Exploring Successful Team Tactics in Soccer Tracking Data

Abstract

In recent years, professional soccer leagues have started collecting tracking data of players on the pitch during all matches of the league. This tracking data might provide an important addition to existing tactical analyses (e.g., video analysis and annotated events). By characterizing the spatial relations between players over time, the dynamic context in which success takes place can be determined. Tactical analysis of events can be enriched with spatial relations between the players during these events. Here, we demonstrate our automatized methodological approach where we use tracking data of 48 matches to (1) identify key events, (2) construct interpretable spatial relations between the players, (3) systematically examine the spatial relations over time, (4) define the success of an event, and (5) discover interpretable and actionable patterns in the spatial relations to report back to the coaching staff. With our approach, future analyses of tactics can be less tedious and more data-driven. Moreover, the context-of-play can be assessed in more detail when implementing tracking data.