Expected Possession Value of Control and Duel Actions for Soccer Player's Skills Estimation

2024/06/02 by Andrei Shelopugin, Shelopugin, Andrei
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Medicine · #Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Machine Learning (cs.LG) #Sports Analytics and Performance #Sports Performance and Training

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2406.00814

openalex publication_date 2024/06/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

Estimation of football players' skills is one of the key tasks in sports analytics. This paper introduces multiple extensions to a widely used model, expected possession value (EPV), to address some key challenges such as selection problem. First, we assign greater weights to events occurring immediately prior to the shot rather than those preceding them (decay effect). Second, our model incorporates possession risk more accurately by considering the decay effect and effective playing time. Third, we integrate the assessment of individual player ability to win aerial and ground duels. Using the extended EPV model, we predict this metric for various football players for the upcoming season, particularly taking into account the strength of their opponents.

Related

• Revisiting Expected Possession Value in Football: Introducing a Benchmark, U-Net Architecture, and Reward and Risk for Passes
• Expected Pass Turnovers (xPT) - a model to analyse turnovers from passing events in football
• Regularized Adjusted Plus-Minus Models for Evaluating and Scouting Football (Soccer) Players using Possession Sequences
• Beyond Expected Goals: A Probabilistic Framework for Shot Occurrences in Soccer
• QPass: a Merit-based Evaluation of Soccer Passes