Data Analytics in Football

Book excerpt: Data Analytics in Football provides students, researchers, and coaches with a firm grounding in the principles of modern performance analysis. It offers an insight into the use of positional data, exploring how they can be collected, modeled, analyzed, and interpreted. Introducing cutting-edge methods, the book challenges long-held assumptions and encourages a new way of thinking about football analysis. The book seeks to define the role of positional data in football match analysis by exploring topics such as the following: What is positional data analysis, and how did it emerge from conventional match analysis? How can positional data be collected, and which technologies can be used? What key performance indicators based on positional data should be used? How can traditional match analysis be complemented by using positional data and advanced KPIs? How can these new methods evolve in the future? Based on data collected from active leagues and fully revised for the new second edition, the text now also examines data collection in relation to other sports, how a data-driven approach in decision-making is achieved by professional teams, the potential of the new methods of data collection, and how they could evolve in the future. Accessibly written, packed full of examples from elite football, and supplemented with expert interviews, Data Analytics in Football is a thought-provoking, rigorously evidence-based guide to the use of data analytics in football performance analysis. As such, it is a vital resource for any student, researcher, or coach interested in performance analysis and skill acquisition, or anyone interested in football more generally.