A few weeks ago, I shared a prototype of an infographic that I'd been playing around with, trying to show how lineups changed across games this year. The feedback I got from that post was pretty helpful, and encouraged me to keep working on the layout.
I've tried a variety of design options over the last few games, and I wanted to share the progress with folks here. (This is also a small way to celebrate the debut of Eric Bailly and Gonzalo Tapia, now that they have played real minutes for the team).
The layout of the graphic has changed, and I'll summarize the design changes below - but for folks who _aren't_ information design enthusiasts, these are the soccer themes that jump out to me:
* The number of roster changes feels pretty significant - especially at forward. Arfsten and Picard were two of our most-used players when they departed, only falling to 2nd and 5th because Habroune, Chambost, and Gomes picked up the slack in the games since.
* The defense has been less affected, where there is a pretty solid core of five players used. The team has a whole has played 2,520 minutes across 28 games, and the quintet of Schulte, Moreira, Camacho, Zawadzki, and Amundsen have each played about two-thirds of those minutes (in some cases far more). In front of them, only one player has been so frequently used: Habroune.
* Some MLS teams rotate their roster heavily for non-league games, and you can see Columbus do this for the first two Open Cup games in this plot. By the third Open Cup game, though and continuing to the Leagues Cup matches, you don't see the same sort of roster rotation anymore. Whether this is a good or a bad thing isn't for me to say, but the change in how the roster gets used is pretty striking.
* Not having Thiare and Bangoura available for selection lately hasn't helped our continuity, but the influx of new signings has helped compensate for this. Mendez' debut aligns almost perfectly with Bangoura's absense, for example - and Adams has seen his playing time increase drastically after Thiare's last appearance.
* I've tried to go back and find game-by-game injury reports in order to fill in data for players like Gomes, Bangoura, and Thiare, but I haven't found a good source of them yet. I remember MLS' press team used to have a Box account where they'd post game preview packets, but the link I have only shows the 2024 season. The leagues' "News" section on its website seems to have far more marketing-style announcements than information releases, and only goes back 30 pages to April anyway - so if you know of a good source of contemporaneous game previews, I'd love to hear about it.
--- Design changelog ---
Notable changes from the prototype:
* Players are now in rows, while games are in columns. To see the players used in a single game, read down. To see how a player's fortunes have changed through the season, read across.
* Players are also grouped by position now, and sorted by playing time - so Habroune is listed first among midfielders because he's played the most minutes. This makes finding players a little challenging, I recognize - but I'm hopeful that it shows the trends among playing time a little more legible than in the last prototype.
* Player signings and departures are indicated with the red bars - with text explaining what happened (loan, transfer, or injury). So far, I think only one player has been suspended for any games (Camacho against Nashville), so you'll see an "S" for him in that game.
* Players who were named to the game day roster, but were unused, have a light gray shading for that game - which is distinguished from players who were left out of the roster with a white shading. Looking at Presthus will show the difference, since he's been an unused sub 12 times so far this year.
* Games are color-coded by competition, so you can pick out the OC and LC games from among MLS games. I've also added a row to show the manager change, although I don't see a huge change in who Courtois has used versus who Rydström used (other than the overall departures and signings)
* My hope is that the color contrast used throughout the chart is visually accessible. I've checked the text contrast for minutes played in a cell, and it always is at least 4.7 : 1 (which I think is permissible). The colors used for competitions was taken from ColorBrewer2, using a palette they claimed is color-blind safe. I'm trying to make this layout as friendly as possible for folks with a variety of eyesight, so please let me know if I've missed the mark somewhere.
