Fantastic Players. And Where to Find Them (with Data Analysis).
By: João Gouveia
Tags: Data Analysis, Power Bi, Storytelling, Data Visualization, Football

Can we explain the performance of some teams in the current season with the transfers they did last summer? Can we identify the trends European clubs are following in terms of purchases?

The What and the Why.

Data analysis is no longer seen as that boring and tedious thing in which some bar and pie charts are built from some tables. So, what changed? Probably the ability to understand data, to extract value from it, to visualize and communicate it. The ability to tell a story with data. An ability that has been shaping the way we see ourselves and the World around us. And that was exactly what led me and some amazing friends to develop this project for the course of “Analyzing and Visualizing Data”.

As like any other project starts, we were struggling in the beginning about the theme. “Ok, what should be our project about?”. During the first weeks, no idea appeared. Until one night we were having dinner and started to speak about a certain goal João Félix had score for his new team (like there are any other possible conversation topics these days…). And that was it! We had found our project’s matter. We decided to analyze the past transfers’ window and tell the story of a young Portuguese wonderkid leaving SL Benfica and embracing a giant challenge in the country of nuestros hermanos.

Although that goal was achieved, we wanted to go beyond that story. And so, using the potential of PowerBI, we developed a interactive dashboard that allows any user to analyze the performance of several clubs during the last Summer in terms of purchases and sales. Feel free to navigate through it and to share any insight you were not expecting to see (we wrote some in the ending of this article, but no spoilers! You have to stick around to read them!). Just click on the following link to go to the dashboard!

The How.

So, let’s briefly explain what we did to build the dashboard. Since the goal was to infer some insights from the past transfer window, the group needed a dataset containing that information, and this is where the famous website Transfermarkt stepped in. After a web scrapping made with python, an initial dataset was generated, containing the information about the top 1.791 transfers of this Summer.

Additionally, the group decided that an analysis by position could be essential to understand which main trends the biggest clubs in Europe are following. And, for that reason, an additional file was created, containing the different positions in which the players can play and the respective coordinates in order for them to be plotted on a football field image. At this point, the group was already able to build the first two pages of the project: League Overview and Team Overview.

League Overview

Team Overview

As for the Player Profile page, since one of the goals of this project is to find who can be the next big transfer, a user can choose one of the top 20 most expensive players from last Summer and compare him to similar players. To do this, a dataset containing the information about more than 17.000 players from FIFA 20 was collected and uploaded to PowerBI.

At the same time, the group created an algorithm using python that would evaluate the 6 composite attributes of this top 20 and compare them against the 17.000 players, in order to return which players would be the most similar. Finally, the result of such computation was uploaded to the PowerBI’s model and we were able to built the final page: Player Profile.

Player Profile

Some “I didn’t see that coming” insights.

A World apart? The centralization of broadcasting rights changed the English football, to the point of allowing the smaller clubs to spend enormous amount of money in the market. Proof of that is the 7th position the Championship (England’s second division) occupies in the top leagues with the highest expenditure level (with 160M€).

Bologna did what? Surprisingly, Bologna FC spent almost 65M€ in the past Summer, by purchasing 11 players (more than SL Benfica and Sporting CP combined). However, such investment is not bringing the expected results, as its current 15th position in the league shows.

A Lukas’ coincidence? Luka Jovic was a lost opportunity for SL Benfica. After an incredible season in Frankfurt, Real Madrid spared no expense and bought the young Serbian for an impressive fee of 60M€. However, according to our algorithm, a similar player to Jovic is Luca (!) Waldschmidt, that this Summer was close to sign for… SL Benfica.

Now, it’s your turn!

If you have made it this far, thank you for reading! Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or recommendations, or if you’d like to share your thoughts.