Mathematicians Use Network Theory to Model Champion Spanish Soccer Team's Style

Mathematicians applied network theory to the unique style of play of the Spanish National Team, winners of this year’s European Championship. The resulting graphics determine that the team wins more often because it relies more on precise teamwork rather than the special skills of one or two superstars.

Using passing data from the 2010 World Cup, Javier López Peña (University College) and Hugo Touchette (Queen Mary University) found that the team passes the ball among its players a lot and, according to an article in PhysOrg, exhibits “betweenness centrality, which is a way of measuring the amount a network relies on a single node to operate at its optimum capacity. Their findings were uploaded to arXiv.

Source: PhysOrg