The Tactical Match Report provides a structured overview of team behavior across game-phases within a single match. It combines positional tracking and event data to deliver visual and metric-based insights that support match analysis and tactical evaluation.
Insights of the Tactical Match Report
The report offers a detailed interpretation of a team’s tactical organization during distinct phases of play. It includes average player positions, tactical metrics, ball-movement patterns, and season benchmarks to contextualize performance. Each report is generated per team, ensuring that both sides of a match can be analyzed independently.
AI Summary
In addition to the standard analysis content, the PDF version includes an AI-generated Match Team Summary. This summary provides an automated tactical interpretation of team behavior in possession and out of possession, as well as graphic representations of team shapes per game-phase.
Please note: The summaries are generated automatically using AI and rely on the underlying match data. They offer a quick interpretive layer but may occasionally contain inaccuracies or phrasing that does not fully match a team’s preferred terminology. These outputs should therefore be viewed as supportive insights alongside the detailed tactical analysis in the report.
Accessing the report
The report is available in the Data center within the SciSports platform. It can be downloaded for any match where positional and event data are available.
Steps:
Open Data center from the main menu.
Select Data sets.
Choose a match from the list.
Navigate to Reports.
Download the Tactical Match Report.
Report Structure
The Tactical Match Report contains several sections that present tactical insights in a consistent structure. These sections can be accessed in the Data center and downloaded as a PDF file.
The report includes:
Cover page
Match team summary
Line-up page (Containing the line-up for both teams)
Analysis pages
Glossary
Match team summary (AI-generated)
The report includes summary page. This content is generated using SciSports Tactical AI Assistant technology, combining positional and event data to form narrative insights and visual summaries. It provides:
An automated tactical interpretation for team behavior of both in-possession and out-of-possession phases
A visualization of the team’s shape per game-phase
Shapes explained:
Color of Shape | In/Out of Possession | Definition |
Blue | In Possession | Chance Creation |
Blue | Out of Possession | High Pressing |
Orange | In Possession | Ball Progression |
Orange | Out of Possession | Mid zone Pressing |
Gray | In Possession | Build-Up |
Gray | Out of Possession | Low-Block Defense |
Analysis pages
The analysis pages are the core of the Tactical Match Report. Every analysis page contains up to three different types of analyses:
A table with Tactical Metrics (Key Performance Indicators) specific to that game-phase.
A plot with the average positions in that game-phase.
A plot with the heatmap of the ball in that game-phase (not always on the page).
The heatmap consists of colored hexagons which show you the most frequent positions of the ball during that game-phase.
Example of an analysis page in a tactical match report.
Game-phases
A game-phase is simply defined as a subset of the game defined by a set of rules. For the purpose of the tactical match report, game-phases are currently determined based on the ball state (being alive or dead, and being in possession of the home or away team). Which means that at its base, team game states can vary from in possession, transition to defense, transition to offense, out of possession to ball dead. By adding additional logic like the ball location, height of the attacking line etc. we can construct a more complex set of rules.
Note that we currently only analyze elaborate play. In other words, structured open play, that excludes the transition window (first 5 seconds after a possession change), as well as the set-piece window (first 7.5 seconds after a set-piece start).
The report currently covers the following game-phases:
In possession: Team is in possession of the ball, anywhere on the field.
Zone 1 (Build-up) | Team is in possession of the ball in the first 25% of the field. |
Zone 2 (Build-up Progression) | Team is in possession of the ball in the second part of the own half (25-50% of the field). |
Zone 3 (Chance Creation) | Team is in possession of the ball in the lower part of the attacking half (50-75% of the field). |
Own Half | Team is in possession of the ball on the own half. |
Opponent Half | Team is in possession of the ball on the opponent half. |
Out of possession: The opponent is in possession of the ball anywhere on the field.
High Press (Zone 4) | The opponent is in possession near it’s own goal (75-100% of the field from the perspective of the analyzed team), and the line of pressure is within 5 meters of the ball line (i.e. attacking line is <5 mtr from the ball line). |
Mid Zone Press (Zone 3) | The opponent is in possession near the midline (50-75% of the field from the perspective of the analyzed team), and the line of pressure is within 5 meters of the ball line (i.e. attacking line is <5 mtr from the ball line). |
Low Block Defense (Zone 2) | The opponent is in possession in the first part of the own half (25-50% of the field). |
Opponent Half | The opponent is in possession on it’s own half. |
Own Half | The opponent is in possession on the half of the analyzed team. |
Definitions & Key concepts
Concept | Definition | Applies to |
Game-Phase | All frames in a single match that belong to a given game-phase. So all frames in a match that fit the criteria “out of possession: opponent half”. Frames don’t have to be part of a single sequence. | All Sections |
Vert. Compactness (m) | Longitudinal distance (goal-to-goal axis) from the lowest to heighest outfield player (goalkeeper excluded). | Tactical Metrics |
Horiz. Compactness (m) | Lateral distance (side-to-side axis) from the left-most to the right most outfield player. | Tactical Metrics |
Players in front Ball | Number of players in front of the ball line (closer to the opposing goal), measured by distance to the opposing backline. | Tactical Metrics |
Players behind Ball | Number of players behind the ball line (closer to the own goal), measured by distance to the opposing backline. | Tactical Metrics |
Players on Own Half | Number of players on the own half. | Tactical Metrics |
Players in First 3rd | Number of players in first 3rd (the 3rd closest to the own goal). | Tactical Metrics |
Players in Middle 3rd | Number of players in the middle 3rd. | Tactical Metrics |
Players in Final 3rd | Number of players in the final 3rd (the 3rd closest to the opposing goal. | Tactical Metrics |
Players in Box | Number of players in attacking score box. | Tactical Metrics |
Players on Att Half | Number of players on the attacking half. | Tactical Metrics |
GK to D-Line Dist (m) | Longitudinal distance between the GK and the Defensive line (see line detection for more info). | Tactical Metrics |
DEF - MID Dist (m) | Longitudinal distance between the Defensive Line and the Midfield line (see line detection for more info). | Tactical Metrics |
MID - ATT Dist (m) | Longitudinal distance between the Midfield Line and the Attacking line (see line detection for more info). | Tactical Metrics |
Offside Line (m) | Position of the offside (most backward player - 1). | Tactical Metrics |
Game Phase Metrics | All metrics are averages over all frames in a game-phases | Tactical Metrics |
Team Averages | All team averages are metric averages over all games played by the team in the season thus far, and are subject to the same definitions and averaged over the same game-phase. | Tactical Metrics |
Average Positions | Average XY position of a player over all frames in a game-phase. | Average Positions |
Line Detection | The lines (GK, DEF, MID, ATT) are dynamically identified through the following process:
After line detection, we compute the average position of a line (centroid) based on all players in that line, and we use x-component (goal-to-goal axis) to compute distances between lines (intra-team subgroup distances). | Tactical Metrics |