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Comparison of individual playing styles in football

Author

Listed:
  • Guan Tianyu

    (Department of Mathematics and Statistics, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario M3J1P3, Canada)

  • Sarkar Sumit

    (XLRI Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur 831001, Jarkhand, India)

  • Swartz Tim B.

    (Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC V5A1S6, Canada)

Abstract

This paper attempts to identify football players who have a similar style to a player of interest. Playing style is not adequately quantified with traditional statistics, and therefore style statistics are created using tracking data. Tracking data allow us to monitor players throughout a match, and therefore include both “on-the-ball” and “off-the-ball” observations. Having developed style features, tractable discrepancy measures are introduced that are based on Kullback–Leibler divergence in the context of multivariate normal distributions. Examples are provided where a pool of players from the Chinese Super League are identified as having a playing style that is similar to players of interest.

Suggested Citation

  • Guan Tianyu & Sarkar Sumit & Swartz Tim B., 2024. "Comparison of individual playing styles in football," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 20(4), pages 351-364.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:jqsprt:v:20:y:2024:i:4:p:351-364:n:1005
    DOI: 10.1515/jqas-2024-0041
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