Python code associated to my blog post about Messi: Is it possible to defend against Messi?.

Content

This repo contains code for analysing Messi Data Biography.

It contains folders for Jupyter notebooks, data, and figures.

Notebooks

My analysis is composed of several notebooks. You can find the complete list below, with a small description.

Notebooks	Description
01-data_loading	Load Statsbomb data from local or github and do some preprocessing.
02-data_exploration	Explore Messi data and visualize some stats (goals, winning %, etc.)
03-Defense_analysis	Focus on the question "How to defend against Messi?". Exploration of Espanyol-Barcelona 2009/2010
04-VAEP_with_atomic-spadl	Use atomic-spadl to use the VAEP metric
05-xT_with_atomic-spadl	Use atomic-spadl to use the xThreat metric
06-EXTRA-advanced_messi_stats	Data vizualisation of some advance metrics
atomic-spadl_1-load-and-convert-statsbomb-data	Notebook from atomic-spadl
atomic-spadl_2-compute-features-and-labels	Notebook from atomic-spadl
atomic-spadl_3-estimate-scoring-and-conceding-probabilities	Notebook from atomic-spadl
Utility_functions	Utility functions for data vizualisation and calculate advance stats
unit_test	Test of one utility function with pytest

N.B.: make sure the atomic folder of socceraction is at the same level as this project if you want to use the associated notebooks.

Interactive visualization

List of visualization.

General

All static images can be found here: https://github.com/BenjaminLarrousse/statsbomb-messi/tree/master/figures

Visualization	Description
Win/draw/loss FC Barcelona	Win/draw/loss distribution of FC Barcelona with Messi (2004-2019).
Win/draw/loss Messi	Win/draw/loss distribution depending on Messi scoring or assisting.
Messi goals and assists	Number of games with goal, assist, or both.
Goals and assists involvement	Percentage of games without goals or assists, by season.
Messi xG distribution	Distribution of xG depending on goals or assists.
Messi VAEP values by season	Messi VAEP outputs by season.
VAEP distribution	VAEP distribution on the complete Messi dataset.
VAEP vs xG	Correlation between xG and VAEP for Messi.

Derby Espanyol/Barcelona

All static images can be found here: https://github.com/BenjaminLarrousse/statsbomb-messi/tree/master/figures/derby

Visualization	Description
VAEP Distribution (2009/10)	VAEP distribution, season 2009/10, and derby value.

Messi Advanced stats

Visualization	Description
Completed passes inside the box	Messi completed passes inside the box, normalized per 90. By season.
Completed passes into the box	Messi open play completed passes into the box, normalized per 90. By season.
Completed throughballs	Messi completed throughballs, normalized per 90. By season.
Key passes	Messi open play key passes, normalized per 90. By season.
xG assisted	Messi xG assisted, normalized per 90. By season.

Contact

For further information, please contact me on Twitter: @BLarrousse