Fans and players alike are quick to describe the game of soccer as an art, including Evin Nadaner, former semiprofessional soccer player and co-founder of Top Right Soccer, a testing program that introduces standardized metrics to the evaluation of soccer prospects.
Top Right Soccer’s motto, “You can’t excel at what you don’t measure,” embodies the company’s goal to create both athletic and technical scores for soccer prospects through six tests, making the game less subjective and more data-driven. Says Nadaner, “Athletic shows potential and technical shows where you are at right now.”
The standardized tests measure shot velocity, dribbling speed, agility with the ball, acceleration and sprint speed. After testing, prospects are measured against averages from their level, including professional, college or youth players.
“All the best clubs in the world do standardized testing, so why aren’t we doing this?” asks Nadaner, who notes that in America, the youth soccer system is fragmented, making it hard to assess the best players without these standard metrics.
“Every time someone asks, ‘Who is the best player ever?’ they’ll say, ‘Oh well, he scored eight goals,’ ” says Nadaner. “But I’m like, ‘Yeah, but he’s playing against traffic cones, so you can’t really judge things well.’ We have to have benchmarks in this process so that a player has a standard report.”
When testing with the Top Right Soccer process, players’ results are plotted on a graph that shows where their skills fall in relation to other prospects in their level of competition. Athletes can also compare their skills to those of more advanced soccer players to see where they need to improve if they wish to reach the highest level of competition.
“Theoretically, soccer can be broken into a few different pillars of what makes a good player,” Nadaner says. “How well you can strike a ball, how well you can dribble a ball, how quickly you can take two touches — so, the technique of passing, dribbling and the quickness of mind to feet.”
Nadaner acknowledges that different players in the various soccer positions — strikers, midfielders and defenders — would each find their strengths in different areas of the standardized testing. For example, “A striker might be good at shooting the ball and running straight with the ball,” says Nadaner.
However, while each position has its strengths, he says that overall, American soccer should increase its focus on coaching players to score goals. While other sports in the U.S. adapt gameplay to focus on offensive action, scoring in soccer has remained stagnant since the 1980s, at an average of 2.66 goals per game.
From his perspective, Nadaner believes that standardized skills testing can lead U.S. soccer clubs in this new, high-scoring direction.
While it is possible for players to evaluate these metrics on their own, Top Right Soccer is also excited about its events that mimic the NFL’s annual combine. At Top Right Soccer’s event on Oct., 25 in Naples, Fla., players were tested on their 30-yard dash speed, their shot velocity and percentage of shots made, and their successful dribbles and turns in a figure-eight drill.
“It’ll take you 90 minutes [of gameplay] to evaluate a player who we can do in seven seconds,” explains Nadaner. “Large regional events like the one in Naples are going to get everybody out there.”
Despite his penchant for thinking of soccer as a subjective art form, even Nadaner admits that for the sport to make deeper inroads in the U.S., there must be a focus on players’ skills and strength of play. With proper adoption, soccer players of all skill levels may be able to accurately evaluate their skills compared to others and use that data to make informed decisions about their path forward in the sport.
Says Nadaner, “I think that this is going to revolutionize the soccer game.”
