With this second attempt at mapping the birthplaces of the players from a soccer club, I’ve learned a few new things. As the Orlando City mapping project is a continuing effort I’m looking forward to improving that when I update it. I will post those results soon. For now, have a look at the Miami Fusion map covering the players who composed the roster between 1998-2001.

Here’s a screenshot of what the Miami Fusion map looks like.

miamifusion

I’m not sure I have a lot of observations on this map of the Miami Fusion. It is interesting to see again where clubs are pulling players from, and there were certainly some similarities to the Orlando City map.

So just a few notes:

So I found the “publish” function which allows me to share a more more streamlined and attractive map like the one above. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell there isn’t a way to embed this into WordPress. I’m going to keep looking into this.

I used the app’s “geocode” function this time. Certainly faster than entering in latitude and longitude manually. I’m a little worried about when two players have the same birthplace the points stack and one becomes unable to be viewed. I’ll look into that.

I added a “source” to each player mapped. The real challenge here has been the use of Wikipedia. As I noted before, I don’t trust the accuracy of this site, but this work has really exposed the lack of reliable sources for this information. I will continue to work on this.

I tried the “satellite” view and think it looks sharp.

Next up I’m going to see if I can merge the maps to give a comparison where the Miami Fusion players are from vs. Orlando City’s. I’d like to map out the Tampa Bay Mutiny, the other Florida club from MLS. These clubs with shorter histories are a little less daunting than some of the more established clubs. That said, once time allows, I want to map a team like DC United at some point.

I’ve also been considering mapping Generation Adidas players.

I seem to have made it through this entire post without making a Miami Fusion/ Google Fusion Tables joke.

Let me know what you think! Comment or reach out on Twitter: @KevinIsHistory. Corrections or correspondence can be sent to kevin.mercer AT outlook . com