Slashdot Mirror
Ranking Soccer Players By Following the Bouncing Ball
sciencehabit excerpts from an interesting report on statistics for soccer, in the stats-obsessed world of sports: "Only a handful of soccer ranking systems exist, most of which rely on limited information: the number of goals scored in a match, the number of goals assisted, and some indices of a match's difficulty and importance. ... So researchers turned to an unlikely source: social networks. Applying the kinds of mathematical techniques used to map Facebook friends and other networks, the team created software that can trace the ball's flow from player to player. As the program follows the ball, it assigns points for precise passing and for passes that ultimately lead to a shot at the goal. Whether the shot succeeds doesn't matter. Only the ball's flow toward the goal and each player's role in getting it there factors into the program's point system, which then calculates a skill index for each team and player."
News at 11.
Points for not scoring? Isn't that the same as a woman telling you that she just wants to be friends because your friendship means more than a relationship would?
I wonder how high Green ranks.
Of course, this is an incomplete metric for player worth.
How about off-ball activity that contributes? Moving across a zone or defender to clear space for someone who actually handles the ball? What about the guy who makes a brilliant cut but doesn't get served well by a teammate, so never handles the ball?
What about defense?
Never mind the fact that this metric would be biased against Italian league players, where ball control and quality opportunities is more important than number of shots. You could game this system very easily by cranking shots from 30 yards.
Soccer doesn't lend itself well to statistical analysis of players. That's one of the things that makes it a beautiful sport and fun to discuss, IMO.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
assigns points for precise passing and for passes that ultimately lead to a shot at the goal
calculates a skill index for each team and player.
Wow, that's really going to tell you about a players defensive skills, isn't it.
Not that those could possibly important in a game where usually only one or two balls make it to the net the whole game. I mean, it's not like defense would play much of a role there.
"If God had meant football to be played in the air he would have put grass in the sky" - Brian Clough
Doesn't measure defensive contributions and doesn't account for stronger defense against known good players. Someone remind these people that soccer is a team sport.
The fifa world cup, it infects everything. Especially those bloody vuvuzel-BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
If it rhymes it must be true.
Surely you are aware of the fact that tracing that ball will be only the first step in curing cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, poverty, hunger, energy crisis, global warming AND bringing the balance to the Force?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Say whaa? Yeah, I guess with the scores always so low, you gotta find something to hype.. I think they should light the ball on fire...
Todos mis movimientos están friamente calculados
I assume there is already some kind of decent metrics for rating players to enable fantasy leagues - the sort where average joe picks a bunch of players (from all teams) that he likes, and compares his "fantasy team" to all the other average joes who choose to spend their time doing the same. What metrics do these fantasy leagues use?
Aussie rules football (AFL) has very specific player scoring, developed from the work of Champion Data (not a large amount of detail there). These data and metrics are now used by every offical team, commentators and form the basis of most fantasy league scores. On the local news site which runs the largest fantasy league competition there is a lot more about how points are awarded, and performances of players through the season (about halfway through season 2010 at the moment).
Looking even more in depth, creating heat maps from player data, are some PHD students at my old university
I would have thought these kinds of data and analysis would be even more advanced in a sport that has much more history and far more fans around the world than AFL?
Under those circumstances, Spain played an amazing game against Switzerland this week: Hundreds of accurate passes that ended in shots. More passes in one half than most teams make in an entire game. And yet, they didn't score, and lost the game against a team that had 25% ball position, but actually managed to score.
It would also mean that every Italian national team from the last 30 years happens to be terrible, despite their world championship titles.
Follow the bouncing ball, children.
If you've watched any English match in the past decade, you will see there are a slew of stats. When a player is on screen, stats are displayed such as: number of passes, % of passes completed, assists, shots, shots on target, tackles, total km run, and more.
On the other hand, as we've already had these stats for a decade or two we know how irrelevant they are. There are plenty of players that run around waving for the ball and when they get it simply knock it back or sideways in a manner that contributes little. They have great stats and may touch it in the build up to a goal but are far from being the architects.
Using the same software to analyse companies and creative team, mentioned in the article, that is a joke. As is the original researcher trying to understand why his team isn't winning when it only has one decent player.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
There is a company called Champion Data that currently does a similar thing for Australian Rules football. They generate player rankings based on a whole range of minutae. A pass is worth next to nothing if it is a short distance to an open teammate in the backline but worth a lot if it is a long accurate pass to a player in a dangerous position - and the player gets credit regardless of what happens next, so if they pass to a teammate in good position who fluffs the shot at goal, the passer still gets credit. The points are also standardised across matches so that player performance can be compared even though some matches are fast and furious and some are slow and boring. The resulting rankings often bear little relation to the regular stats because they take into account quality of possession as well as quantity. I have long thought soccer has a dearth of this sort of analysis. They tend to focus on stuff like % time of possession. Often this just means a team has been knocking the ball about in their own half, which the opposition doesn't mind at all. And "shots on target" includes both a powerful strike from close range and a puny long range effort that the goalkeeper has no problem gathering. I'm sure if the Americans cared more about soccer they'd be all over this. Look at what they've done with baseball - the statistics are substantially more engaging than the actual game.
This is a must-watch for all soccer fans:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xLn-X8YJRg
You must mean tracing your balls and palpating the region. It's the most effective way to detect testicular cancer and get early treatment. Perhaps this algorithm could socially map our manhood's movements to see if they are ever get heavier on either side. FOR SCIENCE (and health)!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
For the benefit of World Cup viewers, this may seem more familiar:
"Only a handful ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ exist, most ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ information: the ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ match, the number ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ a match's ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ So researchers ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ Applying ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ the ball's ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ ultimately ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ ball's flow toward the goal ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ for each team and player."
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
Working Brazzers.com account:
brazzers4chan
cumbuckets
Try it before you call it fake. I have no idea why it hasn't been deactivated.
Please, stop using the word soccer. The real name of the game is FOOTBALL. It goes for that name in all the world but the US (even in Italy, even if there it is also called Calcio) What americans call Football is called in the rest of the world American Football or US Footbal. Regarding this scoring method, how would a player with an outsanding dribbling like Garrincha be rated?
PEÃ'AROL: SerÃs eterno como el tiempo y floreceras en cada primavera
It may be the dawn of a new age not only in football but in other sports alike.
Having a concrete mathmatical tool to rank your players will be an invaluable asset to any future team manager.
Deep analysys of team play and players movements...
Its a foobtall theorycrafter's dream.
Have the spectators estimate the player's worth. There's an old saying, everyone would be the better coach, even more than the better president. When you listen to soccer enthusiasts, they all know by far more about how much the players can and cannot do than the idiot coach that put the idiot up again while ignoring that spectator favorite.
Yes, these players won't be as "good". Most likely not. But let's look at the bottom of the reason for this ranking. Why do we want to rank players anyway? To find out how much we should pay them. And what makes a player valuable? No, not the goals he shoots. The amount of people he attracts to come to the stadium. Who cares about goals? People want to see interesting games! And while Italy and Germany are probably amongst the best teams of the world currently, they play horribly unattractive soccer games. Very defensive, very little action. That's not interesting! The interesting part about soccer games is the goals! Everyone wants to see goals! Would I buy a ticket for a game of Italy? Not even if I was Italian!
But there's always players that make games interesting because they move the game, because they create interesting moments, because they fight for the ball and then carry it towards the enemy goal. That's what people want to see! And these players are then also the ones that bring people to the stadium, who gets people to buy tickets and merchandize.
So if you want to use "social networks" to gauge player value, do it the right way. Ask the one whose money you want!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I thought it was going to be a story about testicles...
Not a huge fan. Nevertheless a movement should be started to address the game played and enjoyed by billions of people as "football". IMHO there's "football" and there's "American football".
/.er will .... Oh forget it.
Not trolling, just plating a seed in the hope a sporty
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
I'm sorry, which sport were you talking about?
I definitely do not want to be goalie for my team. Or maybe my team doesn't want me to be their goalie.
And while Italy and Germany are probably amongst the best teams of the world currently, they play horribly unattractive soccer games. Very defensive, very little action.
Wait, what? Have you ever watched a German team play? They didn't score their 4 goals off the counter....
For that matter, the Italians don't really play defensively until they're ahead by a few goals, or until late in the game.
I am become
Nobody really cares at about how well a team plays if that team never wins anything. Or: nobody cares how bad a team plays if it wins a trophy. You can play awfully but if you win the World Cup all your country will celebrate at least until the next day.
A metric could be more interesting for single players but again: if the computer says that you're good but you never win anything maybe your not so good. Getting in the right team at the right moment is also an important skill.
The top UK teams (and others around the world I guess..) all use Prozone - http://www.prozonesports.com/
From what I have seen at the International Broadcasting Convention http://www.ibc.org/ some TV production companies do a fair bit of of markup on their footage too
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
Even the creators of the Ignobel prize admit that some of the science that they're making fun of may one day turn out to be useful. Pascal was trying to prove 1=0 and therefore (in his own logic) God is infallible.. he failed, but in the process came up with loads of really useful mathematics and some decent philosophy to boot. Boole did the same thing and gave us boolean logic. Off the top of my head, the same science could vaguely (I'm just using this as an abstract example) be applied to Barnes Wallace's famous bouncing bomb which allowed the British to prove they were capable of hitting back against the Germans at a point where the Russians had given up all hope on the Alliance.
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
The rest of the world gives a fuck...unlike the sports that the Americans have made up just so they can be the best in the world at something.
I'm not a soccer fan but appreciate the World Cup. I'm sure the US would celebrate if it won the World Cup - it's quite an achievement.
Perhaps the US could ingratiate itself with other countries by becoming more involved in such events?
As has been posted already - the rest of the world is more than mildly interested in soccer (or 'football' as we call it in the UK - not to be confused with 'American football') - hence is it the most popular sport in the world. Worth a look-in maybe?
Being a non-American, I'm not interested in baseball. But if this story was about baseball, I would simply ignore it instead of posting a dumb comment just for the sake of pissing off Americans.
If you post as an AC, don't expect me to spend a mod point on you.
...the Tom Green school of medicine?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
It might also be a completely useless study of a pointless topic.
Also, completely WRONG as the very first commenter to TFA puts it:
ponckk
a team... can play as never before, and still loose, if they don't score.
A team that plays very poorly, can score, and win.....
look at the world cup history, and the majority of soccer matches.
Look at the debut of spain in the world cup...
your software is really nice and the algorithm has to be great. but it doesn't apply in real life.
thats why there arn't many stats in soccer, that is why is simple...GET THE BALL IN, thats what counts.
And your algorithm is leaving that out immediatly
Today, 02:27:4
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Perhaps the US could ingratiate itself with other countries by becoming more involved in such events?
As has been posted already - the rest of the world is more than mildly interested in soccer (or 'football' as we call it in the UK - not to be confused with 'American football') - hence is it the most popular sport in the world. Worth a look-in maybe?"
LOL...just kidding.
Actually, sadly...if the US did somehow manage to win it....I doubt most of the US would even notice, soccer just isn't that popular here, although it has gained popularity in grade school and high schools.
I tried to watch it...and just got a bit bored. The low scoring, and letting people tie just doesn't seem right to me for a competitive game.
I was interested today to find out that the world cup isn't played every year?? Only every 4 years or something.
I don't understand that....I mean, I thought the world cup was analogous to to the Super Bowl in the US, something played every year to determine the champion.
Is there not a soccer champion every year?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Trying to measure a qualitative activity with quantitative tools is meaningless.
Maradona played socccer!
And a lot of us Americans also give a fuck.
for anyone but midfielders. Defenders, and forwards performance cannot be judged solely on their passing and if that results in a goal. e.g. Filipo Inzaghi, he stands offside for 85 minutes, barely in the game only makes a couple of passes that may or may not find their target but as soon as there is a loose ball in the box he is there to put it in the net. a defender marks a striker out of the game, hardly touches the ball because the opposition could never pass it to the player he was marking, defender has had a brilliant game, but this will say he has been average because he only made a few passes and none led to a shot.
I should read down the rest of this page to see if you're just trolling.
I tried to watch it...and just got a bit bored. The low scoring, and letting people tie just doesn't seem right to me for a competitive game.
What has the rate of scoring got to do with competitiveness? I'm kind of confused. Even baseball doesn't have humungously high scores.
Perhaps you'd prefer cricket, where a side can score several hundred points (known as 'runs') and take up to twenty wickets in a match.
As for ties. Only America thinks a draw is unacceptable in sport. The rest of the world copes quite easily with the concept.
Sometimes, just possibly, neither team is sufficiently better than the other to win the match. Why not allow the final score the reflect this?
Obviously this is the World Cup and so there'll be a knock-out cup format (instead of the league format, which is the current stage). As you can't knock someone out in the event of a draw (sorry, a 'tie') the rules permit the use of a couple of mechanisms to avoid this. First is a 30 minute period of extra time (erm, 'overtime'?) then there are penalties.
I don't understand that....I mean, I thought the world cup was analogous to to the Super Bowl in the US, something played every year to determine the champion.
Superbowl:
- Annual
- Play-off following league competition
- Only involves American teams
- Competed by professional sports clubs
World Cup:
- Every four years
- 2 year qualification involving regional qualifiers (in Europe taking the form of mini-leagues)
- Involves the entire world
- Competed by National teams
So no, not analogous to the Superbowl at all.
Is there not a soccer champion every year?
No. There are thousands.
E.g. the equivalent in Football terms to a Superbowl winner is whoever wins the MLS play-offs.
However, there are equivalents in the English Premier League, the Scottish Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, the J League and.. well, every country has its own league competition, producing a champion.
Of course, there are also cup competitions. In England there's the League Cup, the FA Cup, the Johnson's Paint Trophy, the Community Shield and a number of lesser trophies competed for annually. There are also the Europe wide competitions such as the Intertoto Cup, the Europa League (which despite the name is a cup competition) and the Champions League (which despite the name is both a cup competition, and also involves non-champions).
Other continents have their own equivalents.
Each year there's also a World Club tournament, the winner of which are the World Club Champions.
Then there's the African Cup of Nations, which is a competition for national teams, which takes place at the start of each year.
Every four years (bisecting the world cup) there are the European Championships, in which the European national teams compete.
I'll stop now, but hopefully you at least have an inkling of just how much bigger this whole football thing is than something as inconsequential as the Superbowl in the US.
Why am I not surprised this is a US team of scientists? It's pretty adorable to see 'merkins indulge in their favourite sport; creating statistics.
Any ratings system that ranks Sergio Ramos on the same pitch as Xavi Hernandez needs work.
Ah, denial is a beatiful thing.
You clicked, You commented, You give a fuck all right.
What denial? We are a country of 300 million. I bet there are more soccer fans in the US than there are in a small population country where 95% of the country are soccer fans.
Does successful diving with impunity count?
Would love to see some results of this analysis.
This stats company will offer it in time:
http://www.optasports.com/
A blog I run for the wealth
I take everything back. At the time of writing this, Italy is 0:1 behind New Zealand.
For anyone not familiar with soccer: Imagine Canada playing Ice Hockey against Mongolia...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.