Player Pressure Map -- A Novel Representation of Pressure in Soccer for Evaluating Player Performance in Different Game Contexts

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel player pressure map in soccer that visualizes and evaluates pressure on players and teams, aiding performance assessment and tactical decision-making.

Contribution

It proposes a new pressure map representation that reduces data complexity while preserving rich contextual information for analyzing player performance under pressure.

Findings

Effective visualization of pressure on players and teams

Enhanced understanding of performance in different game contexts

Potential for improved tactical decision-making

Abstract

In soccer, contextual player performance metrics are invaluable to coaches. For example, the ability to perform under pressure during matches distinguishes the elite from the average. Appropriate pressure metric enables teams to assess players' performance accurately under pressure and design targeted training scenarios to address their weaknesses. The primary objective of this paper is to leverage both tracking and event data and game footage to capture the pressure experienced by the possession team in a soccer game scene. We propose a player pressure map to represent a given game scene, which lowers the dimension of raw data and still contains rich contextual information. Not only does it serve as an effective tool for visualizing and evaluating the pressure on the team and each individual, but it can also be utilized as a backbone for accessing players' performance. Overall, our model provides coaches and analysts with a deeper understanding of players' performance under pressure so that they make data-oriented tactical decisions.