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Statistics of football dynamics

The European Physical Journal B volume 57, pages 357–363 (2007)Cite this article

Abstract.

We investigate the dynamics of football matches. Our goal is to characterize statistically the temporal sequence of ball movements in this collective sport game, searching for traits of complex behavior. Data were collected over a variety of matches in South American, European and World championships throughout 2005 and 2006. We show that the statistics of ball touches presents power-law tails and can be described by q-gamma distributions. To explain such behavior we propose a model that provides information on the characteristics of football dynamics. Furthermore, we discuss the statistics of duration of out-of-play intervals, not directly related to the previous scenario.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Física, Universidade Estadual de Maringá, Av. Colombo 5790, 87020-900, Maringá-Paraná, Brazil

    R. S. Mendes & L. C. Malacarne

  2. Departamento de Física, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, CP 38097, 22453-900, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    C. Anteneodo

Authors
  1. R. S. Mendes
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  2. L. C. Malacarne
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  3. C. Anteneodo
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Correspondence to C. Anteneodo.

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Mendes, R., Malacarne, L. & Anteneodo, C. Statistics of football dynamics. Eur. Phys. J. B 57, 357–363 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2007-00177-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2007-00177-4

PACS.

  • 02.50.-r Probability theory, stochastic processes, and statistics
  • 89.90.+n Other topics in areas of applied and interdisciplinary physics
  • 01.80.+b Physics of games and sports