Visual analysis of soccer players and a team

Abstract

Soccer is one of the most entertaining and popular sports around the world, and is also very interesting from a scientific point of view. Most of the scientific research on soccer is related to matches and game play analysis. In this paper, we propose a novel system for team performance analysis and visualization in terms of the structure of a team, and concentrate on cause-and-effect relationships between players and their teams based on player transfer data. Our system visualizes the individual player performance, team characteristics, comparisons between teams, and time varying changes of the team characteristics. The analyzed data are presented in two different ways (1) the system creates a pixel-grid visualization that presents the distinct characteristics of each player in a team. (2) A horizon graph is used to display the changes in team characteristics over time due to player transfers. This approach facilitates understanding the influence of player transfers on team characteristics in a very simple and straightforward manner.