In this work, we present a stochastic discrete-time SEIR Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Recovered model adapted to describe the propagation of COVID-19 during a football tournament. Specifically, we are concerned about the re-start of the Spanish national football league, La Liga , which is currently -May 2020stopped with 11 fixtures remaining. Our model includes two additional states of an individual, confined and quarantined, which are reached when an individual presents COVID-19 symptoms or has undergone a virus test with a positive result. The model also accounts for the interaction dynamics of players, considering three different sources of infection: the player social circle, the contact with his/her team colleagues during training sessions, and the interaction with rivals during a match. Our results highlight the influence of the days between matches, the frequency of virus tests and their sensitivity on the number of players infected at the end of the season. Following our findings, we finally propose a variety of strategies to minimise the probability that COVID-19 propagates in case the season of La Liga was re-started after the current lockdown.
We investigated the ability of football teams to develop a particular playing style by looking at their passing patterns. Using the information contained in the pass sequences during matches, we constructed the pitch passing networks of teams, whose nodes are the divisions of the pitch for a given spatial scale and links account for the number of passes from region to region. We translated football passings networks into their corresponding adjacency matrices. We calculated the correlations between matrices of the same team to quantify how consistent the passing patterns of a given team are. Next, we quantified the differences with other teams’ matrices and obtained an identifiability parameter that indicates how unique are the passing patterns of a given team. Consistency and identifiability rankings were calculated during a whole season, allowing to detect those teams of a league whose passing patterns are different from the rest. Furthermore, we found differences between teams playing at home or away. Finally, we used the identifiability parameter to investigate what teams imposed their passing patterns over the rivals during a given match.
We investigate the relation between the number of passes made by a football team and the number of goals. We analyze the 380 matches of a complete season of the Spanish national league “LaLiga" (2018/2019). We observe how the number of scored goals is positively correlated with the number of passes made by a team. In this way, teams on the top (bottom) of the ranking at the end of the season make more (less) passes than the rest of the teams. However, we observe a strong asymmetry when the analysis is made depending on the part of the match. Interestingly, fewer passes are made in the second half of a match, while, at the same time, more goals are scored. This paradox appears in the majority of teams, and it is independent of the number of passes made. These results confirm that goals in the first half of matches are more “costly” in terms of passes than those scored in second halves.
El objetivo de este estudio fue analizar el efecto de realizar diferentes tipos de triangulaciones de pases en campo propio sobre el mantenimiento de la posesión del balón y la progresión del juego en fútbol profesional. Un total de 70,653 triangulaciones en campo propio, llevadas a cabo en los 380 partidos de la liga española de fútbol masculino de la temporada 2018/2019, fueron analizadas utilizando datos de eventos proporcionados por StatsPerform. Dichas triangulaciones fueron clasificadas en dos grupos: las que suponían una repetición de carril lateral y las que no. Teniendo en cuenta esta clasificación, se realizaron dos análisis complementarios: uno diferenciando estos dos tipos de triangulaciones y otro atendiendo a las jugadas en las que estaban presentes, prestando especial atención a cuáles terminaron en la pérdida de balón. En ambos análisis, los resultados arrojan la misma conclusión: una triangulación en la que se repite carril lateral o una jugada en la que haya incluida al menos una repetición de carril lateral tienen una mayor tendencia a terminar en pérdida de balón que cualquier otro tipo de triangulación o jugada en la que no se incluya este tipo de triangulación. Palabras clave: analítica de fútbol, eventos, pases, rendimiento, posesión, carril lateral. Abstract. The aim of this study was to analyze the effect of performing different type of passing triangulations in the own half on the ball possession and progression in professional football. A total of 70,653 triangulations in the own half that took place during 380 matches from the Spanish La Liga 2018/2019 were analyzed by using event data provided by StatsPerform. All triangulations were classified into two groups: (i) one with triangulations involving a side lane repetition and (ii) a second group with those triangulations without a side lane repetition. Considering this classification, we conducted two complementary analyses: one differentiating these two types of triangulations and another considering what kind of plays contained lateral lane repetitions, paying special attention to plays that ended in the loss of the ball. In both analyses, results show the same conclusion: a triangulation in which side lane is repeated or a play in which at least one side lane repetition is included have a greater tendency to finish with a turnover than other types of triangulations or plays in which this type of side lane repetition does not appear. Keywords: football analytics, events, passes, performance, possession, lateral lane.
In this study, we analyse the proximity between professional players during a soccer match. Specifically, we are concerned about the time a player remains at a distance to a rival that is closer than 2 m, which has a series of consequences, from the risk of contagion during a soccer match to the understanding of the tactical performance of players during the attacking/defensive phases. Departing from a dataset containing the Euclidean positions of all players during 60 matches of the Spanish national league (30 from LaLiga Santander and 30 from LaLiga Smartbank, respectively, the first and second divisions), we analysed 1,670 participations of elite soccer players. Our results show a high heterogeneity of both the player-player interaction time (from 0 to 14 min) and the aggregated time with all opponents (from <1 to 44 min). Furthermore, when the player position is taken into account, we observe that goalkeepers are the players with the lowest exposure (lower than 1 min), while forwards are the players with the highest values of the accumulated time (~21 min). In this regard, defender-forward interactions are the most frequent. To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest dataset describing the proximity between soccer players. Therefore, we believe these results may be crucial to the development of epidemiological models aiming the predict the risk of contagion between players and, furthermore, to understand better the statistics of all actions that involve proximity between players.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.