Goalkeeper Distribution ratings

Inspiration

One of our team members is a goalkeeper and there are lots of analytics for shot-stopping (xG on target faced vs goals conceded), but not a lot of analytics for distribution (mainly just passing percentage and xGBuildup). We wanted to give every goalkeeper a simple, standardized rating that could evaluate their distribution regardless of their team's quality or their team's tactics.

What it does

Rates a goalkeeper's distribution ability by rating every pass they made with four variables (Whether or not the pass was successful, the amount of possession that the goalkeeper's team had in the next 20 seconds after the pass, where the goalkeeper's team possessed the ball if they possessed it, and where the goalkeeper's team possessed the ball if they possessed it.

How we built it

Our four main data points were:

1. Avgerage X Position of the keeper's team in the 20 seconds he played a pass.
2. Average X Position of the opposing team's possession in the 20 seconds after the keeper played a pass.
3. Average percent of possession that the keeper's team in the 20 seconds after the keepers pass.
4. Percent completion of keeper passes.

Our script is built to iterate through a list of keepers and for each keeper it creates a dataframe consisting of all of the events from all of the games the keeper played in. The script then creates a list of all of the keeper's passes and iterates through that to grab all of the events that occured within 20 seconds. We then use those events to create the averages we were looking for, and the 'outcome' column to generate the the success rate.

Challenges we ran into

Time and processing power limited us

Accomplishments that we're proud of

What we learned

What's next for Goalkeeper Distribution ratings

Making sure the equal weight equation we used makes sense when evaluating GKs. Applying the ratings beyond just the World Cup to leagues where Opta data is available to determine a goalkeeper's distribution ability. Combine with other shot-stopping/cross-handling metrics to scout/evaluate a goalkeeper completely.

Built With

• python