Jaime Sampaio

Performance analysis in team sports: using tracking data from matches and training situations

The process of preparing to perform at the highest level of competition in team sports is probably one of the most complex tasks to endeavour under the scope of Sports Sciences. The technological advances in positional, computational and imaging tools have allowed to obtain the players’ in-field positional data, either in competition or training scenarios, with year-to-year increasing degrees of accuracy and decreasing demands for the data analysis and interpretation processes. From game point of view, the process of developing and preparing players to perform at the highest level seems to require simultaneous thinking on more and less structured modeling. Having this in mind, it seems clear that analysing performance should also integrate these two perspectives. In this presentation, we will approach performance analysis by focusing on movement synchronisation and entropy-related methods as potential useful applications (Sampaio et al, 2019). The key methodological aspects to account when dealing with tracking data will be covered, as a way to establish concrete boundaries of the actual process. Afterward, an approach to capture movement synchronisation and an approach to measure movement unpredictability will be described, using several available researches to consolidate both proposals. In the end, a special focus on transferring the information to training tasks and research related to the design of these training tasks will be accomplished.

Sampaio J, Gonçalves B, Coutinho D, Santos S, Folgado H and Travassos B (2019). Using tracking data from matches and training situations. In: Sports Analytic Guide: A Deep Dive Into The Use Of Advance Data To A Beautiful Game (pp 74-93). Barça Innovation Hub, Barcelona, Spain.