Abstract
Football is the most popular sport in the world and involves the availability of information of footballers and teams to investigate success in this sport. In account of these aspects, the current study aims to analyze the influence of ball possession time, passes and shots on target in winning Premier League football matches. The methodology adopted consists of a quantitative, descriptive and documentary research, in which the sample is represented by all the 380 Premier League (PL) matches of the 2015/2016 season. The analysis process was made by the use of the association technique, present in the data mining process, with the support of the Weka software. The results suggest that shots on target, as well as its interaction with ball possession and passes - total passes, accuracy of passes, accuracy of passes inside the opponent’s field and long passes - influenced the final result of the match. Based on the results, the conclusion is that direct play alternatives, such as presenting less ball possession time and more long passes, associated with more shots on target, showed to be more beneficial for football clubs to win football matches.
Highlights
Football is the most popular sport in the world with high numbers of footballers and supporters (Britannica, 2015)
Figure 1. is important to observe because it demonstrated that having more ball possession time and making more passes than the opposing teams were not enough to guarantee a high occurrence of victories at Premier League (PL) and indicated that staffs should include other variables in their gameplay strategies in order to help their football teams to increase winning chances
Figure 2. is important to be considered since it showed that teams which preferred to play controlling ball possession can succeed if they win the shots on target duel against their opponents, but not that much if they have preferred to play having less ball possession time and have kept winning the shots on target duel
Summary
Football is the most popular sport in the world with high numbers of footballers and supporters (Britannica, 2015). Besides a sport, represents a cultural phenomenon that includes, in its context, cooperation and opposition relations among the footballers, involved by teams’ objectives and opponents, evidencing the tactical relevance in this scenario (Garganta et al, 1997) As it is a sport inserted in collective sports games (Barreira et al, 2011), football teams operate dynamically since they face contextual situations that can be unpredictable and each game variation relates to a match moment (Machado et al, 2011; Casanova et al, 2012). Football components as ball possession, as short and long passes are included on footballers and teams’ data and have been already investigated by several authors as well, contributing to new researches’ development, as contributing to this research development as well, which brings the differential of analyzing these mentioned components (ball possession and passing variables) associated with shots on target
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