Recently I have been pondering player positions and responsibilities. Deciding that this was a worthwhile project, I started collecting data and doing some reading. Similar analysis has been done on basketball players in the NBA, but my brief look revealed no soccer analysis. Soccer having more than twice as many players on the playing field/court at once certainly makes the task more difficult, as does the unavailability of data. Basic statistics are available (goals, assists, minutes played, etc) but anything further requires much more work to acquire as opposed to basketball who has a site (basketball-reference.com) where all of the data one could want is readily available.
Redefining MLS Player Roles - A Machine Learning Analysis
