There Is No Single Measure of Effectiveness: Auditing the Numbers for Huiqui, Anselmi and Vicente Sánchez

The Delhi gantry never showed me the match. It showed me the room watching it. Last week, reading a Mexican football report on “effectiveness rates” among Joel Huiqui, Martín Anselmi and Vicente Sánchez, my eye stopped at 70.49. The calculator came out. Anselmi: 50 matches, 28 wins, 10 draws, 12 losses — 94 points from 150 available. That is 62.7 per cent. The report said 70.49. This is not a typing slip; it is the kind of error that unsettles the foundation of the whole comparison, because nobody re-ran the division before publishing.

In Mexican football coverage, efectividad usually means points won as a share of points available, not win rate. The distinction looks minor and decides the argument. As presented, Huiqui has 21 matches, 14-3-4, 45 points, 71.4 per cent points rate, 66.7 per cent win rate and two titles. Anselmi has 50 matches, 28-10-12, 94 points, 56.0 per cent win rate and no titles. Sánchez has 28 matches, 18-8-2, 62 points, 73.8 per cent points rate, 64.3 per cent win rate and one title.

The first internal contradiction sits right there. Huiqui’s 71.4 did not come from his 14 wins — 14 of 21 is 66.7. It comes from adding the three draws. So the article blends two different metrics inside one table and asks the reader to treat them as interchangeable. In any numerical argument, that is the first crack: once the metric is undefined, every conclusion can be defended.

Change the metric and the answer changes. By points percentage, Vicente Sánchez leads at 73.8, Huiqui follows at 71.4, and Anselmi sits at 70.49 as reported or 62.7 when recalculated. By win rate, Huiqui leads at 66.7 ahead of Sánchez at 64.3 and Anselmi at 56.0. By trophies, Huiqui leads with two, Sánchez has one, Anselmi none. The headline’s direct question therefore has no single yes. Under the most standard definition of effectiveness — points percentage — Huiqui is not ahead of Sánchez. Under win rate and silverware, he is ahead of both. The article contains all the ingredients for that nuanced answer and never assembles them.

The 70.49 is the most serious inconsistency. Twenty-eight wins and ten draws make 94 points; 94 out of 150 is 62.7 per cent. No ordinary calculation produces 70.49. That is not a rounding quibble — it is a swing of roughly eight percentage points, enough to reverse the direction of the comparison the piece is built on. If Anselmi is at 70.49, Huiqui barely edges him. If he is at 62.7, Huiqui’s advantage is clear. Both readings cannot survive in one article.

The samples are unequal, so the rates are not equally trustworthy. Huiqui’s 21 matches are a narrow base: a single result can move his points percentage by about 4.8 percentage points. Sánchez at 28 and Anselmi at 50 carry less of that fragility. Placing three rates drawn from three differently sized samples on one scale is like comparing readings taken at three temperatures. A rate quoted without its interval is decoration, not analysis.

Nobody says which competitions those matches came from. Are the 21, 28 and 50 league-only, league-plus-cup, or continental as well? The report is silent, and the silence is expensive: format, opposition quality and incentives differ by competition. A draw is worth something in a league and nothing in a knockout. Pooling them into one percentage is technically wrong no matter how clean the number looks. The same gap applies to squad quality, fixture difficulty, injuries and inherited situations. Whether a coach took over a strong side or an interim job mid-season explains more about his points rate than the rate explains about him.

The trophies are not equivalent, so the count is not either. Huiqui’s two are a league championship and the Campeón de Campeones; Sánchez’s is the Concacaf Champions Cup; Anselmi has none. Counting a continental title and a domestic supercup as one apiece is like filing a 100-metre medal and a marathon medal in the same drawer. Raw trophy counts are the crudest proxy for coaching quality because context vanishes entirely.

The goal figures are under-contextualised too. Cruz Azul’s 32 goals are compared with 39 in Apertura 2026, with three matches still to play. Interesting, but incomplete: total goals mean little without matches played, goals per game, opponent strength and competition context. If 39 arrived in 17 matches and 32 in 14, the story inverts. A projection with three games left is suggestive, not conclusive.

And the deepest problem is sourcing. Every statistical point is marked “Source: None.” The only credit goes to the photo agency IMAGO 7, which covers the image, not the data. There is no link to Liga MX, Cruz Azul, official match records or any statistical database. That makes the piece a data note or a discussion prompt, not a rigorous statistical analysis — and the Anselmi arithmetic confirms the caution. The photo caption referencing an Apertura 2026 fixture is also a timeline flag worth verifying.

The real question is not which of the three is more effective. It is why we keep forcing three different things into one word. “Effectiveness” presents itself as neutral while quietly choosing one measure and hiding the rest — points here, wins there, trophies elsewhere. Huiqui’s case is strong on results and silverware, Sánchez’s on unbeaten consistency and points rate, Anselmi’s on sample size and style but weak on trophies. Each deserves praise on a different basis, and criticism on a different basis. Nationality — Huiqui Mexican, Sánchez Uruguayan — is descriptive, not analytical; it has no bearing on effectiveness. And a line like “Anselmi consolidated a football proposal” is evaluation, not data, and it quietly offsets his empty trophy cabinet. I read every formation as a story about who gets to speak and who gets sacrificed; here the sacrifice was context.

What to watch is straightforward. If Cruz Azul passes 39 in the remaining three matches, the goals argument strengthens — but it stays incomplete without per-match rates and opponent quality. My falsifiable test: take any 15-match window for all three in the next tournament, apply one definition (points percentage), separate the competitions, and state the situation each coach inherited. The number that emerges will be less glamorous. It will also be checkable.