Methods for Forecasting Style of Play in Soccer Opposition Analysis: Methods for Forecasting Style of Play in Soccer Devin Pleuler Manager of Analytics Toronto Football Club Bret Myers Analytics Consultant Toronto Football Club Villanova University

Provide data-driven tactical insight Motivations Provide data-driven tactical insight

The Data

Pass Components

k-Means Clustering (in python) from sklearn.cluster import KMeans model = KMeans(n_clusters=50).fit(training_data) for pass in test_data: cluster = model.predict(pass) n = 214,340

Example Cluster

Example Clusters

Average Position of Clusters

Cluster Symmetry

Pass Volume Distribution

Team Passes per Cluster

Can past tactics predict future tactics? Is this predictive? Can past tactics predict future tactics? (and how do we measure it?)

Is this predictive? Game Number

Mean absolute percentage error Is this predictive? where At is the actual value and Ft is the forecast value. Mean absolute percentage error

Is this predictive?

(Pearson Correlation) Team Similarity (Pearson Correlation)

Example Team Clusters

Example Team Clusters

Example Team Clusters

Chaining Passes into Sequences What’s Next? Chaining Passes into Sequences

Pass Chaining

Pass Chaining

Individual Player Tendencies What Else is Next? Individual Player Tendencies

Individual Player Tendencies

Thanks!