What analytics can teach us about the beautiful game. In march 1950, during a match between swindon town and bristol. In fact, the first known experiment was carried out in the 1950s by charles reep, a trained accountant, raf wing commander and fan who pioneered notational analysis in sports. Secondly, reeps data analysis supporting it was too simplistic.
While analytics in todays game have all but killed off the. In the next section of the paper i discuss some of charles reep s data and analysis. The precursor of performance analysis in soccer is work done by charles reep pollard, 2002. How analytics killed the premier leagues long ball game and. Charles reep trained as an accountant, then volunteered for the royal air force in 1928 in the 1950s charles reep wrote his theories on football in the now defunct magazine match analysis. In the early 1950s charles reep collected statistics by hand to suggest that the key to scoring goals is to.
Prozone developed a proprietary playertracking software which, fed by eight cameras around the pitch, would generate a twodimensional birdseye animation of a soccer match. How big data and analytics are changing football smartdata. He surmised that with an average of 2 goals scored per game, only a small improvement was needed in the chance. Pa can be traced back to charles reep s notational analysis of information in english football matches beginning in 1950 pollard, 2002. Thorold charles reep 22 september 1904 3 february 2002 was an analyst credited with. Football performance analysis interview with wade benn, senior match analyst at aspire sports academy by andy forrester on december 3, 2012 in analysis, interviews, sa football wade benn is the senior match. In the years before to his involvement in football, charles reep was an air force.
A wing commander in the british royal air force, charles reep has been credited with creating the first notational analysis system of soccer when, in 1950, he used a pencil and notebook to record the play between a pair of english soccer clubs. Another category of match analysis is motion analysis which focuses on raw features of an individuals activity. Hughes presented his ideas in the magazine match analysis and concluded most goals were scored from three passes or fewer. Charles reep was, by at least 20 years, the first person to devise a comprehensive notational system for recording on paper the ingame actions throughout a football match, a process he began in 1950.
His findings which, anecdotally, saw him sometimes jot down information on rolls of wallpaper concluded wrongly that moves consisting of three or less passes were more likely to result in a goal than longer passing plays. Prozone had developed a proprietary playertracking software which, fed by eight. In 1950, charles reep, an accountant, attended every game of the swindon town soccer teams season, tracking events and recording statistics. The most important soccer performance analyst you have never.
However, sportscode, by us software giant hudl, is a software product. In 1973, reep analysed englands 31 loss against west germany in the 1972 european championship to vigorously protest the pointless sideways passing style of play. But there was reep, who took it upon himself to attend every swindon town f. His ideals were developed from those previously developed by world war ii wing commander charles reep. At first, franks and hughes found data compatible with reep s analysis but, after closer scrutiny, they showed that most goals happened after fewer than four pass movements simply. His method involved taking shorthand notes on a match and then spending up to 80 hours turning the notes into a match analysis.
The most important soccer performance analyst you have never heard of. Pioneered by prozone, systems to support more detailed pre and post match analysis gradually emerged, derby county being the. Soccer analytics has attracted interest for a long time 1,2. From his first analysis of the 1950 swindon town match against bristol rovers all the way to the mid1990s, charles reep went on to notate and analyse a total of 2,200 matches. Measuring the effectiveness of playing strategies at soccer. Summary of the strengths and weaknesses of hand and computerized notation system.
Two soccer teams in a match represent a complex system whose global behavior depends in subtle ways. Prozones software offers realtime match tracking, and is used by over 300 clubs worldwide the club was facing a relegation battle. Charles reep was the first person to take an interest in the data driven. Wolves methods were deeply influenced by the theories of charles reep, a retired raf wing commander, who had worked as an accountant. Reep and bernard benjamin published a statistical analysis of patterns of play in football from 1953 to 1967 in. Despite reep laying the groundwork for basic analysis sixty years ago, it wasnt until the late 1990s that the use of video and data to inform performance began to gain traction in the sport. If charles reep caused the first sea change in football analysis then 50. The role of notational analysis in soccer coaching nic james, 2006. This post introduces richard pollard in an account of the history of sport analytics. Image prozone image caption prozones software offers realtime match.
Wilson points out that reep s analysis shows that 91. Data alone will never win a football match, but effective analysis of the. The match detail consisted of data on every player in every team from every game in. The roots of expected goals xg and its journey from. Boring winners and long ball in england the new yorker. Charles reep s notion that one of every nine shots is scored is a sort of early version of xg. So why wouldnt gavin fleig give a nod to wing commander charles reep. Prozone, the pioneer of performance analysis in sports, has played a vital role in the rise of analytics in soccer. Thorold charles reep was born in 1904 in the small town of torpoint, cornwall. Reep and bernard benjamin published a statistical analysis of patterns of play in english soccer from 1953 to. The most important soccer performance analyst you have. If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article. We have the inside track on some of the best tech in the game starting with.
This analysis, coupled with reep s almost militant advocacy of the longball, meant a very rudimentary form of the expected goals metric was born. Before this revolutionary technology pioneers such as rudolph laban and charles reep would carry out statistical analysis using just a pen and pencil, at the time this was seen as a major stride forward in performance analysis. His findings which, anecdotally, saw him sometimes jot down information on rolls of wallpaper. Citys head of performance analysis, gavin fleig, offered the.
Footballs pioneer the charles reep story the video. Invalid interpretation of passing sequence data to assess. Jumio brandvoice paid program oracle brandvoice paid program. His record of that game provided the most detailed account of his work to date. The few studies that have specifically compared different football strategies have mostly suggested that a direct style leads to better match outcomes, lending strong support to the general conclusions of the unjustly maligned founder of football performance analysis, charles reep. Wing commander charles reep was at that moment beginning to create the first comprehensive notational analysis system for football.
In the years that followed, he quickly saw how the information he was collecting could be used to plan strategy and analyse performance. Top 10 football technologies sportscode the coaching manual. The study of basic events in a game has been called both match performance analysis and match analysis. Reep would play a key role in transferring that success continentally, with his real time analysis of wolves match vs honved seen as a european cup final before such a thing existed helping cullis to cultivate a style of long ball football that he desired. Over the following decades, reep would assemble a statistical library of more than 2,000 matches. Today, reep s toolkit seems fairly quaint, especially when its compared to match. Testing the validity of match analysis to describe playing styles in football, international journal of performance analysis. Reeps simplistic but significant analysis focused on passing moves. Repairing the tarnished legacy of charles reep researchgate. For the love of soccer and data analytics home page. Reep would play a key role in transferring that success continentally, with his real time analysis of wolves match vs honved seen as a european cup final before such a thing existed helping cullis to. In the numbers game by chris anderson and david sally probably the definitive volume on statistical analysis in soccer the authors tell the story of charles reep, a former royal air. In the mid1990s, statistics undergraduates at lancaster university were asked to analyse goalscoring in a hypothetical football match. A public data set of spatiotemporal match events in.
When mark dixon, a researcher in the department, heard about the task, he grew curious. Notational analysis is a technique for producing a permanent record of the. Charles hughes was the director of coaching for the football association. The numbers game, a recent book that examines the datafication of football, noted that he installed a 60inch pentouch tv screen at his home and hooked it up with playertracking software. The role of notational analysis in soccer coaching show all authors. It was titled a statistical analysis of team performance at soccer. After eight years of hand notation practice, charles reep sat in the stockholm stadium and notated in realtime the 1958 world cup final. Charles reep, see larsen 2001 and pollard 2002, developed solutions starting in the early 1950s. Charles reep joins brentford prev article next article probably the most influential and certainly the most controversial notational analyst in britain is charles reep who died in 2002 pollard, 2002 having. Charles reep s analysis of association football, in. A spell with sheffield wednesday would follow, before he attended the 1958 world cup. Richard completed his phd at the university of the south paciific in 1989. Charles reep, when he wasnt abusing the data to support his own ideological vision of proper english football, argued in the middle of the 20th century that the key to winning a football match.
Pioneered by prozone, systems to support more detailed pre and post match analysis. Thorold charles reep 22 september 1904 3 february 2002 was a football analyst credited with creating the long ball game which has characterized english football. Impact of data analysis and technology in rugby union nacsport. The most accessible video analysis software history of performance analysis. Reep documented the exact time he first implemented his notational system at a professional match 3. The role of notational analysis in soccer coaching nic. In those precomputer days, reep s elaborate theories of match analysis were expounded in the old news chronicle in an infinity of squiggly diagrams. In the early 1950s charles reep collected statistics by. Reep would go on to record and draw analysis from 2,200 games, up until the mid1990s. The news from the world cup that among the victorious german sides arsenal was a sophisticated software analysis tool named match insights which is able to convert match data into simulations and graphs marks yet another triumph for the art of using indepth statistical analysis to gain insights and improve performance.
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