Ok I'll bite. Firstly, that's a shit article.
Stats and tactics aren't even similar, so I'll leave out tactics.
Statistical analysis and visualisation are more prevalent in every field for the following reasons: more available structured data, better tools, more trained users, wider audiences. Football's no exception.
However the current crop of established journalists, essayists and commentators are rarely among the trained users of stats and visualisation packages. That explains why operations like Zonal Marking are so feted nowadays.
To me stats are a mixed bag. The quality of interpretation is limited by the data itself and the models that operate upon it. It tends to be best when used as a strong supplement to an argument made on other terms. Also when the numbers are used comparatively rather than as absolutes. It mitigates against some eyewitness biases, but totally ignores essential information.
Visualisation is a bit less applicable in football than in other domains, although chalkboards which show the players lined up like Subbuteo with arrows showing guys "running into space" can be annoying. You see surprisingly little time series visualisation in football analysis - for example moving average of points-per-game for different clubs over different seasons. You see mainly shit visualisations of things like wages total vs league position across different leagues. There's definitely scope here for journalists and bloggers to do better than they do at the moment.
I think in the future there will probably be much finer-grained data about matches available to the public than we have at the moment, which will permit other types of analysis.
