Developing a Football Tactical Metric to Estimate the Sectorial Lines: A Case Study

The aim of this study was to propose a new tactical metric that characterises teammates’ organisation within a tactical sector. This metric was developed based on the Cartesian information of football players’ location at each second of three official matches. From the tracking procedures, 9218 moments were collected which were then organised into defensive (without possession of the ball) and attacking (with possession of the ball) instants. Significant differences were found between the two statuses of the possession of the ball for the defensive line (F (1, 9216) = 44.520; p-value = 0.001; η 2 = 0.005; Power = 1.000) and forward line (F (1, 9216) = 26.175; p-value = 0.001; η 2 = 0.000; Power = 0.108). From the specific results of this case study, it was possible to propose a new concept to help coaches observe a match with some tactical parameters that can allow a quicker identification of team properties.