Abstract
Soccer is one of the most entertaining and popular sports around the world, and is also very interesting from a scientific point of view. Most of the scientific research on soccer is related to matches and game play analysis. In this paper, we propose a novel system for team performance analysis and visualization in terms of the structure of a team, and concentrate on cause-and-effect relationships between players and their teams based on player transfer data. Our system visualizes the individual player performance, team characteristics, comparisons between teams, and time varying changes of the team characteristics. The analyzed data are presented in two different ways (1) the system creates a pixel-grid visualization that presents the distinct characteristics of each player in a team. (2) A horizon graph is used to display the changes in team characteristics over time due to player transfers. This approach facilitates understanding the influence of player transfers on team characteristics in a very simple and straightforward manner.
![](http://media.springernature.com/m312/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1007%2Fs11042-017-5137-4/MediaObjects/11042_2017_5137_Fig1_HTML.gif)
![](http://media.springernature.com/m312/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1007%2Fs11042-017-5137-4/MediaObjects/11042_2017_5137_Fig2_HTML.gif)
![](http://media.springernature.com/m312/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1007%2Fs11042-017-5137-4/MediaObjects/11042_2017_5137_Fig3_HTML.gif)
![](http://media.springernature.com/m312/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1007%2Fs11042-017-5137-4/MediaObjects/11042_2017_5137_Fig4_HTML.gif)
![](http://media.springernature.com/m312/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1007%2Fs11042-017-5137-4/MediaObjects/11042_2017_5137_Fig5_HTML.gif)
![](http://media.springernature.com/m312/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1007%2Fs11042-017-5137-4/MediaObjects/11042_2017_5137_Fig6_HTML.gif)
![](http://media.springernature.com/m312/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1007%2Fs11042-017-5137-4/MediaObjects/11042_2017_5137_Fig7_HTML.gif)
![](http://media.springernature.com/m312/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1007%2Fs11042-017-5137-4/MediaObjects/11042_2017_5137_Fig8_HTML.gif)
![](http://media.springernature.com/m312/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1007%2Fs11042-017-5137-4/MediaObjects/11042_2017_5137_Fig9_HTML.gif)
![](http://media.springernature.com/m312/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1007%2Fs11042-017-5137-4/MediaObjects/11042_2017_5137_Fig10_HTML.gif)
![](http://media.springernature.com/m312/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1007%2Fs11042-017-5137-4/MediaObjects/11042_2017_5137_Fig11_HTML.gif)
![](http://media.springernature.com/m312/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1007%2Fs11042-017-5137-4/MediaObjects/11042_2017_5137_Fig12_HTML.gif)
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bernard J, Ritter C, Sessler D, Zeppelzauer M, Kohlhammer J, Fellner D (2017) Visual-interactive similarity search for complex objects by example of soccer player analysis. In: proc of the 12th Int joint Conf on computer vision, imaging and computer graphics theory and applications, arXiv preprint arXiv:1703.03385, pp. 75–87
Berthold M, Cebron N, Dill F, Gabriel T, Kotter T, Meinl T, Ohl P, Sieb C, Thiel K, Wiswedel B (2007) KNIME: the Konstanz information miner. Springer, New York
Chapman S, Derse E, Hansen J (2012) Soccer coaching manual. LA84 Foundation, Los Angeles
Chung D, Parry M, Griffiths W, Laramee S, Bown R, Legg A, Chen M (2016) Knowledge-assisted ranking: a visual analytic application for sports event data. IEEE Comput Graph Appl 36(3):72–82
Duarte R, Ara’ujo D, Folgado H, Esteves P, Marques P, Davids K (2013) Capturing complex, non-linear team behaviors during competitive football performance. J Syst Sci Complex 26(1):62–72
FIFA Big Count (2014) from http://www.fifa.com/worldfootball/bigcount/index.html
FIFA TMS from BIG 5: Transfer Window Analysis (Summer 2014), http://www.fifatms.com/en/Reports/reports-2014/
FIFA TMS from BIG 5: Transfer Window Analysis (winter 2015), http://www.fifatms.com/en/Reports/reports-2015/
Financial fair play: UEFA (1 September, 2014) from http://www.uefa.org/protecting-the-game/club-licensing-and-financial-fair-play/
Fonseca S, Milho J, Travassos B, Ara’ujo D, Lopes A (2013) Measuring spatial interaction behavior in team sports using superimposed Voronoi diagrams. Int J Perform Anal Sport 13(1):179–189
FootballDatabase.eu from http://www.footballdatabase.eu/transfertstab.php?competition=1&lieu=Angleterre
Fujimura A, Sugihara K (2005) Geometric analysis and quantitative evaluation of sport teamwork. Syst and Comput 36(6):49–58
Goldsberry K (2012) Courtvision: new visual and spatial analytics for the NBA. In: Proc MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conf
Gudmundsson J, Wolle T (2012) Football analysis using spatio-temporal tools. In: proc of the 20th Int Conf on advances in geographic information Syst (9):566–569
Jacques B (1983) Semiology of graphics: diagrams, networks, maps. University of Wisconsin Press, Wisconsin
Kang C, Hwang J, Li K (2006) Trajectory analysis for soccer players. In: proc of sixth IEEE Int Conf on ICDM workshops, pp. 377–381
Kim S (2004) Voronoi analysis of a soccer game. Nonlinear Anal Modell Control 9(3):233–240
Lago-Peñas C, Lago-Ballesteros J, Dellal A, G’omez M (2010) Gamerelated statistics that discriminated winning, drawing and losing teams from the Spanish soccer league. J Sports Sci Med 9(2):288–293
Legg P, Chung D, Parry M, Jones M, Long R, Griffiths I, Chen M (2012) Matchpad: interactive glyph-based visualization for real-time sports performance analysis. Comput Graph Forum 31:1255–1264
Memmert D, Lemmink A, Sampaio J (2017) Current approaches to tactical performance analyses in soccer using position data. Sports Med 47(1):1–10
Nakanishi R, Maeno J, Murakami K, Naruse T (2010) An approximate computation of the dominant region diagram for the real-time analysis of group behaviors. In: RoboCup 2009 robot soccer world cup XIII, (5946):228–239, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Page M, Moere A (2006) Towards classifying visualization in team sports. In: Proc of the Int Conf on IEEE Computer Graphics Imaging and Visualisation, pp. 24–29
Peña J, Touchette H (2012) A network theory analysis of football strategies. In: Proc Euromech Physics of Sports Conf, pp. 517–528
Perin C, Vuillemot R, Fekete JD (2013) SoccerStories: a kick-off for visual soccer analysis. IEEE Trans Vis Comput Graph 19(12):2506–2515
Pileggi H, Stolper C, Boyle J, Stasko J (2012) Snapshot: visualization to propel ice hockey analytics. IEEE Trans Vis Comput Graph 18(12):2819–2828
Robertson PK, Hutchins MA (1994) An approach to intelligent design of color visualizations. In: Proc Scientific Visualization, Overviews, Methodologies, and Techniques, pp. 179–190, IEEE, Washington
Rusu A, Stoica D, Burns E (2011) Analyzing soccer goalkeeper performance using a metaphor-based visualization. In: IEEE 15th Int Conf on information visualisation (IV), pp. 194–199
Sacha D, Stein M, Schreck T, Keim DA, Deussen O (2014) Feature-driven visual analytics of soccer data. In: 2014 I.E. Conf on visual analytics science and technology (VAST), pp. 13–22
Salvo V, Baron R, Tschan H, Calderon M, Bachl N, Pigozzi F (2007) Performance characteristics according to playing position in elite soccer. Sports Med 28(3):222
Spence R (2001) Information visualization. Addison-Wesley, New York, pp 14–16
Sports Interactive. Football Manager from http://www.footballmanager.com/
Stein M, Janetzko H, Seebacher D, Jäger A, Nagel M, Hölsch J, Grossniklaus M (2017) How to make sense of team sport data: from acquisition to data modeling and research aspects. Data 2(1):2
TactFoot: Soccer coaching tactical software (2010), Retrieved from http://www.tactfoot.com
Taki T, Hasegawa J (2000) Visualization of dominant region in team games and its application to teamwork analysis. In: IEEE Proc Computer Graphics Int Conf, pp. 227–235
Ward MO (2010) A taxonomy of glyph placement strategies for multidimensional data visualization. Inf Vis 1(3–4):194–210
Acknowledgements
This work (NRF-2016R1A2B4016239) was supported by the Mid-Career Researcher Program through an NRF grant funded by the MEST.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ryoo, M., Kim, N. & Park, K. Visual analysis of soccer players and a team. Multimed Tools Appl 77, 15603–15623 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-017-5137-4
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-017-5137-4