Anyone who is familiar with data visualization in football has probably seen passing networks after games. But what do they actually show and what are they used for? Your Football Hub describes three important aspects of passing networks that can teach you a lot about a team’s performance.
Average positions
The first thing we can learn from the passing network is the average position of a player during the game when that player made a pass. For this visualization, it is good to know that the first substitutions happened early in the game, which impacted the visualization.
If we look at the Aston Villa – Manchester City game, we can see the difference in average positions. All of Aston Villa’s players are positioned in their own half, while Manchester City’s players are positioned much higher up the pitch. This may indicate that Manchester City were more dominant on the ball and played more offensively than Aston Villa. Aston Villa seem to be more conservative and not come forward as much. This may indicate a more defensive style of play.
Pass combinations
Another thing we can learn from passing networks is a team’s passing combinations. This allows us to see how often a team has passed, how they are progressing, and what the most common combinations are.
What we can see is that Arsenal are passing a lot more than Brighton. We can see that in the lines as they are more present and in the combinations. Each player is passing a lot more to different teammates. It is also an indication of positional passing, while Brighton are much more direct. They tend to pass more forwards than sideways like Arsenal did. What is interesting is that most of the passing combinations in this game involve Foord.
Compactness or width
The last aspect is the compactness of the teams. This is also reflected in the passing networks.
In this match between Manchester United and Chelsea, you can see that Manchester United’s players are standing close together in the right outer area of the pitch. But there is also compactness in a broader sense – they are not far apart in space. Chelsea is different. The midfielders are standing close together, but the distances between the attackers and the wide players are different. This may indicate that the midfielders are standing compact and in the central areas, but the wide players have more freedom of movement.
Final thoughts
Passnetworks is part of an arsenal of data visualizations that can help you better understand a game. It also supports your analysis process and therefore makes you more aware of what happened.
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