Team Tactics Research Articles

Evaluating aerial duel ability of football players using height-adjusted Elo rating model

ABSTRACT Football players’ aerial duel ability has been typically evaluated based on the “aerial duel success rate (success/attempt)”. However, sole reliance on this indicator implies excluding other factors like the opponent’s aerial duel ability and height. This makes the evaluation of a player’s true ability difficult. The Elo rating system is an alternative method that addresses such exclusion. This study analysed a player’s aerial duel ability more accurately using an Elo model adjusted by height. All players from all matches in the K League 1 over the 3 seasons were analysed. The player rankings for aerial duel ability calculated using the Elo rating system showed significant differences compared to the rankings based on aerial duel success rates used in previous studies e.g. the player ranked 1st in Elo was 3rd in aerial duel success rate, the 2nd and the 3rd players remained 21st and 54th. These results serve as valuable information for analysing players’ abilities and understanding team tactics in the applied field. These will also be crucial for player evaluation while scouting.

The Integral Assessment of Playing Tactics in National Football Teams

Objectives. The objective of the study was to determine the features of competitive activities among national football teams based on the integral assessment of playing tactics. Materials and methods. The study was conducted during the 2024 European Football Championship. The competitive activities of national football teams from European countries (Germany, Spain, England, Switzerland, France, Portugal, Netherlands, Turkey) were analyzed, focusing on the playing tactics in 50 halves. In order to carry out the study, the following methods were used: theoretical analysis of literature sources; pedagogical observation of competitive activities; analysis of video materials of competitive activities; methods of mathematical statistics. The statistical analysis of the research results was conducted using descriptive mathematical statistics. The sample was characterized by determining the arithmetic mean, standard deviation (S), and coefficient of variation (V). The significance of observed differences in the indicators was assessed using the parametric Student’s t-test for independent samples. Prior to this, the data’s conformity to a normal distribution was verified using the Shapiro-Wilk W-test. Results. A methodology for the integral assessment of the tactics undertaken by national football teams was developed. The integral assessment of team tactics consisted of 10 specific coefficients that reflect the main components of football players’ competitive activities in the phases of ball possession and recovery. The competitive activities in 50 halves of the 2024 European Football Championship were analyzed. The average value of the integral assessment of the tactics in national football teams was determined to be 5.62 ± 0.43 points. The findings revealed significant tactical variations between the teams, with Spain’s use of high pressing and creative play contributing to their championship victory. A ten-point scale for evaluating the tactics of national football teams was developed, on the basis of which the level of competitive activities is interpreted. Conclusions. The developed methodology for monitoring and analyzing the tactics of football teams allows for targeted management influences on the competitive activities of football players at the operational, current, and stage levels.

Heart Rate Variability Monitoring in Special Emergency Response Team Anaerobic-Based Tasks and Training

The Law enforcement profession is known to impart high stress. Members of Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams are allocated particularly demanding law enforcement operations and may therefore attain high fitness levels but may accumulate excessive stress. Heart rate variability (HRV), an assessment of time differences between heartbeats, likely indicates holistic load in field settings. To date, though, little research measuring HRV has been conducted involving SWAT units. The purpose of this study was to explore HRV measurements following (1) annual firearms qualification and (2) potential stress exposure with respect to completion time on an anaerobically taxing obstacle course. Officers with greater obstacle course performance were hypothesized to also exhibit greater HRV. HRV was also expected to stratify personnel more effectively than heart rate. Prospective 3-lead ECGs were obtained from a cohort of male SWAT operators (n = 15) with 5.2 ± 4.3 years of experience at three time points throughout one training day. HRV was assessed by time, frequency, and non-linear domains. Differences between baseline and post-training values were significant as assessed by the Wilcoxon signed-ranks test for heart rate, SDRR, LF, HF, and SD2. An enter-method linear regression model predicted post-training HF HRV by obstacle course time; r2 = 0.617, F (1,6) = 9.652, p = 0.021. Anaerobic performance may be highly valuable in SWAT units. HRV analysis may also be beneficial in measuring the psychophysiological impact of SWAT activities.

How practical is tactical? Political sociology, militarization, and police tactical teams in Canada

Emergency Response Teams (ERT), commonly referred to as Special Weapons And Tactics (SWAT) teams, are the specialized police unit responsible for mitigating violent and dangerous conflict beyond the capacity of general duty to handle effectively. Debates surrounding the application and effectiveness of ERTs in policing highlight a need to keep ERT members safe due to adequacy and occupational health and safety standards while concurrently managing the expectations of community groups. These groups include those calling for defunding or de-militarization. Explored in the current article, is a thematic analysis of popularized media to unpack the arguments that police, government officials and community activist groups make to help shift opinions on police militarization. However, we frame these media account within Bourdieusian concepts of symbolic power, habitus or field struggle to provide insight into, arguably conflicting, interpretations of police militarization.

Unveiling Multi-Agent Strategies: A Data-Driven Approach for Extracting and Evaluating Team Tactics from Football Event and Freeze-Frame Data

Studying collective behavior in opposing multi-agent teams is crucial across game theory, robotics, and sports analytics. In sports, especially football, team tactics involve intricate strategic spatial and action behaviors displayed as event sequences during possession. Understanding and analyzing these tactics is essential for successful training, strategic planning, and on-field success. While traditional approaches, such as notational and statistical analyses, offer valuable insights into team tactics, they often lack a comprehensive consideration of contextual information, thereby limiting the holistic evaluation of teams’ performances. To bridge this gap and capture the nuanced intricacies of team tactics, we employed advanced methodologies. The sequential pattern mining algorithm PrefixSpan was utilized to extract tactical patterns from possession sequences, enabling a deeper understanding of how teams strategize and adapt during play. Additionally, the neural marked spatio temporal point process (NMSTPP) model was leveraged to model and predict team behaviors, facilitating a fair comparison among teams. The evaluation of team possessions was further enhanced through the innovative holistic possession utilization score metrics, providing a more nuanced assessment of performance. In our experimental exploration, we identified and classified five distinct team tactics, validated the efficacy of the NMSTPP model when integrating StatsBomb 360 data, and conducted a comprehensive analysis of English Premier League teams during the 2022/2023 season. The results were visualized using radar plots and scatter plots with mean shift clustering. Lastly, the potential applications to RoboCup were discussed.

Direct Combat-related U.S. Army Aviation Injuries 2003-2014.

The U.S. Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory (USAARL), a partner in the Joint Trauma Analysis for the Prevention of Injury in Combat (JTAPIC) partnership, conducted a series of retrospective reviews to investigate injuries sustained by occupants of U.S. Army rotary-wing aircraft involved in combat damage incidents. The reviews were conducted to provide occupant survivability information to the Aviation Survivability Development and Tactics team, an agency within the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence. For these reviews, combat damage incidents that produced casualties were separated into direct events (i.e., events in which an enemy weapon system directly injured occupants) and indirect events (i.e., incidents in which occupants were injured as a result of a crash caused by the enemy weapon system). The previous USAARL reviews provided an overview of injuries sustained during direct and indirect events. The objective of this review was to conduct a detailed analysis of injuries occurring during direct events. A descriptive retrospective review was conducted on injuries sustained by occupants of U.S. Army rotary-wing aircraft involved in combat damage incidents between 2003 and 2014. All Black Hawk, Apache, and Chinook combat aviation damage incidents for the study period were reviewed. Personnel casualty information from the Defense Casualty Information Processing System (DCIPS) was linked to combat damage incident information by matching the aircraft platform, incident date, and circumstantial information found in incident narratives. Injury information for personnel identified in DCIPS as being wounded in action was obtained from the JTAPIC partnership; injury data for personnel killed in action were retrieved from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System. All injuries were coded using the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS). Descriptive statistics were used to describe the frequency and distribution of injuries to personnel involved in direct events. Overall, the extremities were the most commonly injured body regions, with lower extremities suffering more injuries than upper extremities. Penetrating injuries were identified as the primary injury mechanism for all body regions. Injuries to each AIS body region were predominantly of minor (AIS 1) and moderate (AIS 2) severity. Although injury severities were generally low (AIS 1 or AIS 2), the results of this effort indicate which body regions may benefit from additional protection during rotary-wing operations in hostile environments. The influence of occupant position within the aircraft and the use and effectiveness of personal protective equipment could not be effectively analyzed due to a lack of information.

Multimodal Shot Prediction Based on Spatial-Temporal Interaction between Players in Soccer Videos

Sports data analysis has significantly advanced and become an indispensable technology for planning strategy and enhancing competitiveness. In soccer, shot prediction has been realized on the basis of historical match situations, and its results contribute to the evaluation of plays and team tactics. However, traditional event prediction methods required tracking data acquired with expensive instrumentation and event stream data annotated by experts, and the benefits were limited to only some professional athletes. To tackle this problem, we propose a novel shot prediction method using soccer videos. Our method constructs a graph considering player relationships with audio and visual features as graph nodes. Specifically, by introducing players’ importance into the graph edge based on their field positions and team information, our method enables the utilization of knowledge that reflects the detailed match situation. Next, we extract latent features considering spatial–temporal interactions from the graph and predict event occurrences with uncertainty based on the probabilistic deep learning method. In comparison with several baseline methods and ablation studies using professional soccer match data, our method was confirmed to be effective as it demonstrated the highest average precision of 0.948, surpassing other methods.

Research on the Application of Kohonen Neural Networks in Football Clustering Analysis

This study applies Kohonen neural networks for clustering analysis in sports. By iteratively optimizing the objective function, it effectively avoids numerous subjective factors, providing a novel and efficient approach for obtaining objective clustering results. The results demonstrate that clustering analysis using Kohonen neural networks offers a clear practical value in evaluating the comprehensive strength of soccer teams. It serves as an effective method for rational, effective, objective, and quantifiable assessment of team tactics and strategies. Furthermore, this method is readily applicable to other comprehensive evaluations in competitive sports.

Using the five-factor model of personality to identify an optimal SWAT team member

This study, based on the five-factor model (FFM) of personality, aimed to identify personality traits associated with the most optimal special weapons and tactics (SWAT) team member. SWAT teams are tasked with pre-empting and responding to terrorist threats, conducting hostage rescue operations, and managing situations that exceed the capabilities of conventional law enforcement agencies. The study sought to provide a deeper understanding of how personality traits function within the high-stakes context of these teams. It involved 159 male SWAT officers in active service within the Swedish Police Authority. A work analysis instrument, the Personality Job Profiler (PJP), was administered to these officers, who served as subject matter experts (SMEs) in a comprehensive personality work analysis. Specifically, the study addressed two research questions: How can an optimal SWAT police officer personality profile be operationalized when translated to the FFM of personality? What is the association between this optimal SWAT profile and the ratings of ten Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders personality disorder profiles, based on the FFM of personality? The findings suggest that successful SWAT officers should exhibit low neuroticism and high conscientiousness, specifically featuring low vulnerability and high levels of competence, dutifulness, and self-discipline. Notably, the SWAT profile differs significantly from personality disorders, such as borderline, schizotypal, dependent, and avoidant, when operationalized with the FFM of personality. These results have significant implications for developing predictors for the selection process and can enhance the selection procedures for future SWAT members. This may also prompt further studies on criteria-related validity using various personality assessment methods.

Conditioning for Strength, Power, and Aerobic Fitness for Specialist Police Tactical Groups

ABSTRACT Police officers serving in specialist Police Tactical Groups (PTG), including Special Weapons and Tactics teams, are called on to perform tasks in highly volatile and unpredictable situations beyond those of general duties police officers. In addition to carrying loads of 20–25 kg, these officers have, and require, levels of fitness above that of the civilian population, general duties police, and even elite athletes. Through the PTGs' occupational lifespan, from initial selection to operational duties, candidates and serving officers require strength (both absolute and relative), power, and metabolic fitness (aerobic and anaerobic) to pass selection, mitigate injury, and perform occupational tasks. Given the complexities of conditioning these officers, including shift work and unpredictable job demands, a conjugate block periodization approach may be of value. Evidence suggests that a block periodization approach of 3 to 4 mesocycles, including an accumulation phase, a transmutation phase, a realization phase, and potentially a deloading or recovery phase may ensure an adequate training stimulus for these specialist officers. This is especially the case when supported by a dedicated and experienced strength and conditioning coach.

Critical Incident Management: Strengthening the Relationship Between Crisis Negotiations and Tactical Teams

Critical Incident Management: Strengthening the Relationship Between Crisis Negotiations and Tactical Teams

The importance of context: re-examining the ‘deployments’ of SWAT teams in Canada

ABSTRACT Based on an analysis of data released through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, Canadian researchers have suggested that Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams are no longer exclusively deployed to resolve high-risk incidents but now frequently respond to routine calls that do not necessitate their involvement. Given concerns about these conclusions, we submitted the same FOI requests to the 14 police agencies examined by Roziere and Walby [2020. Special weapons and tactics teams in Canadian policing: legal, institutional, and economic dimensions. Policing and society, 30 (6), 704–719] and worked with the FOI analyst from each agency to ensure that the data were being interpreted correctly. Based on our re-analysis of the FOI-released data, we report on two problems with the conclusions reached by Roziere and Walby: the conflation of incidents where any SWAT officer responds to calls with full SWAT team deployments and the masking of potential risk factors in calls when relying on call type categories. Our findings illustrate the value of police agencies disclosing relevant contextual information to researchers when possible and they reinforce the necessity of collaborating with FOI analysts to better understand the data being released.

Unsupervised Learning in NBA Injury Recovery: Advanced Data Mining to Decode Recovery Durations and Economic Impacts

This study utilized advanced data mining and machine learning to examine player injuries in the National Basketball Association (NBA) from 2000–01 to 2022–23. By analyzing a dataset of 2296 players, including sociodemographics, injury records, and financial data, this research investigated the relationships between injury types and player recovery durations, and their socioeconomic impacts. Our methodology involved data collection, engineering, and mining; the application of techniques such as Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN), isolation forest, and the Z score for anomaly detection; and the application of the Apriori algorithm for association rule mining. Anomaly detection revealed 189 anomalies (1.04% of cases), highlighting unusual recovery durations and factors influencing recovery beyond physical healing. Association rule mining indicated shorter recovery times for lower extremity injuries and a 95% confidence level for quick returns from “Rest” injuries, affirming the NBA’s treatment and rest policies. Additionally, economic factors were observed, with players in lower salary brackets experiencing shorter recoveries, pointing to a financial influence on recovery decisions. This study offers critical insights into sports injuries and recovery, providing valuable information for sports professionals and league administrators. This study will impact player health management and team tactics, laying the groundwork for future research on long-term injury effects and technology integration in player health monitoring.

Understanding the physical fitness standard, recruitment, and retention of Canadian Emergency Response Teams

Canadian police services rely on their Emergency Response Teams (ERT) to respond to diverse calls for service, requiring ERT members to meet physical fitness standards aligned with the physically demanding components of ERT responsibilities. In the current article, we explore the different physical testing components of Canadian tactical teams to better understand the physical testing standards for ERT. We do this by investigating how members of the Association of Canadian Critical Incident Commanders respond to closed and open-ended survey items related to fitness testing for ERT members, consequences of not passing ERT physical testing standards, and how fitness standards are perceived as creating barriers to member retention and recruitment to ERT. We center our discussion on the need for a physically capable police service to ensure security, reduce risk, and enhance public safety and suggest potential avenues for policy changes tied to physical testing standards as ways forward.

Action-Evaluator: A Visualization Approach for Player Action Evaluation in Soccer.

In soccer, player action evaluation provides a fine-grained method to analyze player performance and plays an important role in improving winning chances in future matches. However, previous studies on action evaluation only provide a score for each action, and hardly support inspecting and comparing player actions integrated with complex match context information such as team tactics and player locations. In this work, we collaborate with soccer analysts and coaches to characterize the domain problems of evaluating player performance based on action scores. We design a tailored visualization of soccer player actions that places the action choice together with the tactic it belongs to as well as the player locations in the same view. Based on the design, we introduce a visual analytics system, Action-Evaluator, to facilitate a comprehensive player action evaluation through player navigation, action investigation, and action explanation. With the system, analysts can find players to be analyzed efficiently, learn how they performed under various match situations, and obtain valuable insights to improve their action choices. The usefulness and effectiveness of this work are demonstrated by two case studies on a real-world dataset and an expert interview.

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The article proposes an approach to developing a method of using an interagency grouping of troops (forces) for stabilization operations in the de-occupied territories, which, unlike the known ones, takes into account the current conditions and peculiarities of performing tasks, combines the best domestic and foreign practices. It makes it possible to determine a balanced list of tasks and activities of law enforcement agencies and public authorities at various levels of government to create an interagency group of the appropriate composition. The proposed approach can be used by the military command and control bodies of the National Guard of Ukraine to plan the use of its formations, as well as to create groups and tactical teams of appropriate composition.

Smartboard: Visual Exploration of Team Tactics with LLM Agent.

Tactics play an important role in team sports by guiding how players interact on the field. Both sports fans and experts have a demand for analyzing sports tactics. Existing approaches allow users to visually perceive the multivariate tactical effects. However, these approaches require users to experience a complex reasoning process to connect the multiple interactions within each tactic to the final tactical effect. In this work, we collaborate with basketball experts and propose a progressive approach to help users gain a deeper understanding of how each tactic works and customize tactics on demand. Users can progressively sketch on a tactic board, and a coach agent will simulate the possible actions in each step and present the simulation to users with facet visualizations. We develop an extensible framework that integrates large language models (LLMs) and visualizations to help users communicate with the coach agent with multimodal inputs. Based on the framework, we design and develop Smartboard, an agent-based interactive visualization system for fine-grained tactical analysis, especially for play design. Smartboard provides users with a structured process of setup, simulation, and evolution, allowing for iterative exploration of tactics based on specific personalized scenarios. We conduct case studies based on real-world basketball datasets to demonstrate the effectiveness and usefulness of our system.

Integral assessment of football team tactics

The purpose of the research was to develop a methodology of control and determine the indicators of integral assessment of competitive performance by various tactical game models of highly qualified football club teams. Material and methods. In the period of 2018-2023, 110 games of the leading European club teams and 46 games of the football team "Dynamo" (Kyiv) were analyzed with regard to the tactical models of the games "A", "B", "C", "D". Specific coefficients were determined in the phase of passing and possession of the ball, which constituted an integral assessment of competitive performance. The assessment of attacks and goalscoring situations, the realization of pressing, the effectiveness of players' interaction in the phase of picking up the ball, as well as the criteria of creativity and game combinations were taken into account. Results. An integral assessment methodology of the competitive performance of football club teams has been developed, consisting of 10 specific coefficients: high pressing coefficient; high pressing efficiency factor, low pressing efficiency factor, coefficient of ball picking efficiency, ball interceptions efficiency coefficient, penetration attack efficiency coefficient, successful penetration attack efficiency coefficient, goalscoring situation coefficient, the creativity and the combinability coefficients. The first five coefficients characterize the team's play in the phase of picking up the ball, the other five – in the phase of ball control on the field. The determined indicators of the integral assessment of the competitive performance of the leading European club teams according to different tactical models of the game are as follows: model "A" - 5.95±0.32 points; model "B" - 5.35±0.29 points; model "C" - 5.57±0.47 points; model "D" - 5.14±0.33 points. Conclusions. The integral assessment of competitive performance allows to provide effective control of interaction of players of a club football team in the phases of picking up and possession of the ball.

Coordinating Team Tactics for Swarm-Versus-Swarm Adversarial Games

Although swarms of unmanned aerial vehicles have received much attention in the last few years, adversarial swarms (that is, competitive swarm-versus-swarm games) have been less well studied. In this paper, we demonstrate a deep reinforcement learning method to train a policy of fixed-wing aircraft agents to leverage hand-scripted tactics to exploit force concentration advantage and within-team coordination opportunities to destroy, or destroy, as many opponent team members as possible while preventing teammates from being attrited. The efficacy of agents using the policy network trained using the proposed method outperform teams utilizing only one of the handcrafted baseline tactics in -vs- engagements for as small as two and as large as 64 as well as learner teams trained to vary their yaw rate actions, even when the trained team’s agents’ sensor range and teammate partnership possibility is constrained.

Applying the terror management theory to active shooter events: Explaining the police response

After the active shooting incident in Columbine, Colorado, the police response to these events changed. Rather than have the first responding officers secure the perimeter and wait for a special weapons and tactics team, police officers have been trained to move quickly to engage and neutralize a shooter. The expectation is that an officer will prioritize the lives of victims over their own. This approach is contrary to the police culture of surviving dangerous encounters. This article presents a discussion of terror management theory as a possible explanation for why some officers may fail to perform according to contemporary expectations, and why some officers may willingly place themselves in positions in which their lives are threatened. This examination is followed by a discussion of policy and research implications.