Valuing Players Over Time
This addresses the need for dynamic player assessment in soccer to improve decision-making, though it is incremental as it builds on existing valuation methods.
The paper tackles the problem of evaluating soccer players' performance as a time series rather than a static measure by introducing I-VAEP and O-VAEP models to rate actions and players over time, resulting in metrics for player consistency and development curves to aid decision-making.
In soccer (or association football), players quickly go from heroes to zeroes, or vice-versa. Performance is not a static measure but a somewhat volatile one. Analyzing performance as a time series rather than a stationary point in time is crucial to making better decisions. This paper introduces and explores I-VAEP and O-VAEP models to evaluate actions and rate players' intention and execution. Then, we analyze these ratings over time and propose use cases to fundament our option of treating player ratings as a continuous problem. As a result, we present who were the best players and how their performance evolved, define volatility metrics to measure a player's consistency, and build a player development curve to assist decision-making.