11 Questions with Ryo Nakagawara

The pursuit of wisdom in any walk of life quickly reveals that what you think you know is not nearly enough to get you to where you want to go. As I'm starting out in my football scouting journey I challenged myself to reach out to those already working in various roles in football to answer a short list of questions. My goal wasn't to get answers but relevant perspectives on the game within the game.

Here is Ryo Nakagawara

How did your first opportunity in football come about?

Currently for me this is just a hobby so I haven't had "opportunities" in terms of a job or anything like that (yet?). I've been playing football since I was 3 and I have been lucky to play in many different countries (USA, Japan, Germany, Israel, to name a few) and levels of play (from your local AYSO team to a professional youth set up) but in terms of the analytics side of things - it's a very recent development for me.

What attracted you to scouting/analytics? What’s more intriguing now names or numbers?

It began more as a way for me to improve my programming skills. Nowadays it's more about having fun and learning about different players/tactics from a different point of view than what I was used to for most of my life. To learn any (programming) language you need a lot of practice but a lot of the examples and tutorials in the learning material I was using just wasn't motivating enough for me. So, I decided to just try web-scraping, clearning, and visualizing soccer data that I could find anywhere and that's how it all began for me.

Who/what is the first player/concept you "found"? What caught your eye?

I'm limited in what I can find with my current skills and set-up (not a lot of easy and legally web-scrapable websites for the lower tier leagues for example) so finding somebody "new" isn't something I've done.

Who/what is the player/concept you "missed" on? What did you learn from it?

Same as above.

If you could start over what skill would you build on first?

Probably writing about soccer. Recently I've been taking notes on Liverpool's games and just posting a rough summary post-match. Games usually finish 3-5AM for me so it's hard being coherent but at the same time, I have a day job, so I can't dedicate extra time to watch a game repeatedly and do a more detailed write-up. Still, writing these notes and doing a summary in a time crunch has been very helpful and it's something I want to keep doing in the future. Writing concisely about the numbers and tactics and how they fit the way the game played out is something I'm slowly learning more about as I keep finding great new resources/people on Twitter and the web (Spielverlagerung, ZonalMarking, StatsBomb, Opta, BetweenThePosts, etc.).

Do you see player development as more of an art or a science?

I think it's been a bit of both even before this huge analytics boom since we've had "sports science" teams involved with physical training/nutritional regimens and stuff for a while now. Nowadays, teams like Ajax (Vosse De Boode's presentation at the StatsBomb conference comes to mind) and Liverpool I think are taking this blend of art and science to heart and it's interesting hearing about their methods whenever they do share that info.

What is your favorite sports moment? Why?

As a Liverpool fan it's Istanbul 2005 - easy. For Japan, I've been fortunate to have seen every single one of their Asia Cup wins except for the first one (I was a just a baby). Tadanari Lee's volley to score the winner in the 2011 Final vs. the Aussies was a pretty great moment especially (very Zidane vs. Leverkusen-esque I might add). It's been great seeing Japan slowly become more relevant in the football world in the past 25 years or so.

What coach/player/team inspires you? Why?

Managers: Klopp. The way he can infect not just a team but even entire organizations is quite extraordinary. For BVB and Liverpool you can clearly see the great working environment/culture he creates.

Players: Oliver Kahn at the 2002 World Cup. Stevie G.

What advice would you give to someone wanting to get into scouting/analytics?

I can only speak for the analytics side of things so learning a programming language. Creating good viz and analytical reports takes time but with programming you can semi-automate if not fully automate a lot of the repetitive busy work. I've said this repeatedly but this is still a hobby for me and it can't take too much of my time so in recent times I've been developing tools (workflows, RMarkdown reports, Shiny apps, R packages) to automate the data gathering and cleaning process and it saves SO much time. I am a huge proponent of R but of course Python is a good language too that is used by many analysts.

What is your favorite app/tool to use (for work or fun)?

R programming language and the tidyverse (mainly {dplyr} and {ggplot2} libraries). I proudly proclaim myself to be nothing but a "ggplot2 merchant".

What other sport/hobby/discipline do you feel improves your work as an analyst/scout? Why?

My current job as a analyst at an international development NGO helps with my R skills and my analytical skills. My hobby in footy analytics helps me learn new things I can use at work and vice-versa so it is a very harmonious symbiotic relationship. Focusing more on statistics and modeling are my future aims and I already have great resources for being a part of the #rstats and footy analytics community online. I was also a student in Psychology and Economics so doing a lot of analysis in those disciplines has given me some lots to think about in terms of how I can apply it to football.