Quantified Soccer Using Positional Data: A Case Study

Abstract

Performance development in international soccer is undergoing a silent revolution fueled by the rapidly increasing availability of athlete quantification data and advanced analytics. Objective performance data from teams and individual players are increasingly being collected automatically during practices and more recently also in matches after FIFA's 2015 approval of wearables in electronic performance and tracking systems. Some clubs have even started collecting data from players outside of the sport arenas. Further algorithmic analysis of these data might provide vital insights for individual training personalization and injury prevention, and also provide a foundation for evidence-based decisions for team performance improvements. This paper presents our experiences from using a detailed radio-based wearable positioning data system in an elite soccer club. We demonstrate how such a system can detect and find anomalies, trends, and insights vital for individual athletic and soccer team performance development. As an example, during a normal microcycle (6 days) full backs only covered 26% of the sprint distance they covered in the next match. This indicates that practitioners must carefully consider to proximity size and physical work pattern in microcycles to better resemble match performance. We also compare and discuss the accuracy between radio waves and GPS in sampling tracking data. Finally, we present how we are extending the radio-based positional system with a novel soccer analytics annotation system, and a real-time video processing system using a video camera array. This provides a novel toolkit for modern forward-looking soccer coaches that we hope to integrate in future studies.