Scripts for downloading and visualising data from clubelo.com showing José Mourinho’s third season problem. A hand-finished version of this chart appears in this Financial Times story: https://www.ft.com/content/56acdd82-02d2-11e9-99df-6183d3002ee1

mourinho_clubelo.R

needs(tidyverse, magrittr, scales)

jose.porto <- read_csv("http://api.clubelo.com/porto")
jose.chelsea <- read_csv("http://api.clubelo.com/chelsea")
jose.inter <- read_csv("http://api.clubelo.com/inter")
jose.real <- read_csv("http://api.clubelo.com/realmadrid")
jose.mufc <- read_csv("http://api.clubelo.com/manunited")

jose.all <- bind_rows(
  jose.porto %>% filter(From >= as.Date("2002-01-22") & To <= as.Date("2004-06-30")),
  jose.chelsea %>% 
    filter(
      (From >= as.Date("2004-07-01") & To <= as.Date("2007-09-19"))
    ),
  jose.chelsea %>% 
    filter(
      (From >= as.Date("2013-07-01") & To <= as.Date("2015-12-17"))
    ) %>% mutate(Club = "Chelsea 2"),
  jose.inter %>% filter(From >= as.Date("2008-07-01") & To <= as.Date("2010-06-30")),
  jose.real %>% filter(From >= as.Date("2010-07-01") & To <= as.Date("2013-06-30")),
  jose.mufc %>% filter(From >= as.Date("2016-07-01") & To <= as.Date("2018-12-18"))
)

jose.labels <- jose.all %>%
  group_by(Club) %>%
  top_n(1, Elo)

ggplot(jose.all, aes(To, Elo, group=Club, color=Club)) +
  theme_minimal() +
  geom_line() +
  geom_text(data=jose.labels, aes(y = Elo+10, label=Club)) +
  scale_color_discrete(guide=F) +
  scale_y_continuous(position = "right") +
  scale_x_date(date_breaks="2 years", date_labels="%Y") +
  labs(x = "", y = "", subtitle = "Team performance level (Elo rating)", title = "Mourinho’s recent stints have been marked by steep declines in performance after promising starts")