Football analytics: a bibliometric study about the last decade contributions

Abstract

Machine learning and digitization tools are exponentially increasing in these last years and their applications are reflected in different areas of our life: in particular, this article has the aim to focus on football (i.e. soccer for Americans), the most practised sport in the world. Due to needing of professional teams, an- alytics tools in football are becoming a crucial point, in order to help technical staff, scouting and clubs management in policy evaluation and to optimize strate- gic decisions. In this article we propose an original bibliometric analysis about football analytics in the decade 2010-2020, thanks the powerful R package Bibliometrix and the well-known bibliometric database SCOPUS. The main goal is to understand better what already exist in football analytics literature and what not, in order to suggest future researchers to find new topics or to refine existing tools. Furthermore, our intention is to show some results starting from the sources production distribution, then focus on the most productive research groups and their countries, discover the most dynamic authors and highlight topics trend thanks keywords, during these last ten years. Finally, three relevant articles that summaries the most important themes are presented.Machine learning and digitization tools are exponentially increasing inthese last years and their applications are reected in dierent areas of ourlife: in particular, this article has the aim to focus on football (i.e. soc-cer for Americans), the most practised sport in the world. Due to needingof professional teams, an- alytics tools in football are becoming a crucialpoint, in order to help technical sta, scouting and clubs management inpolicy evaluation and to optimize strate- gic decisions. In this article we pro-pose an original bibliometric analysis about football analytics in the decade2010-2020, thanks the powerful R package Bibliometrix and the well-knownbibliometric database SCOPUS. The main goal is to understand better whatalready exist in football analytics literature and what not, in order to sug-gest future researchers to nd new topics or to rene existing tools. Fur-thermore, our intention is to show some results starting from the sourcesproduction distribution, then focus on the most productive research groupsand their countries, discover the most dynamic authors and highlight topicstrend thanks keywords, during these last ten years. Finally, three relevantarticles that summaries the most important themes are presented.