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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."
Not the same, if player A passes the ball to player B, who then blows an excellent set up, player A still gets credit for providing an excellent set up.
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.
But that could be because both teams played AMAZINGLY well.
Or it could be because one player messed up a lot on each team (the one that actually shot).
Basically, this is just software that analyzes individual players performance leading up to shots - assists. Their JOB is to get the ball up to the striker. Their job is not necessarily to actually score. The scorers, though, get all the glory. Perhaps this software will help that?
It is less flawed than the current methods mentioned in the summary. In fact, it does MORE to measure the team effort than a metric like goals scored. This is what we might call an incremental improvement. /facepalm
NFL football is more like a blend of chess and raw violence.
If NFL football is chess, soccer is go. The difference? It actually requires talent to be good at goh, whereas a supercomputer can beat anyone at chess. Skilled athletes excel at soccer, overweight drug addicts who should have failed out of high school win football games.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
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.
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
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
Yes, in general the team with the longest possession, most corner shots and most penalties (in an offensive, goal-able position) for them usually wins. There are already a few comparable statistics in place to gauge whole teams, but estimating the "game value" of a certain player is often rather hard. A player may be "valuable" just by being on the field without a single ball contact. There are players who have to be covered tightly so they CANNOT touch the ball and cannot be a sensible place to pass to, because there is ALWAYS an opponent with him. His value lies in the ability to tear apart the defense of the opponent because he has to have a watchdog, often two. He will not be counted as "valuable" in this new scoring system, even though he is probably one of the most valuable players in the team.
It's like using yards carried for football and considering the offense line useless because they don't really carry the ball anywhere.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I call that other game "American Rugby," since that's what it is.
Changa hates change.
Any football fan will tell you that when two teams play AMAZINGLY well the result will be more like 5-5 rather than 0-0.
I strongly disagree. There is much more than offense to consider in a good game of football. If the game results 5-5 it is rather clear that both defenses have failed at their job. Even a game ending 0-0 can be extremely interesting to watch for a football connoisseur. Football is not just about making goals, it's also about not conceding them.
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.
I don't recall Go masters diving to the ground and writhing in fake agony every time the opponent's hand gets them.
Drug addicts? Racist much? I think the NFL does a good job at keeping illicit drugs AND performance enhancing drugs out of the league.
And not very many NFL athletes "fail out of high school". As a matter of fact, very few NFL players get into the NFL without going to college. Would you like to tell me about the 16-year old English phenoms, how they go right into EPL feeder leagues, and how THEIR education worked out for them after failing A-levels and finishing school at 16?
I play soccer and not football, but I'm not going to pretend that the reason more people in the world play soccer because it's hard. More people play soccer in the world because it's relatively easy and all you need is a flat space and a round object. Because it is easy (but hard to perfect) is what makes it the beautiful game. NFL football is not subtle but it is not easy. I played in a third-tier professional German soccer league (as an American), but regardless of my skill, I'd never be able to play professional American Football at ANY level.
In American football, we inflate the scores. If you get it across the goal line, you get SIX points. If you can't run/catch it past that line, but decide to kick it in instead, you get THREE points.
If you break down an American football game typical score like 24-17 into 1 point for running/catching ball past the goal line and half a point for kicking it, that would be something like 3.5-2.5, which is roughly equivalent to a 1-nil victory in soccer.
I stand alone against my countrymen in this argument. Bigger is not better, my fellow Americans.
I have to take you on about the long game play though. The reason for the long games (three hours) is television and commercials. That's another reason soccer is not popular in the US, because it would require the TV channels to broadcast two uninterrupted 45 minute halves. Since TV here is dominated by advertisement money, soccer isn't financially viable for the networks because they can't sell commercials during the game.
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.