Discovering primary indicators for evaluating defender's technical performance using multivariate statistics in football games

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine primary indicators for evaluating the defenders’ technical performance in football games. We collected a total 472 players’ match statistics of season 2017/2018 in tier 1 league of England, Spain and Germany and categorized them into central and wide. Principal component analyses are used to sort the indicators and using eigenvalues for an appropriate number of components. The results showed that “Tackles Lost”, “Defensive Errors” and “Errors Leading to Goal” were the primary indicators for central defenders and “Successful Take-on”, “Total Shots” and “Errors Leading to Goal” were crucial for wide defenders.