Via their website, the performance analysis and statistics group Prozone announced that Stewart Mairs will be joining D.C. United as their Director of Soccer Strategy and Analysis. The position was made known in an interview Jason Levien gave to Steve Goff last month but was one they had been investigating for some time. Mairs will report directly to Dave Kasper.
D.C. has done work with Prozone for several years now and Mairs comes to the team with an impressive resume of more than a decade of experience in the field, including recently contributing analysis to last year's World Cup-winning United States Women's team. He leaves Prozone as the Head of U.S. Operations, and D.C. adds itself to a growing list of teams that employ a full-time analytics representative on staff, including the New England Revolution, Seattle Sounders, Toronto FC and last year's MLS Cup-winning Portland Timbers, to name a few.
Via the team, Kasper's thoughts on the hire:
"We are excited to have Stewart join our Technical Staff,” Kasper said. “I have consulted with him on various analytics projects during the past several years, and his work has been outstanding. Stewart’s expertise will provide tremendous value analyzing our performance in games and in training, preparing for upcoming opponents, and in doing diligence and analysis in player recruitment.”
So last week, D.C. submitted stadium information, this week, they hire a #fancystats member to staff, so the infrastructure continues to see progress.