Not sure how I ended up here, but what is thought now is that your last paragraph is empirically untrue.Traditionalists: "You can't measure soft skills."
Statisticians: "Prove it matters."
I don't know a ton about soccer metrics, but in baseball, the "soft skills" argument was similar to the "god of the gaps." Soft skills were attributed to every contribution that wasn't a hit, run, or RBI. Until those other contributions started getting measured.
Ask any athlete if being "in the zone" is a real thing, and they'll nod emphatically. But then we measured it. Not really a thing.