Ranking Soccer Players By Following the Bouncing Ball 142
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."
Re:Um ... (Score:1, Informative)
It really isn't up to a midfielder/playmaker whether or not the final shot in an attack he helped create will be a good one or not. Hence the only fair way to evaluate that aspect of a player's game is to disregard whether the attack leads to a goal or not.
Re:incomplete metrics (Score:1, Informative)
What about defense?
From the journal article: "We take into account defensive efficiency by letting each player start a number of paths proportional to the number of balls that he recovers during the match." However, you're right about movement off the ball.
The article is just plain wrong (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Hey... As long as it is for such a worthy cause (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Um ... (Score:2, Informative)
NFL football is more like a blend of chess and raw violence.
No, chess boxing [guardian.co.uk] is more like blend of chess and raw violence.
Re:For the benefit of World Cup viewers (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Um ... (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, you can prove that the ball isn't being kicked "back and forth" by watching 15 minutes of match analysis. The English shows are very good at this (when Rupert Murdoch doesn't have a pay-per-view monopoly) as are the Germans. I imagine the Spanish and Italians are too. American sports tv? Not so much, and and that's why we don't like soccer because all we see is a ball being kicked back and forth. It's just like my English friends who think US Football is just running into a pile then resting for 30 seconds.
I challenge you to put a soccer ball on the ground from thirty yards and kick it into an empty net. "Dumb luck"...not so much.
In other news, NASCAR is nothing but dumb luck and guys endlessly driving in circles.
Re:Um ... (Score:3, Informative)
That's what's great about soccer though. You can dominate all the stats, time-of-possession, corner kicks, chances...but all that matters is goals. It's the ultimate "bottom line" sport, which gives fans lots of time to bitch and complain about "we should have won because...". It's fun.
Re:I dunno... (Score:5, Informative)
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.