For inspiration when creating tactics

[allyc31]

Athletics 18 Player roles

 

Might be fun when cooking up new tactics

[CARRERA]

There is a paid subscription needed to access the article. Properbly against SI's ToS.

[kepz]

1 hour ago, CARRERA said:

There is a paid subscription needed to access the article. Properbly against SI's ToS.

Quote

Introducing The Athletic’s 18 player roles: Orchestrator, Safety or Unlocker?

John Muller

Positions are — let’s be honest here — a terrible way to think and talk about football. They’re supposed to suggest players’ job descriptions, even whole skill sets, but all they really tell you is approximately what patch of grass they run around on.

It’s like sending employers a CV that says your desk was over by the potted plant in the north east corner of the office, a few rows behind the accountants and across from marketing. You might get a few weird looks at that interview.

What if, instead of positions, we had a more detailed way to describe footballers’ tactical roles?

Better yet, what if these roles are based not on subjective labels for starting formations but on the type and location of a player’s actual touches?

“Players can be called one position and then do a totally different thing than another player who plays the same position. Sometimes, people don’t agree on what position a player is,” says Mike Imburgio, who started writing articles for American Soccer Analysis about using data to define player roles while earning a neuroscience PhD.

“So I got really fascinated by the idea of, ‘What kind of player is this? What does this player like to do, and what are they tasked with doing?’.”

Together with another American Soccer Analysis contributor named Sam Goldberg, Imburgio developed a set of data-based player roles that serve as the basis for a public scouting model called DAVIES. (Goldberg now works as a data scientist for the New York Red Bulls of MLS; Imburgio does some football recruitment consulting alongside his day job in data science.)

“I settled early on a two-step process that involves taking a lot of data about a lot of different players and condensing it into a smaller number of variables. That’s called dimension reduction. Rather than trying to explore 30 different variables for all of these players, you can look at them on literally a map,” Imburgio says. “From there, you use a clustering algorithm to group players into different roles.”

During pre-season, The Athletic used an approach similar to Imburgio’s to develop our own unique set of 18 player roles.

Like DAVIES, these roles are built on FBref’s trove of public StatsBomb data, which covers players from the big five European domestic leagues — England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain — over the last five seasons.

The resulting player classification model — a role model, if you will — has all kinds of potential uses.

It can put players’ numbers in context by determining who we should compare them to, since different roles have different opportunities to record stats. It can also help us investigate how players, squads or entire leagues evolve over time, how roles and formations interact, or what your club might need on the transfer market.

We hope the player roles will help writers and readers alike find new ways to think about data and tactics, or at least give us something more fun to talk about than positions.

But first things first. Here’s an introduction to The Athletic’s 18 player roles, what they mean and where they came from…

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The 18 player roles

Central attackers

• Finisher: Focused on getting in the box and finding shots. May be good on the ball but isn’t very involved in possession. Examples from the 2021-22 season: Erling Haaland, Lautaro Martinez, Romelu Lukaku
• Target: Involved in his team’s build-up play, especially in the air or by dropping towards the ball. Typically more of a goal threat than a creative passer or dribbler. Patrik Schick, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Gianluca Scamacca
• Roamer: Likes to drop deep or wide to create for team-mates when he’s not attacking the goal. Includes mobile strikers, false nines, and hybrid wingers. Harry Kane, Kai Havertz, Richarlison.

Wide attackers

• Wide threat: Stretches the back line and gets into the penalty area. Does some crossing but likes receiving the final ball as much as playing it. Kylian Mbappe, Vinicius Junior, Mohamed Salah
• Unlocker: Likes to play field marshal in the opponent’s half. Big on crosses, switches, and forward passes. More of a provider than an off-the-ball runner. Mason Mount, Neymar, Lorenzo Pellegrini
• Outlet: Gets on the end of dangerous passes but usually plays it safe on the ball. Takes a lot of touches in midfield or close to goal, not much in between. Draws fouls. Jadon Sancho, Jack Grealish, Joao Felix.

Advanced midfielders

• Box crasher: Doesn’t touch the ball much except when close to goal. More of an off-ball runner than a passer, but will play passes into the box. Likes to dribble. Phil Foden, Florian Wirtz, Serge Gnabry
• Creator: Looks to break lines with aggressive passes. Frequently central to his team’s play in the attacking half. Bruno Fernandes, Kevin De Bruyne, Sergej Milinkovic-Savic
• Orchestrator: Prefers midfield circulation to finding the final ball. Likes shorter, higher-percentage passes. Not afraid to do some defending. Bernardo Silva, Jude Bellingham, Nicolo Barella.

Deep midfielders

• Box to box: Defends low but also gets upfield to receive progressive passes. Not very heavily involved in possession, usually cautious on the ball. Fabinho, Wilfred Ndidi, Eduardo Camavinga
• Distributor: Favours longer, more direct passes and switches. Active in the opponent’s half more than the defensive third. Joshua Kimmich, Fabian Ruiz, Youri Tielemans
• Builder: Serves as the main circulation hub in the build-up and as a stopper at the base of midfield. Declan Rice, Rodri, Aurelien Tchouameni.

Wide defenders

• Overlapper: Gets into the final third, dribbles, and hits crosses. Would rather receive long passes and recycle them than play long himself. Includes a lot of wing-backs. Alphonso Davies, Achraf Hakimi, Reece James
• Progressor: Attempts long balls and progressive passes as well as crosses. Active in possession at both ends. Trent Alexander-Arnold, Andrew Robertson, Joao Cancelo

(Photo: Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

• Safety: Stays home, getting involved in the defensive third while not taking many risks on or off the ball. Includes hybrid centre-backs or elbow backs.Benjamin Pavard, Timothy Castagne, Aaron Wan-Bissaka.

Central defenders

• Aggressor: Likes to tackle and dribble. Not big on long passes or clearances. Includes a lot of outside centre-backs. Alessandro Bastoni, Lucas Hernandez, Ronald Araujo
• Spreader: Plays longer, more direct passes. Will sometimes step out in possession or to close down in defence. Marquinhos, Eder Militao, Jules Kounde
• Anchor: Plays safe passes and does his defending close to goal, especially with clearances and blocks. Ruben Dias, Matthijs de Ligt, Milan Skriniar.

---

How it works…

OK, deep breath. This is about to get nerdy.

First, we took hundreds of season-level stats for players and their teams, mixed and matched them, and came up with 14 that were useful for separating players into broad position groups, for example “wide defender” or “advanced midfielder”. This initial set of stats focused on what part of the pitch players tend to take their touches in, what kinds of passes they attempt, and how successful they are at passing and receiving.

Passing and receiving percentages may sound like a measure of skill — and to an extent, they are — but not so much as they tell you what kind of passes a player is involved in and where. That was important. The goal wasn’t to group players by how good they are at football, only how they fit into their team. (It mostly worked — by Transfermarkt values, there’s a pretty even mix of talent across each of the final 18 roles.)

We fed the first 14 stats into a dimension reduction algorithm called UMAP that arranged 7,000-plus player seasons into a two-dimensional map where players with similar stats were located near one another. Then we used a clustering algorithm called GMM to divide that map into six primary groups of players.

Up to this point, the process was more or less the same as the one used to classify team playstyles for The Five Kingdoms of Football.

As intended, the six primary clusters broke down along position lines: centre-backs and full-backs each had a group almost entirely to themselves, while the other four clusters belonged predominantly to strikers, wingers, attacking midfielders and defensive midfielders (central midfielders were divided between the last two groups).

But the algorithms didn’t know players’ positions. The clusters were derived entirely from stats, so unusual players such as Inter Milan’s Denzel Dumfries, who lines up as a wing-back but operates more like a winger than a defender, were grouped by how they played instead of how they were labelled positionally.

The next step was to break the six primary groups into smaller secondary clusters that would become our 18 player roles.

There was no right or wrong final number of roles, but dividing each primary group into three smaller ones of comparable size made the roles specific enough to capture different styles but large enough to stay fairly stable.

This second stage followed the same process as the first: for each primary cluster, we selected new stats that helped to map and cluster players based on broad stylistic similarity. Each of the six used different stats — dribbles per touch, for example, proved useful for separating attacking midfielders but not defensive midfielders.

The last step was to train a separate model to re-classify players into the 18 roles using all 42 stats that went into the clustering processes, ranging from the percentage of a player’s touches taken in the opponents’ penalty area to how many of his defensive actions are clearances or blocks. Every stat was normalised by team rates, which didn’t make much difference most of the time but may help adjust for more eccentric team playstyles.

After that, all that was left was to name the roles, which is both more important and harder than it sounds.

Even though the roles capture player types that you can probably imagine on the pitch, English doesn’t have as colourful a vocabulary for talking about player roles as some other languages.

“If you take two seasoned scouts and show them the same player that they have no preconceptions of and say, ‘Give me a description of how this player plays in three words’,” Imburgio says, “it’s highly likely that they’re not going to line up.”

The names The Athletic settled on are a little corny and ambiguous by design — they’re supposed to evoke a role’s vibe without getting all pseudo-scientific-sounding in trying to nail down its particulars, which take more than a couple of words to do justice to. (Where role names do sound familiar, like “Target” or “Box to box”, it’s because those concepts happened to map pretty well onto a certain cluster.)

How well did the whole project turn out?

There’s no sure way to say. It’s not too hard to get a feel for what sort of player belongs in which role and how the roles are different, which is the most essential thing. If the roles aren’t interpretable, they won’t be useful.

The model is confident and consistent in its ability to assign roles to players, and the roles themselves are stable enough over time.

On average, a player will stay in the same role from one season to the next 61 per cent of the time, or 46 per cent if he moves to another club. That seems reasonable, given the number of roles and all the usual vagaries of team-mates, tactics and coaching.

Players with distinctive styles, such as Roberto Firmino, pop up at almost exactly the same place on the style maps every season. As for guys whose tactical role has evolved, such as Harry Kane, who’s been dropping deeper to provide for team-mates over the last couple of seasons, the model reflects that.

These are signs that it’s doing something right.

But the real test of how well the player roles project turned out will be how useful it is for The Athletic’s writers and readers, and we’ll find that out in future articles.

“No matter what you end up with, it’s always going to be something that people can argue with,” Imburgio says. “But if you can make use of it, that’s all that matters.”

(Design: John Muller and Sam Richardson)

 

[CowShedBarmyArmy]

I thought the exact same thing when I read it. Would be fun to come up with a list of key attributes and stats for each role to help identify how best to use your squad and to find good signing targets,

[CowShedBarmyArmy]

Made a very crude start, feel free to comment and make suggestions.

 

[(sic)]

18 hours ago, CowShedBarmyArmy said:

Made a very crude start, feel free to comment and make suggestions.

 

I wouldn't agree with some of these roles, but it's a great start.

I think that Anchor and Aggressor in the CB position, for example, can both be CD-D, but their playstyle would change based on their attributes. Anchor would be someone with great positioning, anticipation, marking, tackling, etc. but without great passing - possibly CD on Cover duty. In general less risky passes, less dribbling. While the Aggressor, as the name suggest, would have higher aggression and maybe close down more often than the Anchor, could maybe put him on a stopper duty, and in general he would be good on the ball (first touch, dribbling, technique), but not necessarily a great passer. Also it is mentioned that it includes a lot of outside CBs, so a WCB-S would be a great role for it as well. Brings the ball out of defense seems like a perfect trait for that role as well.

Similarly in the midfield, a Builder screams DLP-D to me, but with the right player traits and instructions, it could as well be a default DM-D. HB-D, or A-D. "Serves as the main circulation hub in the build-up" is the key part to me, and it is why I would go for a DLP-D. A Distributor on the other hand, could really be any role, with More Risky and/or More Direct Passes, together with Likes To Switch Ball To Other Flank , though it does say it is active in the opponents half more, so a DLP-S, CM-S, etc. would work really well. A player would need to be great on the ball, with great passing. 

An Orchestrator in Advanced Midfielders could be any role honestly (AP, AM, CM). What I get from it is that it actually wouldn't have Risky passes turned on, and would instead prefer to play it short. It's not a player that would usually play through balls and risky passes. Again the attributes and player traits would influence this more to be in the line with their description. Creator on the other hand could be the same, RPM, TQ, etc. but instead it would be a player who would be more aggressive in possession, taking more risks.

 

In Wide Attackers area, an Unlocker could really be anyone on Support Duty. I wouldn't play him as an IF though, as an IF is more focused on making forward runs. PIs, Player Traits, Attributes all would affect this, but here I would have a player who would Cross More Often, Play More Risky/Direct passes, Roam From Position, etc.

 

[CowShedBarmyArmy]

9 hours ago, (sic) said:

I wouldn't agree with some of these roles, but it's a great start.

I think that Anchor and Aggressor in the CB position, for example, can both be CD-D, but their playstyle would change based on their attributes. Anchor would be someone with great positioning, anticipation, marking, tackling, etc. but without great passing - possibly CD on Cover duty. In general less risky passes, less dribbling. While the Aggressor, as the name suggest, would have higher aggression and maybe close down more often than the Anchor, could maybe put him on a stopper duty, and in general he would be good on the ball (first touch, dribbling, technique), but not necessarily a great passer. Also it is mentioned that it includes a lot of outside CBs, so a WCB-S would be a great role for it as well. Brings the ball out of defense seems like a perfect trait for that role as well.

Similarly in the midfield, a Builder screams DLP-D to me, but with the right player traits and instructions, it could as well be a default DM-D. HB-D, or A-D. "Serves as the main circulation hub in the build-up" is the key part to me, and it is why I would go for a DLP-D. A Distributor on the other hand, could really be any role, with More Risky and/or More Direct Passes, together with Likes To Switch Ball To Other Flank , though it does say it is active in the opponents half more, so a DLP-S, CM-S, etc. would work really well. A player would need to be great on the ball, with great passing. 

An Orchestrator in Advanced Midfielders could be any role honestly (AP, AM, CM). What I get from it is that it actually wouldn't have Risky passes turned on, and would instead prefer to play it short. It's not a player that would usually play through balls and risky passes. Again the attributes and player traits would influence this more to be in the line with their description. Creator on the other hand could be the same, RPM, TQ, etc. but instead it would be a player who would be more aggressive in possession, taking more risks.

 

In Wide Attackers area, an Unlocker could really be anyone on Support Duty. I wouldn't play him as an IF though, as an IF is more focused on making forward runs. PIs, Player Traits, Attributes all would affect this, but here I would have a player who would Cross More Often, Play More Risky/Direct passes, Roam From Position, etc.

 

Fantastic feedback, thanks. I did rush my initial list as my head was buzzing with ideas and I wanted to get it into excel asap.

[allyc31]

15 hours ago, CowShedBarmyArmy said:

Fantastic feedback, thanks. I did rush my initial list as my head was buzzing with ideas and I wanted to get it into excel asap.

Id love to see your updated thoughts

[CowShedBarmyArmy]

On 16/08/2022 at 11:23, allyc31 said:

Id love to see your updated thoughts

I'll try and do it over the weekend. Been a crazy week in work!

[CowShedBarmyArmy]

Updated (thanks for the feedback (sic).

Appreciate more feedback, this is far from perfect.

Edited August 21, 2022 by CowShedBarmyArmy

[camoulton21]

I'd say that the "Creator" role should be an Advanced Playmaker on Attack instead of being a Roaming Playmaker. I think that an AP-Attack would mimic the aggressive line breaking passes better as I'd imagine this role to be the player with the highest chances created, key passes and assists in the team rather than a player that is controlling the game for the team

I'd also add False 9 to the FM role for "Roamer"

[CowShedBarmyArmy]

2 hours ago, camoulton21 said:

I'd say that the "Creator" role should be an Advanced Playmaker on Attack instead of being a Roaming Playmaker. I think that an AP-Attack would mimic the aggressive line breaking passes better as I'd imagine this role to be the player with the highest chances created, key passes and assists in the team rather than a player that is controlling the game for the team

I'd also add False 9 to the FM role for "Roamer"

Thanks for the feedback. Both good points.

[Draakon]

It's the same old debate - should you try to find perfect roles for your players or should you try to fit them into your tactics (hoping that they will perform in the roles that you assign to them).

It's possible (both IRL and in FM) to set up a general tactic (formation, instructions) and then tweak one or two roles so that it fits better for the specific player. Two players play the same position/role a bit different anyway, because their abilities and preferred moves are different, but the idea that it works in wide specter is wrong - you can't change midfield or full-back roles too much without changing the way your whole team plays. Sometimes it leads to positive results, sometimes not.

 

[CARRERA]

37 minutes ago, Draakon said:

It's the same old debate - should you try to find perfect roles for your players or should you try to fit them into your tactics (hoping that they will perform in the roles that you assign to them).

Indeed it’s a debate and it depends individual preference also.

Two ways were working particular well for me

1. Envisioning a playstyle for the long term and fitting players into it no matter what. It might come at the cost of a little bit less success until I made the right transfers
2. Building a system around the favourite roles of my best players. I usually do that if there are some exceptional players in my team (4*+)

[allyc31]

On 21/08/2022 at 10:14, CowShedBarmyArmy said:

Updated (thanks for the feedback (sic).

Appreciate more feedback, this is far from perfect.

Loving your work so far. One thing that I think could be useful is the inclusion of PPMs? An example might be

 

The Orchestrator

 Prefers midfield circulation to finding the final ball. Likes shorter, higher-percentage passes. Not afraid to do some defending.

To me that is a DLP with the PPMs Plays Short Simple Passes, Dictates Tempo

I know that PPMs are basically just extensions of the movements that are created by the roles but I think that they could be really useful in further perfecting these new roles

Really fun thread so far

[(sic)]

45 minutes ago, allyc31 said:

Loving your work so far. One thing that I think could be useful is the inclusion of PPMs? An example might be

 

The Orchestrator

 Prefers midfield circulation to finding the final ball. Likes shorter, higher-percentage passes. Not afraid to do some defending.

To me that is a DLP with the PPMs Plays Short Simple Passes, Dictates Tempo

I know that PPMs are basically just extensions of the movements that are created by the roles but I think that they could be really useful in further perfecting these new roles

Really fun thread so far

Yep, definitely the PPMs would help a lot to define certain roles. I wouldn't even worry that much about some of the in-game roles, as pretty much any of them could work (though with this role, they would have to be on support and in CM or AM spots), with the right PIs and Player Traits.

Edited August 23, 2022 by (sic)

[CowShedBarmyArmy]

Great idea to add ppms.

I've attached the spreadsheet, feel free to edit it.

I created it just to get the ball rolling and dont mind it being changed.

18 Player Roles.xlsx

[FMSD0]

Converting the 18 known player types into the corresponding FM roles and thus simplifying the choice of tactics is an interesting idea, but it should not be forgotten that the underlying calculations are very zone-based and a more appropriate term might have been "zonal (player) types / roles". After all, the six zones are relatively easy to transfer to FM. Most of the time, progressive roles appear in more than one zone such as progressive full-backs, false nines and tens, etc.—which is not a problem because such progressive roles are mostly fluid dynamic roles anyway.

The transitions from role to role / type can be smooth or extreme (f.e. from Distributor to Box to Box), but for the most part we will most likely reach a broad consensus on which in-game roles might suit which player type role. Once this is achieved, it is easy to identify the appropriate players by following the 18 player type roles. It sounds a bit naïve when I say that because I’ve been working and thinking in these schemes and patterns for some time while using other sources and it just doesn’t apply to everyone, so not everyone understands it straight away.

Basically, before choosing team instructions, this is all that is needed to build a structured framework (but also experimental ones can actually work!) to kick-start things. An essential foundation, in other words, upon which everyone can then build with their own insights.

As someone who likes to link data and tactics, the article is an interesting opportunity to question already existing ideas or logic systems and possibly improve them in some places. I’ve applied this “18 Player Roles” terminology to my system, which I used a few days ago to finish the last 15 matches or so of the season I started a half year ago, to see what types of players make up the best eleven.

That’s what I came up with: 18 Player Roles Converted into FM Player Roles.

And yes, in case anyone is irritated, I really used Haaland as a wide forward (90 percent of the time I guess) to deploy various aggressive False 9s (Shadow Strikers) in the centre. He still ended up with 37 G+A in 2,781 minutes (although he struggled towards the end of the season). I abused FM 21 Haaland’s overrated-ness (who doesn’t?), and with that I mean his more than overpowered dribbling, passing and even defensive stats: He’s on average rated two points higher in relevant stats than proper dribblers such as Guerreiro, Reyna and Brandt, and that means he’s by far the best dribbler in my team (that’s funny). In terms of passing he is also better than Reus, Dahoud and Brandt which is a little bit absurd, but it certainly helped. He’s basically a cheat code of a player, and here’s the point: A player like him can be absolutely anything you want him to be at any given time.

To take up the attributes again: I have also created a spreadsheet that includes worksheets for each zone, short descriptions for every player type / role and weights all attributes (except throw-ins) for the 18 player roles / types. I took the liberty of adapting the attribute system to that of EA Sports (basically multiplying the values by 5 and then minus 1) so that differences are much easier to see. The optimal weighting is certainly debatable for each category (PAC, SHO, DRI, PAS, DEF, PHY) and the roles, but I am very happy with the current version. It displays the players most people would expect to see in each category (except freak players like Haaland of course). Here’s the spreadsheet: Player Role Attributes. 

This way, it is easy to narrow down effective zones and roles for a player. In the end, the most difficult part is to select player types that complement each other well, and then choosing fitting team instructions. I think I will work with this framework from now on as it really simplifies the initial process when starting a new career or moving to a new club, and it gives a very accurate representation of the available player material. It makes me curious to try other styles of play besides possession-play and / or high pressing.