Chapter 22: Further Reading

Foundational Papers

Bialkowski, A., Lucey, P., Carr, P., Yue, Y., Sridharan, S., & Matthews, I. (2014). Identifying Team Style in Soccer Using Formations Learned from Spatiotemporal Tracking Data. ICDM Workshops. Pioneering work on automatic formation detection from tracking data using role assignment and clustering.
Shaw, L., & Glickman, M. (2019). Dynamic Analysis of Team Strategy in Professional Football. Barça Sports Analytics Summit. Introduces methods for quantifying tactical variation within matches and across seasons using tracking data.
Decroos, T., Bransen, L., Van Haaren, J., & Davis, J. (2019). Actions Speak Louder Than Goals: Valuing Player Actions in Soccer. KDD. The VAEP (Valuing Actions by Estimating Probabilities) framework for quantifying the contribution of every on-ball action to scoring and conceding, applicable to tactical evaluation.

Andrienko, G., Andrienko, N., Budziak, G., Dykes, J., Fuchs, G., von Landesberger, T., & Weber, H. (2017). Visual Analysis of Pressure in Football. Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, 31(6), 1793--1839. Introduces visual analytics methods for measuring and displaying pressing behavior from tracking data.
Robberechts, P., & Davis, J. (2020). Valuing On-the-Ball Actions in Soccer: A Critical Comparison of xT and VAEP. MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. Compares expected threat and VAEP frameworks for evaluating tactical actions, relevant to understanding game state effects.

Robberechts, P., Van Haaren, J., & Davis, J. (2021). A Bayesian Approach to In-Game Win Probability in Soccer. KDD. Develops a Bayesian win probability model that accounts for team strength, score state, and time remaining, with proper uncertainty quantification.
Heuer, A., Mueller, C., & Rubner, O. (2010). Soccer: Is Scoring Goals a Predictable Poissonian Process? Europhysics Letters, 89(3), 38007. Analyzes the temporal distribution of goals in soccer, establishing the Poisson process foundation used in win probability models.

Wilson, J. (2013). Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics. Nation Books. The definitive history of tactical evolution in soccer. Essential context for understanding why formations matter and how tactical analysis has developed.
Cox, M. (2017). The Mixer: The Story of Premier League Tactics from Route One to False Nines. HarperCollins. Covers the tactical evolution of the Premier League, providing real-world examples of the formation and game state concepts analyzed quantitatively in this chapter.
Sumpter, D. (2016). Soccermatics. Bloomsbury. Includes accessible treatments of formation geometry and pressing mathematics.

Hudl Sportscode --- hudl.com/products/sportscode Industry-standard video analysis platform used for tactical tagging and match preparation.
StatsBomb IQ --- statsbomb.com Commercial platform providing tactical analysis tools including formation detection and game state analysis.
mplsoccer --- mplsoccer.readthedocs.io Python library for pitch visualization, heat maps, and pass networks used in tactical presentations.

Between the Posts --- betweentheposts.net Detailed tactical analysis of European matches with xG flow charts and pressing statistics.
StatsBomb Articles --- statsbomb.com/articles Regular publications on pressing metrics (PPDA), set-piece analysis, and tactical fingerprinting.
The Athletic Tactics Coverage --- theathletic.com In-depth tactical analysis combining data and video for match strategy breakdowns.