RESUMO
This study aims to illustrate the landscape of passing opportunities of a football team across a set of competitive matches. To do so positional data of 5 competitive matches was used to create polygons of pass availability. Passes were divided into three types depending on the hypothetical threat they may pose to the opposing defense (penetrative, support, and backwards passes). These categories were used to create three heatmaps per match. Moreover, the mean time of passing opportunities was calculated and compared across matches and for the three categories of passes. Due to the specificity of player's interactive behavior, results showed heatmaps with a variety of patterns. Specifically the fifth match was very dissimilar to the other four. However, characterizing a football match in terms of passing opportunities with a single heatmap dismisses the variety of dynamics that occur throughout a match. Therefore, three temporal heatmaps over windows of 10 min were presented highlighting on-going dynamical changes in pass availability. Results also display that penetrative passes were available over shorter periods of time than backward passes that were available shorter than support passes. The results highlight the sensibility of the model to different task constrains that emerge within football matches.
RESUMO
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.
