EURO2024: Where football meets data-driven strategy
The EURO2024 is currently underway in Germany, with 24 countries
competing to be Europe's best football nation, while millions of
Europeans watch on television or at the stadium. Matches are won by
scoring more goals, but data also plays a crucial role. Teams analyse
data to strategise against opponents and select the best players. For
instance, Liverpool and its former coach Jürgen Klopp famously used
data to create a team that won the Champions League
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/magazine/soccer-data-liverpool.html].  

Open football data boosts fan engagement through interactive
visualisations and live scores, enhances scouting, provides tactical
insights, and supports research and journalism. Websites like
OpenFootball [https://openfootball.github.io/] and FootyStats
[https://footystats.org/download-stats-csv] offer extensive data on
competitions from Albania to Zambia, enabling diverse applications.
The most insightful data is captured in football logs detailing match
events, each containing information about its type (e.g., pass, shot,
tackle, etc.), a timestamp, the player’s position on the field, and
additional information. While collecting this data is costly, some is
freely available, such as the football log data for the Women’s Euro
2022
[https://statsbomb.com/articles/soccer/statsbomb-release-free-360-data-womens-euro-2022-available-now/],
offering deep insights into player performance and team tactics. 

Open data is not only useful during matches. Data on fixture schedules
(match dates, venues) helps developers build applications for
tournaments. Moreover, data.europa.eu
[https://data.europa.eu/data/datasets?locale=en&categories=EDUC&page=1&query=sport]
has information available on the public locations where to play sports
in the ‘Education, culture and sports’ section. This shows how
governments can support the facilitation of sports for everyone and
inspires others to share this type of data. 

In summary, open data makes football more dynamic. Coaches can
leverage data to gain insights into team performance and adjust
strategies during tournaments like the European Cup, enhancing the
quality of the games. Fans benefit from increased transparency about
the game and players and enjoy better football as a result of these
improvements. 

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[https://data.europa.eu/en/newsletter]. 

Publication Date/Time
2024-07-08T08:00:00+00:00
How open data is revolutionising the game for teams, fans, and
developers