The evaluation of playing styles integrating with contextual variables in professional soccer

Lingfeng Kong; Tianbo Zhang; Changjing Zhou; Miguel-Angel Gomez; Yue Hu; Shaoliang Zhang

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1002566

The evaluation of playing styles integrating with contextual variables in professional soccer

Front Psychol. 2022 Sep 23:13:1002566. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1002566. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Lingfeng Kong¹, Tianbo Zhang², Changjing Zhou³, Miguel-Angel Gomez⁴, Yue Hu⁵, Shaoliang Zhang⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physical Education, Hohai University, Nanjing, China.
² Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
³ School of Physical Education and Sports Training, Shanghai University of Sport, Shanghai, China.
⁴ Faculty of Physical Activity and Sport Sciences (INEF), Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain.
⁵ Department of Political Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
⁶ Division of Sports Science and Physical Education, Research Centre for Athletic Performance and Data Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.

Abstract

Purpose: Playing styles play a key role in winning soccer matches, but the technical and physical styles of play between home and away match considering team quality in the Chinese Soccer Super League (CSL) remain unclear. The aim of this study was to explore the technical and physical styles of play between home and away matches integrating with team quality in the CSL.

Materials and methods: The study sample consists of 480 performance records from 240 matches during the 2019 competitive season in the CSL. These match events were collected using a semi-automatic computerized video tracking system, Amisco Pro^®. A k-means cluster analysis was used to evaluate team quality and then using principal component analysis (PCA) to identify the playing styles between home and away matches according to team quality. Differences between home and away matches in terms of playing styles were analyzed using a linear mixed model.

Results: Our study found that PC1 presented a positive correlation with physical-related variables such as HIRD, HIRE, HSRD, and HSRE while PC2 was positively associated with the passing-related variables such as Pass, FPass, PassAcc, and FPAcc. Therefore, PC1 typically represents intense-play styles while PC2 represents possession-play styles at home and away matches, respectively. In addition, strong teams preferred to utilize intensity play whereas medium and weak teams utilized possession play whenever playing at home or away matches. Furthermore, the first five teams in the final overall ranking in the CSL presented a compensated technical-physical playing style whereas the last five teams showed inferior performance in terms of intensity and possession play.

Conclusion: Intensity or possession play was associated with the final overall ranking in the CSL, and playing styles that combine these two factors could be more liable to win the competition. Our study provides a detailed explanation for the impact of playing styles on match performances whereby coaches can adjust and combine different playing styles for ultimate success.

Keywords: match performance; principal component analysis; soccer; styles of play; team sports.