Beyond the Pass Completion Rate

For approximately two decades, professional association football has been characterised by increased digitisation. This is associated with the capture of a vast amount of georeferenced data representing the players’ and the ball’s movement as well as game relevant events. In this context, the practicability of geographic information systems (GIS) in the course of the analysis of single players’ passes is addressed in this article. The aim of this study is to relativise the players’ pass completion rate’s significance. As space is crucial in football, for each pass the analysis takes the game’s current spatiotemporal structure into account in order to determine its inherent risk. This encompasses the opponents’ positions first, between the passer and the receiver as well as second, in close proximity to both of them. Moreover, the calculation considers the passes’ length and locations. In relation to the pass completion rate, the players’ passing quality is derived. For this purpose, an ArcGIS custom tool was developed utilising Python. In addition to this, an expert survey was conducted interviewing professional game analysts. The results provide strong evidence that the tool’s functionality is given although certain measures would definitely enhance the tool’s applicability in contemporary football game analyses.