Developing a two-dimensional landscape model of opportunities for penetrative passing in association football – Stage I

ABSTRACT

This study investigated a method for modelling a landscape of opportunities for penetrative passing completed on the ground by ball carriers in association football. Analysis of video footage of competitive, professional football performance was undertaken, identifying a sample (n = 20) of attacking sub-phases of gameplay which ended in a penetrative pass being made between defenders to a receiver. Players’ relative co-positioning during performance was modelled using bi-dimensional x and y coordinates of each player recorded at 25 fps. Data on player movements during competitive interactions were captured using an automatic video tracking system, recording player co-locations emerging over time, as well as current and estimated running velocities. Results revealed that the half spaces between the midfield and both sidelines were the key locations on field providing most affordances for penetrating passes in the competitive performance sample analysed. Due to the dynamics of players’ co-adaptive performance behaviours, it was expected that opportunities for penetrative passing by ball carriers would not display a homogeneous space-time spread across the entire field. Results agreed with these expectations, showing how a landscape of opportunities for penetrative passing might be specified by information emerging from continuous player interactions in competitive performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Penetrative passing
• affordances
• team sports
• emergent behaviours
• co-adaptation

Acknowledgments

The authors thank STATS SportVU for kindly providing the data. The authors would also like to thank João Wemans for fruitful discussions that contributed to the development of this work.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia [PD/BD/106007/2014]; Instituto Dom Luiz, Universidade de Lisboa [UID/GEO/50019/2019]; Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (PT) [SFRH/BD/135876/2018].