IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/jqsprt/v15y2019i2p97-116n1.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measuring soccer players’ contributions to chance creation by valuing their passes

Author

Listed:
  • Bransen Lotte
  • Van Haaren Jan

    (SciSports, Amersfoort, The Netherlands)

  • van de Velden Michel

    (Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands)

Abstract

Scouting departments at soccer clubs aim to discover players having a positive influence on the outcomes of matches. Since passes are the most frequently occurring on-the-ball actions on the pitch, a natural way to achieve this objective is by identifying players who are effective in setting up chances. Unfortunately, traditional statistics such as number of assists fail to reveal players excelling in this area. To overcome this limitation, this paper introduces a novel metric that measures the players’ involvement in setting up chances by valuing the effectiveness of their passes. Our proposed metric identifies Arsenal player Mesut Özil as the most impactful player in terms of passes during the 2017/2018 season and proposes Ajax player Frenkie de Jong as a suitable replacement for Andrés Iniesta at FC Barcelona.

Suggested Citation

  • Bransen Lotte & Van Haaren Jan & van de Velden Michel, 2019. "Measuring soccer players’ contributions to chance creation by valuing their passes," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 15(2), pages 97-116, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:jqsprt:v:15:y:2019:i:2:p:97-116:n:1
    DOI: 10.1515/jqas-2018-0020
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/jqas-2018-0020
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/jqas-2018-0020?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wu Lucas Y. & Danielson Aaron J. & Hu X. Joan & Swartz Tim B., 2021. "A contextual analysis of crossing the ball in soccer," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 17(1), pages 57-66, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:jqsprt:v:15:y:2019:i:2:p:97-116:n:1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.