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  • Kocic's distribution problem: fact or fiction?


    Guest

    In the comments here and in the stands at BMO you often hear the complaint that Milos Kocic is horrible at distributing the ball. Fans see goal kick after goal kick going to the opposition as Toronto's attack is killed before it has a chance.

    But, is it true? Does Kocic have a worse distribution rate than other keepers?

    [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]It's exceptionally labour intensive to determine that. The Opta stats are out there, but you literally have to go game by game to compile them (or pay for them. I'll take donations).

    However, CSN did just that for Kocic to get an idea of where he stands. Using the successful and unsuccessful pass category, which looks at every time a keeper kicks a ball with the intent to get it to another player, we looked at every MLS game Kocic has played this year.

    In total, Kocic has made 581 kicks. Of those 320 were successfully distributed to a Toronto player. That works out to a 55.0 per cent distribution success rate.

    To draw some comparison, we also caculated Chicago Fire keeper Sean Johnson's stats. Johnson was picked because he's about at the same point of his career as Kocic.

    Johnson has made 551 kicks, successfully finding a Fire 349 times. that's a 63.3 per cent success rate.

    So, at least in one case Kocic is wanting, and considerably so.

    However, as with anything to do with TFC you have to look at the pre-Mariner and post Mariner stats to get a full picture. Has Kocic been better under Mariner?

    Under Winter he was 182 for 306, which works out to 59.4 per cent.

    With Mariner he's 135 for 275, which is 49.0 per cent.

    So, he's been much worse. Part of that is likely because Winter discouraged the ball being played long. Although even with a short passing preference Kocic was still giving the ball away more than 40 per cent of the time.

    You can compare Kocic to other players in MLS by going game by game through the Opta stats found on the Chalkboard tab of each game report. I encourage readers to share what they find in the comments.



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