I have always liked math. But I know it is one of the number one targets for kid's dislike in school. If teachers had told you that you could do sports analytics with it one day, I'm sure more people would have tuned in.
This is an example of how to find a passing arrow when all you are given is the receiving location, distance and angle the passer passed the ball at.
In my quest to find the actions that had the most impact on a soccer game, I've created this carry and shot map over the oppositions defensive events.
The heatmap is the losing team's locations of defensive actions in the game. The arrows are for the winning team's attacks that led to shots. Yellow arrow is a pass. Green is a carry over 2 meters. Red dot is a shot and Yellow dot is a goal.
Looking at defensive events alone, I would have guessed that both half spaces were being exploited nearly equally. But when you overlay the offenses plays that result in a shot, only the attacking side's left half space was an effective area for them.
I created a similar tactical view that is used in Football Manager (the game). The improvement is that you can target a player, watch the game and it show's all of their important events. Events such as pressure's on the ball, off the ball runs, carries, etc.
This is actually how I've done professional analysis before. It really helps to combine positional data and event data. Then you can visualize the game and see the important moves a player makes. I've used it to drill down on specific events to understand a player's decision making, team shape during events, reaction to opposition's events and more.
This is a short clip of an attacking midfielder where they receive a pass, carry the ball and make a pass. They take the ball from one side of the field to the other with this sequence.
Here are two heatmaps. The one in red is of the winning team's offensive actions (left to right). The one in blue is of the losing team's defensive actions (left to right).
The red team focused their attacks in the half space on their left side. While the blue team spent a heavy time allocating players in that half space (their right side), this opened the central area.
We can see that red was able to make connections in the center and take shots on the goal. Ultimately, this is what won them the game.