An Online Tactical Metrics Applied to Football Game

Abstract

In collective sports, the match analysis is fundamental in order to improve the quality of coaches' intervention. Nevertheless, the generality of the systems are based on notational analysis which does not allow a deep understanding about the collective behaviour of the team. Therefore, the main goal of this study is to update and design new tactical metrics that allows an improved online knowledge about the teams' behaviour. Tactical metrics such as the teams' centroid, teams' stretch index and teams' effective play area will be presented throughout this study, validated by means of a single match experimental case study. Results suggest the potential of the herein proposed tactical metrics, providing relevant and online information to the coaches over time, thus allowing new opportunities to improve the quality of their intervention.

Dynamical Stability and Predictability of Football Players: The Study of One Match

“…The whole process inherent in this approach, such as the detection and identification of players' trajectories, the space transformation and the computation of metrics, was handled, using the high-level calculation package MATLAB. The tracking of football players was carried out manually and the positional data of each player was sorted based on the fractional methodology described in our previous work [3]. From the outcome of Couceiro et al [3], a downsampling of the acquired data to 4 Hz was adopted (i.e., sampling period of = 250 ms).…”

“…The tracking of football players was carried out manually and the positional data of each player was sorted based on the fractional methodology described in our previous work [3]. From the outcome of Couceiro et al [3], a downsampling of the acquired data to 4 Hz was adopted (i.e., sampling period of = 250 ms). For a matter of efficiency, only playing periods were considered, hence excluding all the pause moments in which the ball was not in the field (i.e., ball out-of-bounds).…”

“…The classical perspective of the performance analysis has been overtaken using new technologies to improve the understanding of the individual and tactical parameters, mainly trying to explain the process variables. For the collective analysis, some metrics have been proposed based on the position of players over time [3,46,47]. Nevertheless, for the individual performance, the researchers have been emphasizing on the notational information (i.e., product variables) and kinematical information [43].…”

“…From rudimentary systems, using only observation, to new technological-based approaches, many procedures can be developed to increase the understanding of a given sport [2]. Therefore, present day research proposes methods and techniques that can help analyse sports performance [3].…”

“…However, the lack of knowledge about advanced methods to analyse the dynamics of football players (space-time series) is responsible for the lack of studies focusing on the tactical performance of football matches [3]. In this sense, mathematics and engineering can provide valuable contributions to sports science in the performance analysis area.…”