Once again, the eyes of the world are trained on the beautiful game, with the Women’s World Cup now underway in France.
We’re watching it too. But we’re not watching it in the way most people, or most companies, watch it. At Sportlogiq, we’ve built our reputation on analyzing sport in microscopic detail, and soccer is no different.
We believe that there is an edge to be gained by the teams we work with, and the media companies we supply information to, if they understand that not all data is created equal. That the context around every action is as important as the action itself, and that data is only valuable if there are actionable, useful insights derived from it.
And it was with this mindset that we recently turned our attention to the world of soccer, having helped several teams win game after game in the hyper-competitive world of NHL hockey.
Of course, Sportlogiq’s soccer data includes all the traditional metrics. The basic foundational data such as passes, shots, crosses and assists. But we also take things a little further. By adding additional qualifiers, and context that’s only possible using cutting-edge AI-driven data analysis techniques, we also have created some brand new metrics.
Here is a quick snapshot of some of them. Keep an eye out for some of these as you’re watching the best in the world fight for the game’s greatest prize in France this summer. We certainly will be.
Line-breaking Passes
When a team is defending, teams like to set up in horizontal lines so it’s difficult to play behind, over, around, or through them. Line-breaking passes are passes that bypass and go through one of those defensive lines. This way, we can know how many times a player played a pass that bypassed a line.
Successful line-breaking passes are a key weapon in an attacking team’s armoury, leading to more consistent scoring opportunities throughout the course of a match.
As you can see in the example, there are several horizontal lines the defending team has organized themselves in. Additionally, you can see that the passer plays the ball through one of those defensive lines, to then break it.