Which team played better?

The Matter at Hand

A team's performance is lacking and one player is underperforming. What reliable metrics can we use to assess this performance? Beyond results-based analysis which, in certain cases does offer us some insight, is there a more accurate approach to understanding sports performance?

Statistics could be useful, but they often lack important context and may not provide all actionable insights.

Perhaps we should trust our eyes and strive for qualitative discernment. However, can our feeble minds truly grasp our memories over time? Will we retain sufficient information for accurate assessments? What comes next?

How do we determine which team played better?

My Two Cents

Football teams establish strategic long-term and short-term goals both on and off the pitch. They then implement a methodology to ensure these goals are consistently achieved. That involves focusing on recruitment, market control, coordinated operations, effective communication, and appropriate remuneration to attain greater success.

That considered, when two teams match against each other the primary aim is to:

• maximize theirs and minimize the opposition's strengths
• mask theirs and exploit the opposition's weaknesses

Coaches guided by principles within their game models use their expertise to devise tactics. A collection of these tactics constitutes a game plan, all aimed at achieving the primary objectives outlined above.

Yet, football revolves around efficacy and efficiency – performing tasks optimally and minimizing wastage.

Simply, what works in its process and yields is the better.

This poses another problem. Think of it, have you ever asked yourself:

• What is team X trying to achieve?
• Why have they chosen this particular method?
• Is this strategy sustainable against the best teams?

For professionals, these challenging questions are the essence of their work: they need to draw inferences from complex situations.

For others, merely deciphering the intent behind a team's week of work is grand. Oftentimes, we neither have the tools nor the info. Insiders hold immensely valuable data points we cannot fathom. And they hold them in abundance.

We only have the 90 minutes we see players on the pitch, (pre & post) match player and coach interviews, minutes of recorded training sessions, documentaries and those of the likes as data points. And can only try to understand through patched inferences.

Here's the challenge; how can we decipher a team's objectives from the little data available to us?

Reverse Engineering in Sports

Scattered cues. Scattered clues. Sports performance analysis requires meticulousness, that is the method through which we acquire knowledge of the supposed intent behind the performance we have seen on matchday. Then, we assess proficiency of execution. Intent and execution are the two metrics from which we solve this conundrum.

Reverse-Engineering: How Players and Teams Poke Football’s Margins

Football evolves. How do we stay ahead?

BallerzBantzJoel A. Adejola

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