FIFA World Cup 2022: Enhanced Football Intelligence Visualizes New Statistics in New Ways

The service breaks down the game into fine detail, multiple video examples

The 2022 FIFA World Cup has been highlighted by a large increase in what FIFA calls “Enhanced Football Intelligence”: every match has its own unique set of in-match and post-match stats presented visually as augmented-reality (AR) and traditional graphics.

FIFA has taken steps to visualize 11 new statistics for viewers of the World Cup.

Developed by the FIFA High Performance team and led by FIFA Chief of Global Football Development Arsène Wenger, the enhanced- football-intelligence service offers new and exciting metrics to enrich the coverage and analysis of every game. The statistics break down each area of the game into fine detail and provide operational definitions and multiple video examples to clearly define each action. Click here to learn more about the new offerings.

“We would like to share our vision of using football-data analytics combined with technical-expert interpretation to create a new football intelligence, allowing everyone to better understand the game,” says Wenger. “Enhanced football intelligence will be our blueprint for how we analyze football in the future. When we discover new insights, we want to share them with the world of football. With our online FIFA Training Centre, we have a fantastic vehicle to do so. My team will continue to provide new and insightful football analysis to help share new understanding of the game, combined with performance data, video examples, and technical explanations.”

FIFA will share the most modern insights, metrics, and performance data in tournament history with the worldwide TV and online audience, as well as with the participating teams and their players. This will enable an analysis not only of what happens on the ball but also of the movements and interactions around and off the ball for teams and players both in and out of possession.

Using the data, FIFA will be able to conduct both longitudinal post-match analysis to understand how the game evolves over time and developmental analysis to better comprehend what it takes to progress from junior to senior level in both the men’s and women’s games.

The FIFA High Performance team — comprising football analysts, data scientists, and data engineers — has developed innovative technology to provide groundbreaking metrics and insights.

At FIFA World Cup 2022, 11 metrics have been introduced:

• Possession control
• Ball-recovery time
• Line breaks
• Defensive-line height and team length
• Final-third entries
• Forced turnovers
• Pressure on the ball
• Expected goals
• Team shape
• Receptions behind midfield and defensive lines
• Phases of play