International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport

ISSN: 2474-8668 (Print) 1474-8185 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rpan20

Football pass network based on the measurement

of player position by using network theory and
clustering

Takahiro Kawasaki, Kenichi Sakaue, Ryota Matsubara & Satoshi Ishizaki

To cite this article: Takahiro Kawasaki, Kenichi Sakaue, Ryota Matsubara & Satoshi Ishizaki
(2019) Football pass network based on the measurement of player position by using network
theory and clustering, International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport, 19:3, 381-392, DOI:
10.1080/24748668.2019.1611292

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/24748668.2019.1611292

Published online: 02 May 2019.

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS IN SPORT
2019, VOL. 19, NO. 3, 381–392
https://doi.org/10.1080/24748668.2019.1611292

Football pass network based on the measurement of player

position by using network theory and clustering
Takahiro Kawasaki, Kenichi Sakaue, Ryota Matsubara and Satoshi Ishizaki
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Shibaura Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

The present study proposed the new method to create a pass Received 21 January 2019
network based on the measurement of the pass positions. The Accepted 23 April 2019
pass positions were determined from the player positions mea- KEYWORDS
sured by the automatic tracking system for soccer players. The Football; pass analysis;
pass positions were classified into clusters by clustering method. network analysis; cluster
The pass network was created by the number of passes between analysis; player position
different clusters. The present study analysed nine official games
of Fagiano Okayama of Japan Professional Football League
Division 2 in 2016 and 2017 years. The results showed that the
pass network could abstractly represent the successful passes.
Then, the network metrics such as the total links, degree centrality,
scaled connectivity and cluster coefficient were evaluated. The
total links and degree centrality were proportional to the number
of passes. The scaled connectivity decreased with increasing the
number of passes because the degree of the particular nodes
increased. Moreover, the cluster coefficient of the node in the
top 25% degree increased with increasing the number of passes.
These results could provide useful information with respect to the
team performance on the field.

1. Introduction
Network theory is a field of computer science and is also a part of graph theory, in which
a network can be defined as a graph consisted of nodes and edges. The data science and
analytics field have used networks to model various structures and problems. In network
theory, centrality is one of the network metrics used to analyse the network characteristics.
And the indicators of centrality identify the most important nodes within the network.
In research field of sports analysis, network theory has been used to evaluate attacking
pattern and tactics in ball games such as football (Ribeiro, Silva, Duarte, Davids, & Garganta,
2017), basketball (Bourbousson, Poizat, Saury, & Seve, 2010) and water polo (Passos. Davids,
Araújo, Paz, Minguéns, & Mendes, 2011). Many studies using the network theory represented
the passes in attacking plays as the network in which the nodes and the edges indicated
players and the passes between two players, respectively. The characteristics of players and
teams are quantitatively evaluated from the metrics of the pass network (Clemente, Couceiro,
Martins, & Mendes, 2015; Duch, Waitzman, & Amaral, 2010; Grund, 2012).

CONTACT Kenichi Sakaue sakaue@sic.shibaura-it.ac.jp Department of Mechanical Engineering, Shibaura

Institute of Technology, 3-7-5 Toyosu, Koto-ku, Tokyo 135-8548, Japan
© 2019 Cardiff Metropolitan University
382 T. KAWASAKI ET AL.

The previous studies investigated the most key position in attacking plays and the
connectivity between positions by using the network metrics such as closeness central-
ity, betweenness centrality, pageRank and clustering coefficient. Pena and Touchette
(2012) evaluated the players in the semi-finals of the FIFA World Cup 2010. As a result,
the leading players indicated the high metrics value. Thus, they argued that the network
metrics provided useful information about the performance of the players. Clemente,
Couceiro, and Martins (2014) evaluated the players in the same team participated in
five games in the Portuguese Football League Division 1. As a result, they reported that
defenders and midfielders indicated the high scaled connectivity and cluster coefficient.
They also researched players in the FIFA World Cup 2014 (Clemente, Martins, Wong,
Kalamaras, & Mendes, 2015). Their results showed that the central midfielder in most
of the teams represented the highest value of out-degree centrality, in-degree centrality,
closeness centrality and betweenness centrality. Moreover, they reported the similar
results for the UEFA Champions League 2015–2016, the Switzerland national team and
the youth teams (Clemente & Martins, 2017a; Clemente et al., 2015; Oliveira, Clemente,
& Martins, 2016).
On the other hand, Clemente et al. analysed the team performance in several types of
research by using the network metrics. The research on the top four teams in the
Spanish La Liga and the English Premier League reported that out-degree centrality did
not depend on the competitive leagues and goal situation (Clemente et al., 2016). The
research on the teams in the FIFA World Cup 2014 indicated that the higher con-
nectivity between teammates improved team performance (Clemente, Martins,
Kalamaras, Wong, & Mendes, 2015). The research on the teams advanced to the
round 16 in the UEFA Champions League 2015–2016 indicated that the network
metrics did not relate to the statistics such as the number of shoots regardless of the
team performance and playing style. Furthermore, Clemente and Martins (2017b)
argued that the network analysis should be considered goal scored play and conceded
play.
Almost all previous studies did not consider the pass position on the field even
though the player position continually switches during the football game. Thus, the pass
networks in the previous studies could not make clear the pass position. Furthermore,
the pass direction is also uncertain. For example, the pass from a defender to
a midfielder is a forward pass in an ordinary positioning. However, if a defender and
a midfielder switch their positions each other, the same pass becomes a backward pass.
Therefore, the network analysis is required to consider the player position (Peixoto,
Praça, Bredt, & Clemente, 2017). Gonçalves et al. (2017) investigated the correlation
between the network metrics and the player position measured by GPS devices for the
U-15 and U-17 teams. The research reported that the player position in the U-15 team
was closer to the ball than that in the U-17 team. Pina, Paulo, and Araújo (2017)
compared the network metrics and the rate of successful attacks, where the successful
attack is defined entering the finishing zone. As a result, the research reported that there
existed the relationship between the network density and the success rate. However, it
was uncertain whether the successful play was the style of connecting the passes or the
individual skills such as dribble since the pass position is not clear. Clemente, Martins,
and Mendes (2016) considered the pass position by dividing the field into 18 regions in
order to investigate the pass position related to goal scored play or conceded plays.
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS IN SPORT 383

They created the weighted undirected network in which the nodes and edges indicate
the regions and passes between two regions, respectively. The in-degree centrality, out-
degree centrality and betweenness centrality indicated that wing and attacking mid-
fielders were the most involved position in the attack, and the lateral defenders were the
start position of most of the attacking plays. However, they pointed out that the pass
positions were not accurate because they decided the player position subjectively.
Additionally, they contended that there is a possibility of new analysis using pass
network by considering the pass position.
Although the importance of the pass position was pointed out in the pass network
analysis, there are no studies of the network analysis by measuring the pass position.
Therefore, the present study analysed the pass network based on the measurement of
the pass position. In order to measure the pass position, the present study used the
automatic tracking system of soccer player developed by Iseyama, Souma, Sakaue, and
Ishizaki (2015). The measured pass positions were classified by cluster analysis. Then,
the pass network based on the pass position was created, and the network metrics were
also calculated.

2. Measurement of football play information

2.1. Measurement object
This study analysed the games of Fagiano Okayama of Japan Professional Football
League Division 2 in 2016 and 2017 seasons. The number of games was nine, and the
first half and the second half are analysed separately. Consequently, 18 game data in the
half of a game were analysed. Table 1 shows the analysed game and the number of
passes in each half of the game. The number of passes depended on the games. The
average of the number of measured passes in the half of the game is 145, and the total
number of measured passes is 2612.

2.2. Measurement of player’s position

The automatic player tracking system developed by our research group was used to
measure player’s position (Iseyama et al., 2015). The movies were recorded by two
commercially available high-density cameras, SONY HDR-CX590V. The size of each
image was 1920 × 1080 pixels, the frame rate was 60 fps and the image was recorded as

Table 1. Measurement result of number of passes and network metrics.

Number of pass Total link Degree centrality Scaled connectivity Cluster coefficient
Year Match First Second First Second First Second First Second First Second
2016 #1 142 188 86 131 6.14 9.36 0.31 0.26 0.47 0.43
#2 148 97 106 59 7.57 4.21 0.30 0.28 0.31 0.31
#3 220 222 172 161 12.29 11.50 0.20 0.23 0.54 0.39
#4 182 194 133 134 9.50 9.57 0.26 0.29 0.45 0.41
#5 213 134 152 104 10.86 7.43 0.23 0.37 0.57 0.39
2017 #6 75 74 50 55 3.57 3.93 0.27 0.30 0.28 0.24
#7 163 98 120 68 8.57 4.86 0.28 0.29 0.38 0.27
#8 121 106 77 86 5.50 6.14 0.31 0.36 0.26 0.21
#9 81 154 52 123 3.71 8.79 0.34 0.34 0.16 0.41
384 T. KAWASAKI ET AL.

progressive mode. The cameras were fixed on the section above the top audience seat in
a stadium. By using this tracking system, all players’ positions were measured at
a sampling rate of 20 Hz. The distance covered and the moving speed of players were
calculated from the measured position. Furthermore, the starting point and the end
point of passes were determined from the measured player position. All player’s
positions were measured by one of the authors in order to exclude the error between
evaluators.

2.3. Measurement of pass data

The pass data were manually measured by observing frame by frame of the same game
movies used for automatic player tracking system. The recorded pass data consisted of
three information: the player in possession of the ball, the time at which each player
firstly got the ball and the time at which the player finally released the ball, with a time
resolution of 20 Hz. The pass data were measured by the same author as the evaluator
for the player’s position. Combining the pass data and the player positions, the player in
possession of the ball, the time and the player’s position were recorded. Then, the ball
events were classified into the successful passes and the failed passes. The successful
passes and failed passes were defined that the current player and the next player in
possession of the ball were the same team and the different team, respectively.
Moreover, the failed passes included the cases in which the play interrupts by foul
and ball out. This study analysed only the successful passes excluded throw-in, goal
kick, corner kick and free kick.

2.4. Method for creating a pass network

Figure 1 shows the method to create a pass network from the successful pass data.
Figure 1(a) shows the example of the measured successful passes in a half of the game.
The ball moved along the arrow, and the tale and head of the arrow indicate the
positions of a passer and a receiver, respectively. The attacking direction of the object
team is the rightward direction. Figure 1(b) shows only the positions of passers and
receivers. In this study, the positions of passers and receivers are used to create the pass
network.
First, the positions are classified into a specified number k of clusters by clustering.
The clustering used in this study is a centroid method that assigns a position to the
nearest cluster in order to minimise the distance from the centroid of the cluster to the
position. Thus, the positions shown in Figure 1(b) are classified into the clusters as
shown in Figure 1(c) by the clustering. Figure 1(c) depicts the result of classifying into
28 clusters, and the larger plotted circle indicates the centroid of the positions in
a cluster. Consequently, all passes can be separated into the passes in the same cluster
and the passes between the different clusters by means of classifying the position of
passers and receivers. Finally, the pass network is created based on the separated passes.
In order to create the pass network, the weighted adjacency matrix is calculated from
the number of passes between different clusters. The diagonal elements of the adjacency
matrix mean the number of passes in the same cluster, and the non-diagonal elements
indicate the number of passes between different clusters with consideration of the pass
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS IN SPORT 385

Figure 1. Creation procedure of a pass network from successful pass data. (a) Successful pass, (b)
pass position, (c) result of clustering, and (d) pass network.

direction. Figure 1(d) shows an example of the pass network depicted as an undirected
graph based on the adjacency matrix. The position of the node indicates the centroid of
the cluster, the diameter of the node is the number of passes in the same cluster and the
line thickness of the edge is the number of passes between two clusters.
The pass network shown in Figure 1(d) has the same features of the successful passes
shown in Figure 1(a). As shown in Figure 1(a), the most frequent pass appears along the
centre line. Consequently, larger nodes are located along the centre line and are strongly
connected by thick edges as shown in Figure 1(d). Therefore, the pass network shown in
Figure 1(d) can abstractly represent the successful passes shown in Figure 1(a).

3. Result
3.1. Effect of number of cluster
In this study, the number of the clusters is fixed for creating the pass network. Thus, the
effect of the number of the clusters on the pass network is examined.
Figure 2 shows the pass networks for the successful passes in Figure 1(a), and the
number of the clusters is 20, 28 and 36 in Figure 2(a, b and c), respectively. The pass
networks in Figure 2(a and b) show that the positions and the connection of the
relatively large nodes near the centre line are different from each other because the
neighbouring nodes unite to decrease the number of the clusters in the network shown
in Figure 2(a). The decrease in the number of the clusters causes the decrease in the
386 T. KAWASAKI ET AL.

Figure 2. Effect of the number of clusters on the pass network. The number of clusters is (a) 20, (b)
28, and (c) 36.

number of the pass between different clusters. Therefore, the less number of the clusters
cannot express the pass network. On the other hand, the pass networks in Figure 2(b
and c) have the same positions and the same connection of the relatively large nodes
near the centre line. However, the network in Figure 2(c) has many small nodes with
a weak connection. Therefore, the more number of the clusters makes the network
complicated.
The effect of the number of the clusters is investigated by the parameter L=N that
indicates the ratio of the total links L to the total number of the successful passes N. The
total links L between different clusters are calculated from the following equation
(Clemente, Martins, Mendes, & Silva, 2016):
X
L¼ awij (1)
1i < jk

where k is the number of the clusters and awij is the element of the weighted adjacency
matrix. Figure 3 shows the relationship between L=N and the number of the clusters k.
The L=N indicates the average value and standard deviation calculated from the 18 pass
networks analysed in this study. As shown in Figure 3, the L=N increases with increas-
ing the number of the clusters k. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, the decrease
in the number of the clusters causes the decrease in the number of the pass between
different clusters. Furthermore, the more number of the clusters makes the network
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS IN SPORT 387

Figure 3. Average value and standard deviation of total links / the number of passes in the case of
the different number of the clusters.

complicated. Based on these facts, this study determined the number of the clusters to
be 28. In this case, about 70% of the successful passes can be expressed as the pass
network between different clusters as shown in Figure 3.

3.2. Result of pass network analysis

This study analysed 18 game data in the half of a game by the proposed pass network.
Table 1 summarises the measured number of successful passes and the network
characteristics. Moreover, the representative two pass networks in the first
and second halves of the same game are shown in Figure 4. In Figure 4, the nodes in
the top 25% of the degree are indicated as black nodes. As shown in Figure 4, it is found
that two networks are distinctively different from each other even if the two networks
have almost the same number of passes.

Figure 4. Examples of the pass network for (a) the 1st and (b) 2nd halves of the game #4.
388 T. KAWASAKI ET AL.

Figure 5. Relationship between the number of passes and total links or degree centrality.

Figure 5 shows the relationship between the number of successful passes and total
links L or degree centrality Dw . The degree centrality is given by the following equation
(Wasserman & Faust, 1994):

1X k
1 X
Dw ¼ diw ¼ awij (2)
k i¼1 k
1  i; j  k
iÞj

where diw is the total number of degree of node i. In this study, the total links Lare 14 times
as large as the degree centrality Dw since the number of cluster k is fixed to 28. As shown in
Figure 5, the total links L and the degree centrality Dw are proportional to the total number
of successful passes. In this study, the total links L and the degree centrality Dw do not
include the passes in the same cluster. Therefore, the result in Figure 5 means that the ratio
of the number of passes between different clusters to the total number of passes is
independent of the total number of passes. The coefficient of the relation between the
total links and the number of passes is 0.720. The value of the coefficient means that the
pass network in the present study expresses about 72.0% of the total passes.
Figure 6 shows the relationship between the scaling connectivity Sw and the degree
centrality Dw . The scaling connectivity Sw is given by the following equation:

1X k
1X k
diw 1
Sw ¼ swi ¼ ¼ Dw ð0  Sw  lÞ (3)
k i¼1 k i¼1 dmax dmax

where dmax is the maximum degree in the network, and swi is the local scaled
connectivity. The scaling connectivity Sw is the average of the degree normalised by
the maximum degree (Gama, Dias, Couceiro, Sousa, & Vaz, 2016). The maximum
value of Sw is 1 if all nodes have the same degree. When the degree of a certain node
is extremely larger than that of the other nodes, the value of Sw becomes small. As
shown in Figure 6, the scaling connectivity Sw is constant when the total number of
passes N is less than 150. However, the scaling connectivity Sw decreases with
increasing the total number of passes N more than 150. According to the definition
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS IN SPORT 389

Figure 6. Relationship between scaled connectivity and number of passes.

Figure 7. Relationship between cluster coefficient and number of passes.

of Sw , the decrease of Sw in Figure 6 means that the degrees of only particular nodes
increased with increasing the degree centrality Dw . Therefore, the degree of the pass
network with a high value of Dw was localised.
Figure 7 shows the relationship between the average value of the local clustering
coefficient ciw of the nodes in the top 25% of the degree and the degree centrality Dw .
The local clustering coefficient of a node cwi is expressed as the following equation
(Barrat, Barthélemy, Pastor-Satorras, & Vespignani, 2004)
X  w 
1 aij þ awih  
ciw ¼ w aij aih ajh 0  cwi  1 (4)
di ðdi  1Þ 2
1  jÞh  k
iÞjÞh

where aij is the element of the unweighted adjacency matrix and di is the number of
degree of the evaluating node i in the unweighted pass network. The local clustering
390 T. KAWASAKI ET AL.

coefficient cwi means the rate of connection among the nodes that connects to the
evaluating node. The maximum value of the local clustering coefficient ciw is 1 in which
the nodes connected to the evaluating node are connected each other. Even if the degree
of the evaluating node is small, it is possible that the local clustering coefficient ciw
becomes 1 because the local clustering coefficient cwi is determined by the connection
among the nodes. In this study, the average value of cwi of only nodes in the top 25% of
the degree is evaluated in order to eliminate the effect of the nodes with a small degree.
Figure 7 shows the average value of cwi of nodes whose degree was in the top 25% of
the degree increases with increasing the number of passes. This result means that the
connection including the nodes in the top 25% degree became strong with increasing
the number of passes.
As described in this section, the relationship between the metrics of the whole pass
network and the total number of successful passes was explained. As the results, the
total links L and the degree centrality Dw were proportional to the total number of
successful passes. Also, the average value of the local clustering coefficient cwi of the
nodes in the top 25% of the degree was positively correlated with the total number of
successful passes. Therefore, these metrics of the whole pass network proposed in this
study indicate the relative level of the number of successful passes. On the other hand,
the scaling connectivity Sw decreased with increasing the total number of passes more
than 150. The scaled connectivity Sw indicates the localisation of degree in network
theory. Therefore, the increase of passes more than 150 was resulted from the localisa-
tion of passes at particular nodes in the case of the present study. The scaled con-
nectivity Sw can reveal whether the passes appear throughout the network or at the
particular nodes.
The metrics of the individual node can be also evaluated as well as the metrics of the
whole pass network. For example, although the patterns of two pass networks in Figure 4
were quite different from each other, the metrics of the two pass network as shown in
Table 1 are almost the same value. In such a case, the evaluation of the degree of the
individual node reveals that the node with the largest degree is the important hub of
passes. In the 18 networks examined in this study, it could not be observed the common
characteristics about the metrics of the individual nodes because the position of the node
with the largest degree was different game by game. The pass analysis based on the pattern
of a pass network or the metrics of the individual node is the subject in future study.

4. Conclusion
The present study created the pass network based on the measurement of the pass
position. The locations of the nodes were determined by clustering the positions of
a passer and a receiver with respect to successful passes. The edges indicated the passes
between different clusters. Therefore, the proposed pass network could express the
position and the direction of the passes. As mentioned in the section on the results,
the pass network expressed the most frequent pass positions by large nodes and
strongly connection by thick edges. This pass network had the same features as the
successful passes. The network metrics such as the total links, degree centrality, scaled
connectivity and cluster coefficient were evaluated. The total links, degree centrality and
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS IN SPORT 391

average value of local clustering coefficient cwi of the nodes in the top 25% of the degree
were positively correlated with the total number of successful passes. Therefore, it is
thought that these metrics of the whole pass network indicate the relative level of the
number of successful passes. On the other hand, the scaled connectivity indicates the
localisation of passes. The proposed pass network is expected to be a new method to
evaluate the team performance.

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Fagiano Okayama for cooperating with data measurement.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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