Five Major League Soccer (MLS) teams have signed on with statistical analysis company "Word Stats" to enhance their ability to make excuses for the 2015 season.

The Seattle Sounders, Portland Timbers, Toronto FC, Philadelphia Union, and Los Angeles Galaxy have all signed on with the professional word and phrase team to bring advanced analytics in excuse techniques to Major League Soccer.

"We felt like we needed to bring excuses into the 21st century, and the old way of just lobbing them from the back of the room when we felt like they were warranted is something we needed to change", said Portland Timbers director of communications Dan Laurant. "Instead of saying, 'the referee was poor' and getting a fine; advanced metrics show that saying 'the physical condition of the referee was sub-optimal' will result in a 10% gain in excuse performance."

The Seattle Sounders issued a press release on the matter, "Seattle is proud of being on the forefront of the technology revolution in soccer and we intend to do the same when it comes to excuses. Whether we blame the field, the conditions, the coach, the referee, the play of the other team, or the average humidity in the team van on the way to the game we will take our excuse generation to the absolute maximum with our new professional relationship."

Word Stats is based out of Baltimore and according to their mission statement the small, statistics based company has influenced the way in which professional coaches in Baseball, Football and Irish Lacrosse made excuses for poor play and losses.