Navigating team tactical analysis in football: An analytical pipeline leveraging player tracking technology

Team tactical behaviour in football can be analysed using positional data. Global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) track players’ positions on the pitch and provide data on latitude and longitude positioning. However, data pre-processing is required for GNSS positional data prior to tactical analysis, which varies across studies and is scarcely reported. This lack of standardisation poses a challenge to the application and reproducibility of earlier findings. Therefore, Study 1 aimed to establish an analytical pipeline for tactical analysis, addressing typical data processing issues. Study 2 aimed to deploy this pipeline as a proof of concept, comparing team tactical behaviour across in-possession, out-of-possession, and transition phases in a competitive match. Independent positional datasets from different GNSS devices were used in two studies. Study 1 presented an analytical pipeline providing solutions for map projection, rotation matrix application, and handling missing values in data from small-sided games. Study 2 applied the pipeline to match data and revealed significant differences in team tactical behaviour across match phases. The analytical pipeline demonstrated its generalisability to match and training scenarios as well as across different tracking devices, allowing practitioners and scientists to advance tactical analysis in team sports using player tracking technology. This pipeline warrants disclosing processing procedures and the synchronisation of positional and event data to improve the reliability of findings.