The “Hockey” Assist Makes the Difference—Validation of a Defensive Disruptiveness Model to Evaluate Passing Sequences in Elite Soccer

Abstract

With the growing availability of position data in sports, spatiotemporal analysis in soccer is a topic of rising interest. The aim of this study is to validate a performance indicator, namely D-Def, measuring passing effectiveness. D-Def calculates the change of the teams’ centroid, centroids of formation lines (e.g., defensive line), teams’ surface area, and teams’ spread in the following three seconds after a pass and therefore results in a measure of disruption of the opponents’ defense following a pass. While this measure was introduced earlier, in this study we aim to prove the usefulness to evaluate attacking sequences. In this study, 258 games of Dutch Eredivisie season 2018/19 were included, resulting in 13,094 attacks. D-Def, pass length, pass velocity, and pass angle of the last four passes of each attack were calculated and compared between successful and unsuccessful attacks. D-Def showed higher values for passes of successful compared to unsuccessful attacks (0.001 < p ≤ 0.029, 0.06 ≤ d ≤ 0.23). This difference showed the highest effects sizes in the penultimate pass (d = 0.23) and the maximal D-Def value of an attack (d = 0.23). Passing length (0.001 < p ≤ 0.236, 0.08 ≤ d ≤ 0.17) and passing velocity (0.001 < p ≤ 0.690, −0.09 ≤ d ≤ 0.12) showed inconsistent results in discriminating between successful and unsuccessful attacks. The results indicate that D-Def is a useful indicator for the measurement of pass effectiveness in attacking sequences, highlighting that successful attacks are connected to disruptive passing. Within successful attacks, at least one high disruptive action (pass with D-Def > 28) needs to be present. In addition, the penultimate pass (“hockey assist”) of an attack seems crucial in characterizing successful attacks.

Is a compact organization important for defensive success in elite soccer? – Analysis based on player tracking data

“…Ultimately, no possession is similar to a previous one, which leads to a great dispersion of values. Nevertheless, these small effect sizes are comparable to other studies in this context 20,21 and are therefore meaningful. Further, since the compact organization is only a small subset of a team's tactical behaviour in defense, its importance is made clear by the differences found.…”

“…However, this study concentrated on the effects of the playing phase of defensive play. Therefore, in accordance with previous studies, 20,21 we exclusively included possessions that had a minimum of three consecutive passes and a minimum duration of five seconds.…”

“…To determine the tactical formation of a team, we used an approach that has already been used to identify formation lines. 20,27,28 However, we expanded this approach by an increasing number of time windows and a dynamic assignment of players to account for in-game formation changes 29 and substitutions. We defined two tactical formations (one defending formation and one attacking formation) for each of the two teams over a ranging window of 15 min (resulting in six defending and six attacking formations for every team per match).…”

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“…In addition, most of the investigations dealt with single players’ game performances. As suggested in previous studies, we divided the game into individual attacking sequences ( Forcher et al, 2021 ). Subsequently, we assessed the success of each individual ball possession for the own as well as for the opposing team.…”

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“…D-Def—computed as the displacement of the average X and Y positions (or centroids) for the full team, and the defensive, midfield, and attacking lines between the moment a pass was given (t0) and 3 s later (t0+3). D-Def is constructed by three components: the disruption in the longitudinal and lateral directions, and disruption of the team surface and spread area [For an in-depth description, see ( 33 )]. This results in a measure from 0 to 150 (with 0 indicating no disruption and 150 indicating a maximum of disruption).…”