Who can replace Xavi? A passing motif analysis of football players

Abstract

Traditionally, most of football statistical and media coverage has been focused almost exclusively on goals and (ocassionally) shots. However, most of the duration of a football game is spent away from the boxes, passing the ball around. The way teams pass the ball around is the most characteristic measurement of what a team's "unique style" is. In the present work we analyse passing sequences at the player level, using the different passing frequencies as a "digital fingerprint" of a player's style. The resulting numbers provide an adequate feature set which can be used in order to construct a measure of similarity between players. Armed with such a similarity tool, one can try to answer the question: Who might possibly replace Xavi at FC Barcelona?