Every day, enormous amounts of data are produced by businesses and consumers, forming vast data sets, both structured and unstructured. Such sets are increasingly used to guide strategic decision making, by means of big data analytical processes.
Big data analytics helps businesses to become more effective, hereby generating more revenue and/or profit. Depending on the desired outcome of the analysis, analytical processes can be descriptive, prescriptive, diagnostic or predictive (Banerjee, Bandyopadhyay & Acharya, 2013).
However, besides organizational decision-making focussed on costs, revenues and ultimately shareholder value, big data analytics can be used to guide decision making regarding one of the more trivial questions buzzing around society the last couple of decades, such as: ‘Which footballer is actually the best: Christiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi?’.
For over 20 years, fans, experts, players and coaches have not reached consensus about which player may be called the greatest of all time. Both sides of the argument have embayed numerous arguments and statistics to solve this seemingly unsolvable question. However, by using big data analytics, Decroos, Bransen, Van Haaren & Davis (2019) have finally produced an undebatable and unambiguous answer to the question.
Using data mining and machine learning techniques, these researchers from the University of Leuven, Belgium, have been able to examine the statistics of both players more extensively than researcher had done before. By creating the VAEP (Valuing Actions by Estimating Probabilities) framework, the researchers were able to accurately determine the value of football player’s actions. Besides focussing on assists and goals, the researchers included three more elements in their analysis:
1) The value of the player’s action types (passes, crosses, dribbles etc)
2) The value of the player’s action type with regards to the game context
3) The possible effect of a player’s action on subsequent actions
Using these elements, the researchers were able to calculate the value of football players not only based on quantifiable statistics such as goals, assists and successful passes and dribbles, but also included the value these actions deliver. The analysis shows that Messi is superior in terms of action quantity and quality, which is shown in the table below.
Without the use of big data analytics techniques, an area that is imminently growing both in size and in capabilities, the debate between supporters of Messi and Ronaldo would possibly never been solved, and none of the two players could have been called greatest of all time with certainty. However, by means of the study by Decroos et al. (2019), the end of an era of discussion between who is the best is now marked.
Sources
Banerjee, A., Bandyopadhyay, T., & Acharya, P. (2013). Data analytics: Hyped up aspirations or true potential?. Vikalpa, 38(4), 1-12.
Decroos, T., Bransen, L., Van Haaren, J., & Davis, J. (2019, July). Actions speak louder than goals: Valuing player actions in soccer. In Proceedings of the 25th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery & Data Mining (pp. 1851-1861). ACM.
I cannot help it, but I still like Ronaldo better… Your post shows a very rational and interesting way to look at this great question that has been haunting football fans for quite some time. I always compare this discussion to the discussions taking place among tennis fans, regarding the rivalries of Borg/McEnroe and Federer/Nadal. Obviously there is a very rational way of looking at who is the greatest of all time or who was the greatest player in a specific era. For instance, in the game of football, one could assess the greatness of the players by looking at the total number of Champions League and/or World Cup titles that were won. In tennis, one could do the same by counting the number of Grand Slams and/or Davis Cups won by a certain player.
However, in my personal opinion we shouldn’t always be rational when talking about sports. Obviously, there is something very subjective about liking one great player over another great player. Personally, I like players, whether it is on the tennis court or the football pitch, who show grit, personality and charisma. That is why I adore Rafael Nadal, John McEnroe and Cristiano Ronaldo over their well-known and, statistically better performing rivals. Players that are perhaps known for not behaving as ideal role models for children.
I think some other points of discussion are the differences in technology and enhanced physical capabilities between players that were active in different eras. Scientific progress have a massive impact on what is physically possible in one era versus the other. That is why I think we should stay away from terms like “The Greatest of all Time”. I would propose calling Messi “The Greatest of 2003 Until Today”. I am keen to hear your opinion on the latter!
Thank you for writing this interesting blog Joost! I did not know that this particular framework for valuing player actions and rating them existed. Me myself am also interested in the Messi versus Ronaldo debate. I think we might have a definitive answer after they retire. However, until that time, I don’t think this particular framework will give us an undebatable and unambiguous answer. This for the following reasons:
1.As we both know, off-the-ball actions dictate a large part of the game. Only 1 player has the ball at any given time. Positioning of the rest of the team plays a huge part in their performance. The authors of the VAEP framework point out that their framework only values on-the-ball-actions. That is, the model only values actions with the ball, while defending is often more about preventing your opponent from gaining possession of the ball by clever positioning and anticipation. Because of this, Ronaldo is at a disadvantage; he mostly played on the midfield.
2.Comparing players across leagues or even clubs can be hard. It is generally easier for a player to perform valuable actions in a top club with strong teammates, than in a club without. Messi has an advantage because of this, he played with two of the best midfielders of all time; Iniesta and Xavi. These two accompanied Messi since his debut. Ronaldo on the other hand had to get used to multiple teammates over the years. In England, in Spain and in Italy.
The framework is fine as a starting point for rating players, but it is unfit to settle the debate of the greatest football player of all time.