homehome Home chatchat Notifications


How Liverpool FC is using data science to dominate British Premier League

The Reds are tracking data and trends to dominate the pitch.

Tibi Puiu
January 28, 2020 @ 8:26 pm

share Share

Liverpool forms a compact block in the center of the pitch late in the match with Spurs. Credit: Youtube capture.

After winning last year’s UEFA Champions League Final, the most important football competition in the world, Liverpool Football Club is now dominating its domestic Premier League, leading this season’s standings by a whopping 16 points. Liverpool has not lost one match out of the 23 it has played thus far and is almost guaranteed to win the title, cementing its position as the world’s best current football team.

What can explain Liverpool’s extraordinary success? It’s no secret that the club boasts some of the greatest football players in the world, but they’re definitely not alone. Barcelona, Bayern, or Manchester City also have their fair share of amazing talent at their disposal.

Liverpool’s secret sauce might surprise many: data science.

Liverpool scores against Everton with a long pass over its defense.

For some time, the football club has been gathering exhaustive amounts of data and crunching the numbers in order to determine which players are most fitted to occupy a certain tactical position during certain matches, but also what’s the best style of play.

The club’s famous manager, Jürgen Klopp is not only on board with the idea of incorporating science in his team’s decisions — he’s embracing it. The team even has a name for its new style of playing football augmented by science: pitch control. The name is self-explanatory — it’s all about making the right, data-driven decisions such that the team can utilize the pitch to its full potential.

Meanwhile, in the backend, there’s an entire team of researchers and statisticians crunching the numbers so that Liverpool can bring out its best.

For instance, Ian Graham, who is the director of the research division at Fenway Sports Group (the group that owns Liverpool F.C.), has a PhD. in theoretical physics and is in charge of evaluating players and sporting trends data. Michael Edwards, the club’s sporting director, is a former analyst himself having previously spent time at Portsmouth and Spurs.  Liverpool’s data science team also includes Tim Waskett, an astrophysicist, and Will Spearman, who has a doctorate in philosophy, both of whom regularly appear publically explaining pitch control. The graphic below is often used as an example.

A pitch control visualization that captures the regions of space controlled by certain players. The player circled in yellow has the ball, his team has access to areas of the pitch colored in blue, while areas colored in red are controlled by the opposing team. Pitch control theory says that the yellow circle has to pass the ball to a teammate positioned within the blue zone.

According to Liverpool’s outstanding team of data analysts, the team is combining event data and tracking data in order to analyze in real-time how each action on the pitch impacts the probability of scoring a goal. This concept is illustrated in the graphic below.

Pitch control constantly crunches the numbers to determine which areas of the field are most promising in order to score a goal.

“The red team is Liverpool and the areas in red are the places they can get to sooner than the players in blue. Everything is turned into a goal probability and this value, 1.3%, is the probability that a goal will be scored with the ball in this position within the next 15 seconds,” Waskett explained during recently held event part of the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures.

Of course, Liverpool isn’t the only football team to use data science. Most teams competing at the highest levels now have a data science department but, considering their performance, the Reds seem to be exploiting hidden trends and data better than anyone.

What’s certain is that the way football is being played has changed drastically, and we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg as technology will become increasingly incorporated into sports.

share Share

A London Dentist Just Cracked a Geometric Code in Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man

A hidden triangle in the vitruvian man could finally explain one of da Vinci's greatest works.

The Story Behind This Female Pharaoh's Broken Statues Is Way Weirder Than We Thought

New study reveals the ancient Egyptian's odd way of retiring a pharaoh.

China Resurrected an Abandoned Soviet 'Sea Monster' That's Part Airplane, Part Hovercraft

The Soviet Union's wildest aircraft just got a second life in China.

A Rocket Carried Cannabis Seeds and 166 Human Remains into Space But Their Capsule Never Made It Back

The spacecraft crashed into the Pacific Ocean after a parachute failure, ending a bold experiment in space biology and memorial spaceflight.

Ancient ‘Zombie’ Fungus Trapped in Amber Shows Mind Control Began in the Age of the Dinosaurs

The zombie fungus from the age of the dinosaurs.

Your browser lets websites track you even without cookies

Most users don't even know this type of surveillance exists.

What's Seasonal Body Image Dissatisfaction and How Not to Fall into Its Trap

This season doesn’t have to be about comparison or self-criticism.

Why a 20-Minute Nap Could Be Key to Unlocking 'Eureka!' Moments Like Salvador Dalí

A 20-minute nap can boost your chances of a creative breakthrough, according to new research.

The world's oldest boomerang is even older than we thought, but it's not Australian

The story of the boomerang goes back in time even more.

Swarms of tiny robots could go up your nose, melt the mucus and clean your sinuses

The "search-and-destroy” microrobot system can chemically shred the resident bacterial biofilm.