Expanding the Scope of Football Analytics by Integrating Tracking Data and Utilizing Statistical Learning
Publicerad
Författare
Typ
Examensarbete för masterexamen
Master's Thesis
Master's Thesis
Modellbyggare
Tidskriftstitel
ISSN
Volymtitel
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Sammanfattning
The recent decade has seen a data revolution within football as data analytics and
statistical learning have become established vital tools. The data revolution has also
seen the emergence of a new type of football data called tracking data. This thesis
first explores how information from tracking data can be integrated with established
event data and improve an established statistical learning model providing an expectancy
metric for passes called xP. Secondly, the thesis explores how it can used to
create a new type of statistical expectancy metric for player playability previously
unattainable with only event data.
Using event data and tracking data from 28 real football games, these separate
datasets have been synchronized to extract new information and context for passing
events. This information was used to train and compare a statistical learning model
for the xP metric with a model only trained on the previously known event data.
The results indicate that the added tracking data information provides a significantly
improved xP model especially in terms of understanding passing events and
therefore making more realistic pass probability predictions. Despite clear improvement,
there exist possibilities to further improve the xP model in regards to for
example a more accurate data synchronization process as well as further improved
feature engineering.
Moreover, the synchronized tracking and event data in combination with the improved
xP model were used to develop a metric that describe player playability
expectancy called xPlay. The new metric provides a simple and elegant way of
measuring player playability and results of various implementations indicate that
the metric can serve as a great tool in both player and team evaluation. Although
promising results the metric is in need of more evaluation on a bigger scale.
Beskrivning
Ämne/nyckelord
Event Data, Tracking Data, Statistical Learning, xP, xPlay