Football analysis using spatio-temporal tools

•A first attempt to produce a set of automated football analysis tools.•Algorithmic techniques from computational geometry are used to develop efficient solutions.•In-depth discussion on how the basic tools can be used to analyse more complex patterns.

Analysing a football match is without doubt an important task for coaches, talent scouts, players and even media; and with current technologies more and more match data is collected. Several companies offer the ability to track the position of the players and the ball with high accuracy and high resolution. They also offer software that include basic analysis tools, for example basic statistics about distance run and number of passes. It is, however, a non-trivial task to perform more advanced analysis. We present a collection of tools that we developed specifically for analysing the performance of football players and teams. The aim, functionality and the underlying algorithms for each tool are presented and discussed.