Method for understanding football ball motions using video based notational analysis

This study took time-stamped ball-related event descriptions and coordinates from Prozone Sports to build a summary of the football's motion. Aerodynamic data from wind tunnel testing and rolling resistance information from FIFA tests were applied to specific scenarios from the dataset to better understand individual events. Slow, short events were found to be the most frequent by far and most of those were intercepted before rolling to a stop. The corner-cross to a header scenario was chosen as an easily-defined event and a flight trajectory was determined. The data could potentially be used to quantify what happens during a kick and in some situations, provide medical researchers with a better idea of what cranial accelerations are present in a header.