Exploring design implementations of soccer match event data

To start with a design that is new for us in terms of implementation, we focused on using the P5 Mappa library to see how we would approach the world map figure that will indicate from which countries (certain types of) professional players are. An idea we described earlier in one of our previous blog posts (Fig 1). The Mappa library provides a set of tools for working with static maps, interactive tilemaps, and geo-data that can be used when building geolocation-based visual representations. In that light overlaying existing maps with your data is the main feature that we want to exploit in our design process.

We added the geographical latitude and longitude information to the data so that each country can automatically be located on the map. We just randomly wrote a script asking for a small ellipse in Belgium and two bigger ones in Andorra and Australia on an interactive world map. Next up is changing the ellipse's color and size based on the number of players and position of players. We're starting to enjoy the process!

Figure 1: From this information, the designers can infer for a particular football league (Spanish La Liga or Germany's Bundesliga, etc.) from which parts of the world do most of the defenders or the midfielders or the goalkeepers come from? This can actually help soccer teams in the selection criteria of their players.

Figure 2: Interactive overlay of the world with ellipses placed on home countries of soccer players.