Paul Carr

From a self-analysis, yeah, you look at your players.

Okay, what do they do well?

Maybe this guy makes a certain kind of pass, a long pass, really well.

So A, we should maybe stress that more since that's the strength of his.

Maybe there's a better spot on the field from which he can use those skills.

Maybe he should be at left midfield instead of left back.

or maybe more central than out on the wing.

So trying to identify what does this guy do well, and then you're fitting all those puzzle pieces together, which is obviously the challenge of getting 11 guys all in the ideal spot to maximize their skill and make the team better as a whole.

right uh at least not right now so will the data help keep the advantage the u.s has in women's soccer or is it a matter of time before the club system gobbles up our women's team yeah and i think the the data will help the u.s stay at the top um in the sense it's really like taking a step back man it's the money like the u.s just invests as a country more money in women's soccer than uh maybe any other country and a lot of that does go back to you know

They had a head start with college and Title IX in the early 80s.

That was essentially a feeder system for the national team, and still is.

So other countries are catching up in part because they're just investing more money, and they can get not just the data, but just all the infrastructure, the support staff, again, the club levels, which are those feeders for the national team.

So the data, and I think just the familiarity with it in general in the U.S., the U.S.

embraces data.

because it's more popular in other sports, embraces data more quickly than some other countries.

So, yeah, that'll be part of helping the U.S.

on the women's side stay at the top of that heap.

Yeah, you see this in other sports where there's late bloomers, and if he didn't have the, whatever, G League in basketball or go play in Europe for a couple years, he might not have come back and been a star in the NBA.

And so similar in soccer, if they don't have that second level of league

whether in your country or another country, to go play in and, you know, improve, then you lose the whole class of players.