Scientists also play soccer
Scientists also play soccer
A study published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology and led by researchers from the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM) (Spain), explains how to use methodologies of complex networks to analyze the game of football teams.
"In the next few years the analysis of the game and performance of a football team will change radically." This is explained by Javier M. Buldú, researcher at the Biological Networks Laboratory (UPM.-URJC.) Of the Biomedical Technology Center and coordinator of an article, published in Frontiers in Psychology.
"After several years of talking with physicists, mathematicians, data analysts, coaches and players, we have finally understood what is the best way to adapt the methodologies of network science to understand what happens in a football field," he adds. .
The work, developed together with a group of researchers from several Spanish centers (UPM, ESADE and Telefónica) and international centers, focuses on defining the most appropriate way to transform the events that take place during a football match in a complex network, formed by nodes (players) and links (passes), for further mathematical analysis.
"The key is to understand the actions of a player as the result of interaction with his teammates and, at the same time, with his rivals. Until now the analysis focused on isolated data of the player (completed passes, goals, recoveries, ...), however you can not analyze a player without taking into account what happens in their environment. And this is the paradigm on which the sciences of complexity are based, "explains Javier Galeano, a researcher at UPM and co-author of the study.
(Photo: SINC)
The science of networks, also known as complex networks theory, is based on the analysis of the structure of a network to explain the processes that occur in it. This methodology, still very new, has been applied in an infinity of problems of a very different nature; from the appearance of a trending topic on Twitter, to the collapse of electricity grids during a blackout, through the disappearance of ecosystems.
However, when this type of analysis is applied to football, the complexity of the game requires the definition of new metrics capable of giving meaning and utility to the results. "The networks of passes between players evolve in space and time. They are alive. They move. And all this is done in continuous interaction with the network of the rival team. That is why we must adapt classic network metrics to this new problem. The construction of multi-layer networks or network-networks can be a solution, but space and time play a fundamental role, "says Javier Buldú.
However, the authors of the work went to work. They took the data from several seasons of all the first division teams and began to shred them. Passes, recoveries, fouls, goal chances, all with their spatial and temporal coordinates. "It has been complex, since at first we got results that did not make much sense. However, we finally understood that the more information we included in the construction of the networks of both teams, the better. And so we have started to get very interesting results, "says Javier Galeano.
Javier Busquets, director of the Executive Master in Digital Business at ESADE, who has also participated in the work, believes that the applications of this type of analysis have no limit since "starting from the construction of the networks of each team it is possible to analyze which It is the role of each player in the network, how the functions are distributed among all or if there are subsets of players, called motifs, which condition the game of the whole team. And what is more important, it can be quantified, which can be used to assess the performance of a player on the team or speculate on the consequences of possible signings. "
And it is that this type of analysis can be fundamental not only for the technicians of a football team, but also for scouting agencies or bookmakers. "The question is not whether the first division teams should incorporate this methodology in the preparation of a game, but how long they will take to do it," says Busquets.
"We already have the methodology in place. It is time to apply it in a practical way in the performance of the teams, "says Busquets. And it is that although the analysis of data seems to be key to understand the evolution and adaptation of the game throughout a meeting ". "Additionally," adds Busquets, "opens the door to studying competitiveness as the interaction between the networks that form the teams and the conceptualization of the generation of spaces of superiority. It is not so much about having the ball, but about anticipating the opposing team in a systematic way ".
All these ideas, and others, are described in the article by Frontiers in Psychology, whose authors say that it is only the first of a series of works in progress. (Source: UPM)
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