HandScout: a New System to Record Football Data

Abstract

Since the early 1900s, researchers have been making a great effort to seek more objective ways to analyze sport, especially soccer matches. Objectives: We aimed to describe HandScout software development, a quantitative tool projected to record soccer data based on predefined guidelines. Methods and Results: The HandScout is designed according to the dynamical self-organizing system and is composed of 99 individual actions, divided into nine categories: Action map, goal map, offensive organization, offensive transition, defensive organization, defensive transition, set-pieces, passes, and goals against and scored goals. This new information-gathering instrument can assist in the assessment of a wide range of characteristics considering the great complexity of the game and thus provide data about the behavior of players on the pitch. Conclusion: The HandScout is a user-friendly system that provides extensive data information of the team or the opponent. Thus, the HandScout software can provide information to coaches to adapt their weekly training sessions and provide relevant information about the soccer dynamics.