The touch & go dribbling model

Abstract One of the most relevant actions in football is that of keeping ball possession to progress on the game. To do that players of a team either keep passing the ball around or dribble it. Here we propose a preliminary model to capture instances in which football players dribble the ball around the field. The two-stage model consists of a “touch” event, an end-directed projectile launch, and a “go” phase, during which the ball follows its projectile course and the player performs locomotion toward the moving target of the ball. In this model, control over the general trajectory manifests during the touch phase; during the go phase, the player's movements are dictated by the ball's trajectory alone. Adjusting parameter values such as touch velocity demonstrates how the model can be the entry point for future investigation into how the parameter dynamics of dribbling respond to the context of the game.