Football Analytics
Understanding networks through the analysis of Bayer Leverkusen’s passing networks
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Long time no see… But for a good reason.
After some months I’m back on Medium and today we’re merging two exciting worlds: football and geometry.
Concretely, we’ll touch upon the topic of networks but, as always, through a practical case. We’ll study football passing networks focusing on last year’s Bayer Leverkusen matches.
The Bundesliga winners had an amazing season playing outstanding football under Xabi Alonso. I’m curious to investigate how that translates to mathematical terms and understand their playing style and most relevant players through their passing networks.
While the importance of networks is already established to study interconnection between nodes, its application in football isn’t different from that. It’s basic stuff, in fact, but it’s worth dedicating a post for anyone who hasn’t seen one yet.
Statsbomb[1] has high-quality data and, luckily for us, they made free and available for everyone all Bayer Leverkusen’s games from last season.