Can SNA help the clubs win the game?

Since it was first discovered, football has been changing dramatically. Everything related to the game is influenced by improvements in sports science and other sports-related disciplines. But the biggest change football faced has started in 1999 and 2000 with the transfer of Christian Vieri to Internazionale for a fee of 48.3 million €, followed by the move of Hernan Crespo to Lazio and Luis Figo to Real Madrid for 53.6 million € and 58.5 million €, respectively (1).

Those were the first signals of a new era in football that has created another dimension in football instead of enjoyment: the football industry. Today the money invested in football clubs is much more than we think and it creates a huge economy in the world. According to Deloitte Money League 2009, which the company has been initiating since 1997, Real Madrid retain top position with revenues of 366 million €, while Manchester United and FC Barcelona are following the leader with 325 million € and 309 million € respectively (2).

While the revenues and investments amount to that much, it is inevitable for a football club to be transformed into a very-well managed company by introducing the newest management tools and concepts to get the best out of the investment made.

And this is the point where social network analysis is taken into account. After general information about the football industry, I would like to introduce to you not a very new but a young employment area of social network analysis. I would like to talk about its effects on football.

After going through couple of web sites and analyses, I realized that a football match is such an easy process to apply SNA, mainly because it is very easy to gather information from a football match. SNA assumes each player as a node and the passes between players as the sole resource of interaction amongst the team and it really portraits different, in-depth results mostly for the team management and coaches.

Thomas Grund, a PhD student in Sociology at Nuffield College in University of Oxford, developed three hypotheses which pertain to the relation of degree/strength, clustering and betweenness to performance of the team. He assumes that more interaction by the means of number of passes and more clusters among players increase general performance of the team while increasing betweenness leads to underperformance (3).

After the analyses, he found out a linear relation between the number of passes/performance and clustering/performance of the team. Moreover, he also ascertained an adverse relation of betweenness and performance (3).

According to my personal experiences, I agree with Grund’s hypotheses as well. It is always true that the team which controls the ball more is also able to control the game and is more close to win the game. Creating clusters during the game strengthens team-work and communion, thus reducing the reliance of individual players. This also gives flexibility to the team.

On the other hand, as he mentioned and I agreed, betweenness makes the team vulnerable and prevents it to create/gain (a) control over the game.

By using SNA, we can see the relation between the quantity of passing and team-success, the flow of the game and obviously the interaction between players and so on. But, the most important question is how a coach could use the SNA analysis and for which purposes. By utilizing SNA, a coach can understand which players are in more interaction and which players are less with whom, where the game is clustering, who are the bridges or bottlenecks and so on.

By interpreting SNA, a coach can provide the team with different, in-depth winning tactics. SNA also provides coaches to have a broad idea over the match and the team. He can find the suitable players and can create the most harmonious team

.

The only contradiction I can raise to the analysis is that the number of passes made should not be the sole indicator of interaction. Suppose that, a player runs to the opposite side of the field to create free space or opportunities to other team-mates. By doing that, he/she loses chance to get the ball passed to him/her and clearly is not included in the passing interaction. However by creating that opportunity, he/she is conspicuously becoming one of the main actors of the interaction.

Football industry is still a young man lingering around and needs a hand to bring him up. After studying a little bit and realizing its benefits for the coaches, I strongly believed that SNA could be the hand to raise the young man. I also believe that, if used properly, SNA can uprise the challenge to the next level which I assume will be very enjoyable also for supporters.

Mustafa Güngör

Sources

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_(football).
2. http://www.deloitte.com/view/en_GB/uk/industries/sportsbusinessgroup/article/f49d49642dff0210VgnVCM100000ba42f00aRCRD.htm
3. http://grund.co.uk/images/file/Structure%20of%20a%20Football%20Match%20-%20Presentation%20GRIPS(1).pdf
4. http://www.flickr.com/photos/arthit/319308836/

Additional information,

the link below directs you to a useful Italian website that analyzes the game by using SNA. First, choose the match you want to look at and then click 3^rd button between the fields down the page.

http://sport.virgilio.it/calcio/serie-a/2008-2009/diretta/dettaglio-partita.html?id_c=21&id_e=28&id_p=274670

The SNA of Denmark-Sweden match;

http://www.innovisor.dk/english/SNA.html

http://www.innovisor.dk/content/Case%20-%20Denmark%20vs%20Sweden.pdf