Abstract
Rating systems play an important part in professional sports, for example, as a source of entertainment for fans, by influencing decisions regarding tournament seedings, by acting as qualification criteria, or as decision support for bookmakers and gamblers. Creating good ratings at a team level is challenging, but even more so is the task of creating ratings for individual players of a team. This paper considers a plus–minus rating for individual players in soccer, where a mathematical model is used to distribute credit for the performance of a team as a whole onto the individual players appearing for the team. The main aim of the work is to examine whether the individual ratings obtained can be split into offensive and defensive contributions, thereby addressing the lack of defensive metrics for soccer players. As a result, insights are gained into how elements such as the effect of player age, the effect of player dismissals, and the home field advantage can be broken down into offensive and defensive consequences.
Highlights
Soccer has become a large global business, and significant amounts of capital are at stake when the competitions at the highest level are played
Plus–minus ratings are a family of player ratings for team sports where the performance of the team as a whole is distributed to individual players
Such ratings have been successfully used by media for sports such as ice hockey and basketball, and creators of such rating systems work as analysts for National Basketball Association (NBA) teams, influencing their decisions on trades and free-agent signings [1]
Summary
Soccer has become a large global business, and significant amounts of capital are at stake when the competitions at the highest level are played. While soccer is a team sport, the attention of media and fans is often directed towards individual players. An understanding of the game involves an ability to dissect the contributions of individual players to the team as a whole. Plus–minus ratings are a family of player ratings for team sports where the performance of the team as a whole is distributed to individual players. Such ratings have been successfully used by media for sports such as ice hockey and basketball, and creators of such rating systems work as analysts for National Basketball Association (NBA) teams, influencing their decisions on trades and free-agent signings [1]. There has recently been several academic contributions towards plus–minus ratings for soccer [2], the influence of these ratings has not yet reached the same levels as in basketball
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