IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/col/000089/020757.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The hedgehog or the fox: Versatility and performance in professional soccer

Author

Listed:
  • Tomás Rodríguez
  • Jorge Tovar

Abstract

Being versatile -having the ability to perform different functions- can be a desirable trait for firms that must compete in different environments. However, attaining versatility may come at the high cost of sacrificing the kind of excellence that can only be achieved through specialization. Furthermore, when strategic interaction involves any opportunities for cooperation, then being more versatile might lead to lower equilibrium payoffs, even if such greater versatility were costless. It follows that whether versatility tends to pay off or not is an empirical question, which needs to be asked in each specific setting. We use detailed match-level data on players' interaction from the Spanish La Liga 2018-2019 soccer season and the Colombian 2018-1, 2018-2 and 2019-1 seasons to define a measure of observable versatility. Namely, for each team, we count the number of distinct sub-teams of all possible sizes (2-11) that are ever observed to interact during the season and thus build a team's 10-dimensional observable versatility profile. We observe that teams displaying a greater number of distinct sub-teams of large size (4 and above in the case of the Spanish league) tend to perform better. We compute 1- dimensional observable versatility indices by applying PCA to the 10-dimensional observable versatility profiles and show that these simple indices are strong predictors of teams' performances.

Suggested Citation

  • Tomás Rodríguez & Jorge Tovar, 2023. "The hedgehog or the fox: Versatility and performance in professional soccer," Documentos CEDE 20757, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
  • Handle: RePEc:col:000089:020757
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repositorio.uniandes.edu.co/bitstream/handle/1992/66506/dcede2023-12.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jordi Duch & Joshua S Waitzman & Luís A Nunes Amaral, 2010. "Quantifying the Performance of Individual Players in a Team Activity," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(6), pages 1-7, June.
    2. Matthew O. Jackson & Brian W. Rogers & Yves Zenou, 2017. "The Economic Consequences of Social-Network Structure," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(1), pages 49-95, March.
    3. Ricardo Manuel Santos, 2014. "Optimal Soccer Strategies," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 52(1), pages 183-200, January.
    4. Bruno Gonçalves & Diogo Coutinho & Sara Santos & Carlos Lago-Penas & Sergio Jiménez & Jaime Sampaio, 2017. "Exploring Team Passing Networks and Player Movement Dynamics in Youth Association Football," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(1), pages 1-13, January.
    5. Seidman, Stephen B., 1981. "Structures induced by collections of subsets: a hypergraph approach," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 1(4), pages 381-396, August.
    6. Tovar Jorge, 2014. "Gasping for air: soccer players’ passing behavior at high-altitude," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 10(4), pages 411-420, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Medina, Pablo & Carrasco, Sebastián & Rogan, José & Montes, Felipe & Meisel, Jose D. & Lemoine, Pablo & Lago Peñas, Carlos & Valdivia, Juan Alejandro, 2021. "Is a social network approach relevant to football results?," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    2. Muscillo, Alessio & Pin, Paolo & Razzolini, Tiziano & Serti, Francesco, 2018. "Does "Network Closure" Beef up Import Premium?," IZA Discussion Papers 12036, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Moreno Galbis, Eva & Wolff, Francois-Charles & Herault, Arnaud, 2020. "How helpful are social networks in finding a job along the economic cycle? Evidence from immigrants in France," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 12-32.
    4. Bich, Philippe & Teteryatnikova, Mariya, 2023. "On perfect pairwise stable networks," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 207(C).
    5. Díaz, Carlos & Patacchini, Eleonora & Verdier, Thierry & Zenou, Yves, 2021. "Leaders in juvenile crime," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 192(C), pages 638-667.
    6. Laima Gerlitz & Christopher Meyer, 2021. "Small and Medium-Sized Ports in the TEN-T Network and Nexus of Europe’s Twin Transition: The Way towards Sustainable and Digital Port Service Ecosystems," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(8), pages 1-24, April.
    7. Cui Zhang & Dandan Zhang, 2023. "Spatial Interactions and the Spread of COVID-19: A Network Perspective," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 62(1), pages 383-405, June.
    8. Zenou, Yves & Boucher, Vincent & Tumen, Semih & Vlassopoulos, Michael & Wahba, Jackline, 2020. "Ethnic Mixing in Early Childhood: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment and a Structural Model," CEPR Discussion Papers 15528, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Dequiedt, Vianney & Zenou, Yves, 2017. "Local and consistent centrality measures in parameterized networks," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 28-36.
    10. Mundt, Philipp, 2021. "The formation of input–output architecture: Evidence from the European Union," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 89-104.
    11. Elias Carroni & Paolo Pin & Simone Righi, 2020. "Bring a Friend! Privately or Publicly?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(5), pages 2269-2290, May.
    12. Yann Algan & Quoc-Anh Do & Nicolò Dalvit & Alexis Le Chapelain & Yves Zenou, 2015. "How Social Networks Shape Our Beliefs: A Natural Experiment among Future French Politicians," Working Papers hal-03459820, HAL.
    13. Chen, Ying-Ju & Zenou, Yves & Zhou, Junjie, 2022. "The impact of network topology and market structure on pricing," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).
    14. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/78vacv4udu92eq3fec89svm9uv is not listed on IDEAS
    15. De Silva, Dakshina G. & Gertsberg, Marina & Kosmopoulou, Georgia & Pownall, Rachel A.J., 2022. "Evolution of a dealer trading network and its effects on art auction prices," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    16. John Higgins & Tarun Sabarwal, 2023. "Control and spread of contagion in networks with global effects," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 25(6), pages 1149-1187, December.
    17. Bryan S. Graham, 2016. "Homophily and transitivity in dynamic network formation," CeMMAP working papers CWP16/16, Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    18. Verdier, Thierry & Zenou, Yves, 2017. "The role of social networks in cultural assimilation," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 15-39.
    19. Enghin Atalay, 2024. "A twenty-first century of solitude? Time alone and together in the United States," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 37(1), pages 1-33, March.
    20. Valeria Costantini & Valerio Leone Sciabolazza & Elena Paglialunga, 2023. "Network-driven positive externalities in clean energy technology production: the case of energy efficiency in the EU residential sector," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 48(2), pages 716-748, April.
    21. Claudia Olivetti & Eleonora Patacchini & Yves Zenou, 2020. "Mothers, Peers, and Gender-Role Identity," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(1), pages 266-301.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    team-performance; versatility;

    JEL classification:

    • D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights
    • L25 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Performance
    • Z20 - Other Special Topics - - Sports Economics - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:col:000089:020757. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Universidad De Los Andes-Cede (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ceandco.html .

    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.