
PageRank Algorithm Reveals Soccer Teams' Strategies - Anon84
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428399/pagerank-algorithm-reveals-soccer-teams/
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waterside81
Yeah, I'm not sold on this one. This sounds like it's trying to make a story
up after the fact. Of course Xavi gets the ball the most, he plays the point
of a diamond midfield, or the "trequatrista" role. Since the point of soccer
is to move forward, he is in the position most likely to touch the ball the
most (middle of the pitch). The left back (Jordi Alba in this year's Euro)
won't touch the ball too much ... because he plays left back.

Similarly, for Italy, I don't need any graph theory to know that Pirlo gets
the ball the most because (A) he's their best player and (B) because he plays
in a deep position in the midfield so it's easy for him to get the ball from
the goalkeeper, defenders, or other midfielders.

Long story short - teams set themselves up so their best players get the ball
the most. You don't need to be a mathemagician to dig that nugget up.

~~~
afy
Actually, in the final Pirlo did not have the ball the most for Italy because
he was closely marked by Xavi. A central defender, Barzagli got more touches
than him. It would be interesting to see the graph of that match.

Also your final assertion that teams set themselves up so their best players
get the ball the most seems a bit off to me. Consider FC Barcelona. Lionel
Messi is arguably their best player but you would be hard pressed to find a
game in which he has the ball the most since he plays high up on the pitch as
an attacker.

I agree with you in that single match analysis using this technique doesn't
really produce any new insights. I think this analysis would be very
interesting when comparing between different games however. e.g. comparing
Italy's match against England where Pirlo was effectively given free reign of
the pitch to their match against Spain where he was shut down for most of the
match. I would love to get my hands on some raw data from Optasports!

~~~
djKianoosh
On a tangent.. I'd love to see a heat map of Messi's movement for Barcelona
(and Argentina). Whenever I watch him he's all over the place. And to my eyes,
he's most dangerous when picking the ball up either from the midfield line or
on the touchline half way up the field. In both cases, when runs at pace with
the ball he's diabolically good. Any data/visualization to track that would be
fantastic to see, especially filtering only on those instances where he causes
real damage to the opponent (e.g. a shot on goal for him or a teammate)...

~~~
llimllib
For any game from a major league, you can go to the soccernet game summary and
click on GameCast to see a heat map for any player. Here's Messi in the
Barcelona 3 - 1 Real Madrid from December: <http://i.imgur.com/XEvpW.jpg>

(From
[http://soccernet.espn.go.com/gamecast?id=323887&cc=5901](http://soccernet.espn.go.com/gamecast?id=323887&cc=5901)
)

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patrickk
I would be skeptical about the usefulness of this data to soccer. It can
answer questions like "how many passes" or how connected a player is but it
doesn't tell you _how_ to play like Spain or how to beat Spain. It just
confirms what you can tell by watching Spain on tv: they pass lot, and they're
really skillful. The number of completed passes, distance ran, assists, shots
on/off target, goals, etc is already heavily tracked
(<http://www.optasports.com/sports/football.html>).

As an aside, the reason for the prevalence of the tiki-taka philosophy is
largely because of the legendary Barcelona youth training camp - La Masia
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Masia>). The whole way of thinking about
soccer differs massively in the British Isles compared to continental Europe -
in England and Ireland it's the outdated 'kick-and rush' style football (aka
"hoof it up to the big striker") versus the more patient possession-focused,
passing game in continental Europe.

~~~
jackhammer2022
>"..in England and Ireland it's the outdated 'kick-and rush' style football
(aka "hoof it up to the big striker") versus the more patient possession-
focused, passing game in continental Europe. "

This is the very reason as to why England fails to perform in the big
competitions. Lack of creativity.

> "...but it doesn't tell you how to play like Spain or how to beat Spain."

Exactly this data might provide some statistics on the formation and player
agility but a team's performance is largely dependent on the gameplay and the
strategy of the manager.

I find this site: <http://www.zonalmarking.net/> to be much more useful when
it comes to tactical analysis.

~~~
sien
It was going to be interesting to see how long in this thread before someone
mentioned Zonal Marking.

It is interesting that the analysis doesn't mention Barcelona. That might be
because reactive, kick long football has beaten Barca twice in Champion's
League in the past 4 years. Mind you, Barca are one of the best club teams in
the past 30 years at least.

Inter Milan and Chelsea had dramatically less of the possession and passing
than the tikki-takka of Barca but both managed to get over the top of Barca.

A team's performance is also dependent on the personnel. The Barca core that
is also the core of Spain and they are phenomenal. Who knows when another
midfield like Xavi, Busquets and Ienesta (and Messi for Barca) will appear.

Or as someone said about Italy vs Spain, Spain won because they had 3 players
at least as good Pirlo.

~~~
zzygan
Zonal Marking is a fantastic site for tactical minded football fans. Highly
recommended. Not overly surprised that its referenced 2 or 3 times on HN.
Switzerland is the closest example of Chelsea/Inter in the case of Spain.
Switzerland shut down the midfield pretty effectively, however Spain were
particularly awful in that game, and Spain did remedy that situation later on.

In watching Euro2012, I have found it amusing about Spain being called boring
by plenty of authors. The only way teams have found to stop Spain has been to
park the bus, and let Spain have the ball for long periods. The negativity of
opposing teams was reason for the lack of activity in the final third of the
field. The result Italy in the final was a great example of what happens when
a team tries to attack Spain. They get beaten soundly.

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fluorescentLAMP
I write for MLSsoccer.com and I do some very similar types of analysis.

Here is something recent including similar network graphics and player average
position. [http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/article/2012/04/10/central-
win...](http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/article/2012/04/10/central-winger-new-
way-visualizing-beautiful-game)

I've done a bunch of stuff with centrality and other stuff, but that isn't
exactly my target audience at the moment.

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muyuu
Spain's success is not about passing accuracy alone, nor can one reduce team
quality to measuring the number of successful passes. Sure it's generally a
good statistic, as is possession, but many other factors count and completely
different styles can be equally successful.

People tend to overreact to the latest result.

Spain's biggest success was being able to accommodate to a system without a
reference striker (Villa being injured). Puyol was also out and Sergio Ramos
played very well as CB, leaving Arbeloa as RB despite being a dead spot
supporting the attack. Xabi Alonso had a lot fewer of his long pin-point
passes (his best quality) and had a more defensive role, Iniesta held the ball
more to link Xavi and Silva. All in all it was very surprising that they won
despite missing two of their very best players for the tournament. However,
had they lost to Portugal in the penalty shoot-out (and they play a COMPLETELY
different style with much fewer passes) then we wouldn't have this article in
FP right now.

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sid6376
For someone who follows soccer closely, none of the revelations were
surprising, apart from the centrality of Capdevilla, which again can possibly
be explained by the fact that Spain play a passing game right down to the
goalkeeper. So while the goalkeeper of other teams hoof the ball down the
pitch, Spain's goalkeeper prefers to pass it to one of his available
defenders. Capdevilla being the left back is a usual supect. I am sure the
right back would also have a high network centrality. Taking nothing away from
the analysis though, its still pretty cool.

~~~
muyuu
Capdevilla was fantastic, but I'd say Jordi Alba managed to improve on him
this euros. Incredible LB.

Villa and Puyol haven't been properly replaced though. Playing Ramos as CB
left Arbeloa on RB and he's not at the same level.

~~~
sid6376
Villa would come back for the world cup and Jordi Alba was just plain awesome.
The bigger concern for me would be how to replace Xavi who would be 34 by the
time of the world cup.

~~~
zzygan
Pirlo for Italy was 34 for this years Euro's, and look at the tournament he
had. Its possible if Xavi is rested appropriately that Spain can have the same
effect in Brazil. Scary actually.

Stats are important to Football, but pure data is useless to sport in general
without a way of applying the data. Interesting is how the data is applied
more than anything else. Can comparisons across time be drawn to teams across
era's to statistically determine who the best team of all time are?

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Nimi
I have strong doubts about the effectiveness of this method: Why do I need
complex algorithms to know Xavi is the pivot that drives Spain forward? That
can be ascertained by either watching the game, or looking at his passes
received/made stats.

But if we already found ourselves talking about soccer, I would like to
shamelessly plug a wonderful soccer tactics website:
[http://www.zonalmarking.net/2012/04/17/bayern-
munich-2-1-rea...](http://www.zonalmarking.net/2012/04/17/bayern-
munich-2-1-real-madrid-what-type-of-player-to-use-as-the-number-ten/) (I
linked to what I think is the best recent article)

~~~
drstewart
Because complex algorithms can reveal information that isn't immediately
obvious from basic stats, let alone "gut feelings" that you get from merely
watching a game. This type of thinking is what leads to disparities between
who the best players actually are and who the fans think the best players are
(see: baseball All-Star voting).

~~~
Nimi
I wholeheartedly agree with you on the gut feeling vs. stats issue, but this
complex algorithm in and of itself doesn't seem to reveal any information that
isn't obvious from basic stats: Xavi is clearly seen as the "dynamo" from the
basic stats perspective (in fact he routinely breaks passes received/made
records). If one would come with a complex algorithm that would reveal
something new (to me, to the media), that would be really exciting for me.

Since you seem to have an interest in such situations (complex techniques
claiming discrepancy between consensus and actual performance), I'll go off on
a tangent and shamelessly plug (again! don't people have any shame these
days?) what I think is a very good example: [http://wagesofwins.com/wins-
produced/how-to-calculate-wins-p...](http://wagesofwins.com/wins-produced/how-
to-calculate-wins-produced/) <http://wagesofwins.com/faq/>

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brudgers
The network shows Torres upfront for Spain despite his not appearing in the
final until the second overtime (106th minute), but shows Van Bronkhorst who
was substituted in the 105th minute?

From all that analysis, it doesn't really follow that the 2010 World Cup Final
was Spain 1-0 Netherlands with the sole goal coming in the 116th minute after
each team used all their allotted substitutes. Though Spain had more of each,
corner kicks, shots and shots on target were similar for both teams.

The real telling statistic is fouls - which ultimately led to the Dutch being
a man down (Heitinga) when the Spanish scored, through the center back
position which he played.

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freshrap6
Semi-tangent: Are there startups who do work like this, analyzing sports games
or developing technology for sports (other than fitness trackers)? I'd be
interested in learning more about them if so.

~~~
GFischer
Yes, there's a whole world of startups devoted to that.

The one I know is a Uruguayan startup called Kizanaro.

<http://www.kizanaro.com/web/index.php?lang=en>

They work with the Uruguayan national team (American champions and #2 ranked
squad behind Spain), although for now much of their analytics are human-
assisted.

The MIT Sloan Sports Analytics conference is the mecca of this kind of
companies:

<http://www.sloansportsconference.com/>

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jboggan
Interesting approach but I'm not sure how significant these graph theoretical
methods are when the networks are so very small. This would be more revealing
on a metrized graph.

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alter8
In other sports both teams are expected to score tens, even hundreds of times.
In soccer one goal often is enough. Collecting stats for analysis seems
entertaining for the observers, but how is that useful for the teams, in a
sport that is so dependent on luck?

~~~
philwelch
Hundreds of times? 100 points in an NBA game is about 50 times on average--you
miss 1 out of 2 free throws about as often as you get a three point play,
probably. 10 runs is high for a baseball game. 50 points in an NFL game is
about ten scoring opportunities, if you figure five touchdowns and five field
goals. And yet statistics are meaningful for all of these games, just as they
are for soccer.

