Mini Project #1: Visualising Actions

A quick attempt at understanding England’s full back build up

Preface

I’m using this blog to document my progress of David Sumpter’s Soccermatics course, in conjunction with some of the material available on Uppsala University’s website and the Friends of Tracking Youtube channel. I greatly appreciate the free access David has provided to this content, along with Wyscout and in this case Statsbomb, whose free data are utilised for educational purposes in this course.

Task

1. Think of a player who you enjoyed watching at the recent Men’s or Women’s World Cups.
2. What actions did they perform that were important and why?
3. Plot the actions and describe how the data supports or contradicts your own analysis.
4. Write a short text using at most two figures that illustrate your point.

I’ve chosen a topic where the players’ relative strengths and weaknesses are widely known; my objective being high quality figures which illustrate my point coherently. Another aim is for the graphics to be aesthetically pleasing and easy to understand, so I’m always open to feedback.

England’s fullback conundrum

England started their first two WC games with Kieran Trippier in the right back berth but after a closely contested draw against the United States, Kyle Walker was drafted in for the remaining fixtures. I’ve gone with the more simple progressive passes and carries definitions from Wyscout and I’ve produced progression graphics for each of the pair to challenge/ confirm the generally accepted profiles of the players at current:

• We would expect to see Trippier make more progressive passes, perhaps with a lower completion rate as they tend to be more ambitious, game changing passes.
• We expect to see Walker still complete a good number of progressive passes, but perhaps from a slightly deeper and more central position as line breaking passes have become a bigger part of his game through his evolution under Pep. This may result in more progressive passes being from his own half.
• We see Walker overlapping the winger less often, so we’d expect Walker to receive fewer progressive passes.
• I would also expect neither of them to put up many or even any progressive carries- unless Kyle Walker decided to knock it and run it’s not a part of either of their games.

Starting with Trippier:

Data provided by Statsbomb

We were incredibly ball dominant in the 6–2 win against Iran with 79% possession. Trippier received, attempted, and failed progressive passes to an extremely high volume. We also see that the majority of his work is done in the opposition’s half in both games but the cagey 0–0 against the US was a different game all together.

We see that the US contained us to a more rigid shape and limited our ability to switch it to Trippier and let him play with time and space; the majority of his passes made were instead from wider and deeper areas. He did, however, complete multiple passes towards the byline completed from relatively deep positions, showcasing his ability to adapt and pose a threat to different oppositions.

Data provided by Statsbomb

Against Wales we had 65% of the ball in a reasonably dominant 3–0 victory and we see that Kyle Walker contributed far less to England’s ball progression than Trippier in his games. It looks like a typical game he might play for City in the league, where his role is to keep the ball ticking over whilst making the occasional line breaking pass to varying success.

Despite another 3–0 win against Senegal with 62% possession, England only produced 0.9 to Senegal’s 0.7 xG so it was actually a tighter affair which was somewhat similar to the game against the US. It’s noteworthy that in the kind of game where we saw Trippier’s ball progression falter we see Walker’s came to life but this is a somewhat natural effect of cagier games given where the players like to operate. Better opposition allow less time on the ball in higher areas and we know Kyle Walker likes to tuck in as an auxiliary center back in these situations.

Walker’s performance against Senegal is certainly impressive though, with his progressions proving ambitious and successful. This further reinforces our original profiling of Walker as a player who helps to progress our team into the opposition’s half, whereas Trippier functions more as a creator once the team is already there. Although when operating in the oppositions’ half we see that Walker is still utilised as an outlet and even chooses to carry the ball into more advanced areas before releasing to a teammate. This challenges the notion that he performs the same deep role for England as he does for City as he is still given some licence to get forward.

Further Work:

As a short exercise with a small sample size, I’m happy with how the graphs turned out but this is where I would extend the project:

• I would maybe include the type of failure as I clustered all progressive failures into one type. I think more game specific information on the graphics would also help to add context.
• I would use a more advanced definition of a progressive pass and use more metrics like xT or even just key passes to outline Trippier’s creativity as oppose to Walker’s ball retentive tendencies.
• More context is always wanted and in this case I would investigate the differences in the games of players around them- perhaps to see how other players might have to cover for Trippier positionally or pick up what he leaves creatively when left out the side. Even how the team functions in a lopsided sense when we exchange Walker for Trippier. Also how the profiles of each player are conducive to success dependent on the opposition.
• The introduction of Kyle Walker also came with Jordan Henderson’s reintroduction and a return to a 433 as oppose to the 4231 at the expense of Mount’s more advanced role. It’s an overall less aggressive team on paper and no doubt there were other knock-ons in the side.
• I also ignored the game against France where Walker was up against Mbappé, it’s intuitive to choose the more physical and defensively minded fullback to go up against Mbappé but there’s always the counter argument to be made that the void left by Mbappé in the press could have freed up Trippier to be a creative threat in that game should you find another way to contain Mbappé defensively. There will always be tactical ‘what ifs’ in football but I do think this circles back to one of England fans’ frustrations with Southgate’s squad management when it comes to our lineups being so heavily opposition based. Whether his regular changes and perceived lack of consistency are actually beneficial to our style of play and tournament success is still an open question.