Network Motifs in Football

Year 2018, Volume: 20 Issue: 3, 263 - 272, 30.12.2018

Necmi Gürsakal , Fırat Melih Yılmaz , Halil Orbay Çobanoğlu , Sandy Çağlıyor

https://doi.org/10.15314/tsed.465664

Cited By: 1

Abstract

Complex
networks often display network motifs and these can be described as subgraphs.
Methods for analyzing complex networks promise to be of great benefit to almost
all scientific disciplines including sports. In football if we want to disrupt
the opponent's game format, we must first be aware of the pass motifs that the
team often uses. Determining how to break these motifs will make an important
contribution to the success of a team. In this
study, 3-nodes and 4-nodes pass motifs of the teams were examined within the
frame of a data set of ten games and the most frequent repetitions of these
motifs were determined. In addition, we suggest that in a match, the balance
can be measured by the correlation between the frequencies of the motif types
and there may be an inverse relationship between this correlation and the
difference in the goals of the match.

Keywords

Network Science, Network Motifs, Football

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