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Datasets:
luxury-lakehouse
/
pitch-control-tracking

Tasks:
Tabular Regression
Languages:
English
Tags:
sports-analytics
soccer
football
pitch-control
tracking-data
spearman-2017
License:
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metadata 
language:
  - en
license: mit
task_categories:
  - tabular-regression
tags:
  - sports-analytics
  - soccer
  - football
  - pitch-control
  - tracking-data
  - spearman-2017
  - physics-model
size_categories:
  - 10M-100M
configs:
  - config_name: default
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: data/*.parquet

Pitch Control Tracking Data

Per-player per-frame pitch control values from ~38 million rows of professional soccer tracking data across 20 matches from three providers. Computed using the Spearman (2017) physics-based model — each row contains one player's position, velocity, and the home-team control probability at that location.

Part of the (Right! Luxury!) Lakehouse soccer analytics platform.

Quick Start 

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("luxury-lakehouse/pitch-control-tracking")
df = ds["train"].to_pandas()

# Average home-team pitch control per match
home_control = df.groupby("match_id")["pitch_control_value"].mean()
print(home_control.describe())

Explore interactively: Soccer Analytics App

What is Pitch Control?

Pitch control quantifies which team controls each location on the pitch at every moment in a match. The Spearman (2017) physics-based model estimates control by computing the time for each player to intercept a given point, accounting for reaction time and maximum acceleration kinematics. A logistic influence function converts time-to-intercept into a control probability, and each player's contribution is the fraction of their team's total influence at that location.

The result is a per-player control value: the home-team control probability [0, 1] at that player's current position at that instant in time.

Data Fields

Column Type Description
tracking_id string Primary key — unique player-frame identifier
match_key bigint Canonical Kimball match FK (PR 7, ADR-011). BIGINT surrogate, collision-free across providers. Emitted natively by pitch_control_batch.py per PR 7 schema widening.
team_key bigint Canonical Kimball team FK (PR 7, ADR-011). BIGINT surrogate.
player_key bigint Canonical Kimball player FK (PR 7, ADR-011). BIGINT surrogate.
match_id string Match identifier (prefixed by provider — kept for human-debug joins)
player_id string Player identifier (provider-native)
team_id string Team identifier (provider-native; PR 7 staging canonicalization)
team string Team side affiliation (home or away)
period int Match period (1 or 2)
frame int Frame number within the period
timestamp_seconds double Timestamp in seconds from period start
x double Player X coordinate (StatsBomb 120-yard scale)
y double Player Y coordinate (StatsBomb 80-yard scale)
ball_x double Ball X coordinate
ball_y double Ball Y coordinate
velocity_x double Player velocity X (coordinate-units/second)
velocity_y double Player velocity Y (coordinate-units/second)
speed_ms double Player speed in m/s
pitch_control_value double Home-team control probability [0, 1] at this player's position
source_provider string Tracking data provider (metrica, idsse, skillcorner)
frame_rate bigint Frame rate in fps (25 for Metrica/IDSSE, 10 for SkillCorner)
data_source string PR 7 — alias of source_provider for downstream Kimball-conformed marts. Emitted natively by pitch_control_batch.py (PR 7 schema widening).

PR 7 — Kimball surrogate keys + dual-column window

The Kimball surrogate keys (match_key, team_key, player_key) are emitted alongside the legacy provider-native identifiers (match_id, team_id, player_id). The Kimball keys are BIGINT and collision-free across providers; consumers joining to other Kimball marts should use them. The legacy source_provider alias will be sunset in PR 8 (~2026-07-22) — match_id, team_id, player_id remain as human-debug columns.

Coordinate System

All coordinates use the StatsBomb 120×80 yards scale. All three tracking providers are normalized to this coordinate system during ingestion. The origin (0, 0) is at the bottom-left corner of the pitch; x runs along the length (0–120 yards), y along the width (0–80 yards).

Model

The pitch control values are computed using the Spearman (2017) physics-based model:

  1. Time-to-intercept: For each player and each target location, compute the minimum time to reach that point given a reaction time plus kinematics under maximum acceleration.
  2. Logistic influence function: Convert time-to-intercept to a control probability via a sigmoid function.
  3. Per-player control: Each player's pitch control value is the fraction of their team's total logistic influence at the player's current position, relative to all players on the pitch.

The result is bounded [0, 1] where 1 = home team has full control and 0 = away team has full control.

Data Sources

Provider Matches Frame Rate Competition
Metrica Sports 3 25 fps Open sample matches
IDSSE Bundesliga 7 25 fps German Bundesliga
SkillCorner A-League 10 10 fps Australian A-League

All providers use standardized tracking formats normalized to the StatsBomb coordinate scale.

Limitations

  • Small sample: Only 20 matches have full tracking data. Patterns may not generalize across leagues or tactical systems.
  • Variable frame rate: Metrica and IDSSE track at 25 fps; SkillCorner at 10 fps. Time-series analyses should account for this difference.
  • Velocity estimation: Velocity vectors are estimated from positional differences and may differ in smoothing method between providers.
  • Physics model approximation: The Spearman (2017) model assumes constant maximum acceleration and uniform reaction time. It does not account for player fatigue, directional momentum, or tactical intent.
  • No goalkeeper distinction: Goalkeepers are treated identically to outfield players in the control model.

Dual-Column Window (2026-04-26 → 2026-07-22)

The lakehouse is migrating to Kimball-conformed surrogate keys per ADR-011. The upstream stg_pitch_control__values model now carries match_key (BIGINT, FK to dim_matches) and data_source (idsse, metrica, skillcorner) alongside the existing match_id. The published HF dataset payload remains unchanged in this window — current consumers see exactly the columns documented above.

The next dataset version (planned 2026-07-22, alongside PR 8 of the staged Kimball migration) will add match_key and data_source to the published parquet payload, and deprecate match_id in favour of match_key. Schema changes will be announced in the dataset's HF revision history.

Citation

If you use this dataset, please cite the original pitch control paper:

@inproceedings{spearman2017beyond,
  title={Beyond Expected Goals},
  author={Spearman, William},
  booktitle={MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference},
  year={2017}
}

Companion Resources

Resource Type Description
OBSO/PAUSA Values Dataset Off-ball scoring opportunities computed from pitch control surfaces
Space Creation Values Dataset Per-player space creation using differential pitch control

More Information

Explore interactively: Soccer Analytics App