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."

Comments

Re:incomplete metrics

[fiannaFailMan]

Moving across a zone or defender to clear space for someone who actually handles the ball?

Handle the ball? Someone like Thierry Henry?

Re:Sounds rather slanted

[Al Al Cool J]

Spain *are* a much better team than Switzerland and this system would show that. Have them play a thousand times, and Spain would win the vast majority. So I'm not sure I see your point.

You do make a good point about Italy. However I'd be interested to see what the system actually says about Italy before condemning it.