting midfield -- Toni Kroos (32), Luka Modric (36) and Casemiro (30) -- will also be in their 30s when the season begins. Among those four, there's likely to be some decline due to injury or worse performance or both. If they all get worse at once, Madrid have some young talent waiting in the wings -- namely Aurelien Tchouameni and Eduardo Camavinga -- but will they all be able to perform at the same level as the superstars they're replacing? Real Madrid's reliance on aging club legends continues to work, but it won't last forever. Plus, Carlo Ancelotti's managerial approach has never yielded back-to-back league titles.
And third, per FBref, Villarreal attackers Arnaut Danjuma and Gerard Moreno ranked tied for second in the league in non-penalty xG+xA per 90 minutes, behind only Benzema. So, uh, why wasn't the team better? Well, they only played 2,663 combined league minutes, which is barely more than Benzema played by himself and fewer than Vinicius Junior (fourth on the list). If Danjuma stays at the club this summer and both he and Moreno put together healthy seasons, then Villarreal should be better than the team that was already (if you strip out finishing variance) one of the four best teams in the league. Throw in the potential for some regression for Madrid and it could happen -- even if, like everything else, it probably won't.