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

Abstract

Abstract:The game of football demands new computational approaches to measure individual and collective performance. Understanding the phenomena involved in the game may foster the identification of strengths and weaknesses, not only of each player, but also of the whole team. The development of assertive quantitative methodologies constitutes a key element in sports training. In football, the predictability and stability inherent in the motion of a given player may be seen as one of the most important concepts to fully characterise the variability of the whole team. This paper characterises the predictability and stability levels of players during an official football match. A Fractional Calculus (FC) approach to define a player's trajectory. By applying FC, one can benefit from newly OPEN ACCESSEntropy 2014, 16 646 considered modeling perspectives, such as the fractional coefficient, to estimate a player's predictability and stability. This paper also formulates the concept of attraction domain, related to the tactical region of each player, inspired by stability theory principles. To compare the variability inherent in the player's process variables (e.g., distance covered) and to assess his predictability and stability, entropy measures are considered. Experimental results suggest that the most predictable player is the goalkeeper while, conversely, the most unpredictable players are the midfielders. We also conclude that, despite his predictability, the goalkeeper is the most unstable player, while lateral defenders are the most stable during the match.

Sensitivity pattern recognition and variableness of competitive adolescent soccer relative performance indicators

“…Unambiguously to soccer, players' positional variability illustrates the tactical regions where they play during games [36], and may allow for the stratification of the performance of players from different level of skills [37]. In the meantime, finding from this study supported with the previous study that indicated that striker is thinner, endure more than GK and skillful in heading compared to goalkeeper but not for defenders [36][37].…”

“…In the meantime, finding from this study supported with the previous study that indicated that striker is thinner, endure more than GK and skillful in heading compared to goalkeeper but not for defenders [36][37]. For instance, finding of the current study might suggesting that, for a pacey striker and a free role forward should have the great ability of pace, acceleration, Nevertheless, output from the significant parameters related to soccer performance were followed up by stratification on the variability on the players performance.…”

On an Entropy-based Performance Analysis in Sports

“…Unlike cognitive theories that support traditional motor control models, e.g., [13] and [13] considers variability to be a negative factor in learning, the nonlinear perspective supports that "embedding chaos" into the process may be necessary to establish new human movement patterns [15]. However, only some few studies, such as [9], [6] and [17], analyzed sports from a nonlinear perspective, using tools like entropy. This recent use of nonlinear measures in sports have fostered the evaluation of not only the magnitude of the human variability, but also its temporal structure, thus allowing to describe complex conditions that cannot be described using only linear tools [12].…”

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“…For those reasons the tendencies and patterns of relationship between team-members it is not always the same or repetitive (Gréhaigne, Godbout, & Zerai, 2011). In fact, the ability to be variable and improve the dynamic of cooperation may improve the possibility to overcome the opponent and decrease the chance to be blocked by the opponent (Couceiro, Clemente, Martins, & Machado, 2014).…”