Jay Fitzsimmons

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Soccer – local and CPL analytics

Soccer jerseys hanging on a clothesline.

I play, coach, and referee local soccer. Mostly with the Peterborough Youth Soccer Club.

I’ve also written about Canadian soccer for a couple of blog sites. Most of my articles present data analysis, because graphs are pretty.
One of my articles gained traction, noting financial reporting irregularities by Canada Soccer. This led to a brief submitted to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage for their work on Safe Sport in Canada, and was cited in committee proceedings.

Soccer analytics and writing

My articles on the Canadian Premier League-U Sports Draft

Other Canadian Premier League articles by me

Other articles and compilations

  • Minutes played by each draftee in their post-draft season. Minutes is on the y-axis, and draft position is on the x-axis. There is no obvious pattern, and many zero-minute players at most draft positions.
  • Draftees' playing time, by position. Four doughnut graphs show the percent of draftees playing different levels of minutes in the post-draft season; one doughnut graph for each position (goalkeeper, defender, midfielder, and forward). Darker section represent more minutes played. The larger the section, the higher the percent of players in that category.
  • Scatter plot showing which positions get drafted (and played) the most. The y-axis is minutes played in a player's post-draft season. The x-axis is the four classes of playing position: goalkeeper, defender, midfielder, and forward. Players' names accompany their data points, showing how many minutes each played. Colours of dots and names corresponds to their team.
  • Stacked bar chart showing which CPL teams play their draft picks the most. The y-axis is minutes played in a player's post-draft season. The x-axis is teams. Draftees are stacked in order of minutes within each team's bar, with players on the bottom having played the most minutes.
  • Bar graph showing which positions have been drafted the most, all time and for the 2023 draft.
  • Bar graph showing which U Sports universities produce the most draftees. From all-time data and from the 2023 draft.
  • Bar graph showing roster stability from 2021 to 2022. The y-axis shows each team, and the x-axis shows what percent of their 2021 player-minutes are returning in 2022. Teams are listed in order of 2021 standings. In general lower-standings teams had higher turnover.
  • Scatterplot of which CPL teams use their substitutions a lot. The y-axis is how many minutes tend to be played by a substitute. The x-axis is how many substitutions are made per game. Data points show teams' logos. Ottawa stands apart with so few substitutions per game.