In the last chapter of her PhD thesis Lotte Bransen looked at penalty kicks. Several interesting things emerged. A simulation study indicated slightly higher save percentage if the goalkeeper did not always align directly in the center of the goal. 1/5

📝 dtai.cs.kuleuven.be/sports/blog/... w/ @probberechts.bsky.social @jessejdavis.bsky.social

🥾⚽️ As noted by, e.g., @zonal-marking.bsky.social a strange trend of the 2026 World Cup is teams deliberately booting the ball out of play from kick-off. With the @royalbelgianfa.bsky.social we looked into this in 2024 for the @statsbomb.com conference.

Vanochtend was ik te gast in De WK-Tribune op Radio 1 over de impact van AI op het voetbal. Het fragment is hier te herbeluisteren 👇 www.vrt.be/vrtmax/luist...

⚽➡️🧠 It’s a only small step from soccer analytics to Parkinson’s research… Over the past years, I collaborated on a project to improve how we understand Parkinson’s disease. It’s now published in Nature Communications: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Curious how soccer fits into this? Read on 👇

Our 2026 World Cup predictions are live! 🔮 🇪🇸 Spain (24%) is the clear favourite, followed by 🇦🇷 Argentina (17%), 🇫🇷 France (11%), 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 England (7%) and 🇧🇷 Brazil (5%). Explore every team’s path to the final in our interactive 👇 w/ @jessejdavis.bsky.social dtai.cs.kuleuven.be/sports/world...

If you are interested in Bayesian analysis and the Bayesian framework in general (which you should imo) I've put together an open course on coursera. Check it out here: www.coursera.org/specializati... #Bayesian #MachineLearning #DataScience

What if you could simply “prompt” a model with a few shots and get accurate xG predictions? #TabPFN is making waves on academic benchmarks. We tested how it handles a real-world sports analytics problem. w/ Timo Martens & @jessejdavis.bsky.social dtai.cs.kuleuven.be/sports/blog/...

⏳ The submission deadline for our MLSA workshop is coming up soon: June 5, 2026 (just two weeks away)! Don’t miss the chance to share your ongoing research ideas or recent work on Sports+AI!

This is a reminder that you can still register for our #socceranalytics symposium. We have a great set of speakers! www.kuleuven.be/liss/events/...

Our Workshop on Machine Learning and Data Mining for Sports Analytics (MLSA) will happen again as part of @ecmlpkdd.org! 📅 7 or 11 Sept 2026 📍 Naples, Italy 📝 Submissions due 5 June 2026 \w @hugoriosneto.bsky.social @azimmermdm.bsky.social & Maaike Van Roy dtai.cs.kuleuven.be/events/MLSA26/

Don't miss the deadline for the LISS Football Analytics Symposium! Here are 3 reasons to get that abstract in 👇 1️⃣ Make an impact: Present your work directly to club analysts 2️⃣ Low effort: 2-page abstract (published research welcome!) 3️⃣ Learn from 4 of my favourite speakers on soccer analytics

We’re recruiting for a Data Engineer to join our Research team at Liverpool FC. In my (perhaps biased) view, it’s a great opportunity to join an excellent team, work at the forefront of sports analytics, and have a tangible impact. www.linkedin.com/posts/conorq...

⚽Event Announcement⚽ Leuven Institute of Sport Science’s #FootballAnalytics Symposium will take place on April 23! Current invited speakers are Prof. Pascal Bauer (DFB, USaarland) and @unravelsports.bsky.social Abstract submission closes on Feb 26 @ 17:00 CET www.kuleuven.be/liss/events/...

It’s that time of year again: proposals are now being accepted to present at Opta Forum 2026, which is taking place in London at the end of March. If you are interested in taking part, the submission deadline is 9th February. Full details can be found ⬇️ www.statsperform.com/resource/opt...

Continuing the tradition, I have compiled an end-of-year overview of the soccer analytics content that I liked the most in 2025. This edition includes pointers to about 200 resources, including research papers, blog posts, news articles, podcasts, and webinars. janvanhaaren.be/posts/soccer...

Can we measure the ability to block dangerous passes in soccer? ⛔️⚽️ We recently presented our latest research paper "Quantifying Off-Ball Defensive Impact through Cover Shadows" at the Hudl Performance Insights 2025 Conference: 📺 youtu.be/kf6far1Zst8?... 📝 static.hudl.com/craft/perfor...

We're expanding the Club Brugge Football Data Science team. As our Football Data Scientist, you'll work with one of the most advanced analytics infrastructures in football to help management, scouting, and analysis staff turn data into better decisions. jobs.clubbrugge.be/en/football-data-scientist

IMPECT released a season of public event data! ⚽ There’s already plenty of event data out there — so why care? Because IMPECT’s data adds some really cool and unique features, such as their Packing Zones. And with the new kloppy v3.18 release, it's really easy to get started with this dataset.

We’re excited to launch the 𝐒𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐂𝐨𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐫 𝐗 𝐏𝐲𝐒𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐀𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐲𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 𝐂𝐮𝐩 - a hackathon-style challenge that will bring together the community to collaborate, compete, and innovate using open-source SkillCorner data. 👉 Sign up pysport.org/analytics-cup

Top stuff once again. Bringing validity to the conversation which is too often overlooked in the football analysis space.

Before an app launches, it undergoes usability testing. Why shouldn't an advanced sports metric? In our latest blog, we propose 4 criteria: 1️⃣ Trustworthy 2️⃣ Novel 3️⃣ Intuitive 4️⃣ Useful Then, we put VAEP to the test... \w @jessejdavis.bsky.social & Maaike Van Roy dtai.cs.kuleuven.be/sports/blog/...

We can use xG to compute post-hoc win-draw-loss probabilities. Our new blogpost shows MCMC's estimates of these probabilities are unstable, computing them exactly is faster than approximating them, and MCMC's runtime strongly depends on its implementation. dtai.cs.kuleuven.be/sports/blog/...

Looking forward to the #MLSA25 workshop next week at @ecmlpkdd.org! We'll have some exciting research on soccer, ultimate frisbee, basketball and table tennis. ⚽🥏🏀🏓 Want a sneak peek? The papers are already available on the workshop website 👇

The Carnegie Mellon Sports Analytics Conference is an annual event dedicated to highlighting the latest sports research from the statistics and data science community. Registration for the 2025 CMSAConference is open. 🔗 www.cmsaconference.com

“What if, when the opposition has 11 players behind the ball, a centre-back decided it was more worthwhile to ‘kick for touch’ rather than attempt to play through midfield?” Oh boy do I have a research presentation for you

Excited to announce a new paper together with @sigridolthof.bsky.social entitled "Perspectives on data analytics for gaining a competitive advantage in football: computational approaches to tactics". This is a synthesis article that has 3 key objectives www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.... 1 / 4

🔷 𝐏𝐲𝐒𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐗 𝐏𝐲𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐄𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐡𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐂𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐚𝐥𝐬! 🔶 On December 9th @PyData Eindhoven and @pysport.org will organize 𝐏𝐲𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐄𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐡𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟓! 𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐨: lnkd.in/eBGWKs3V

Your fave women’s footie analytics gals (@cata-bush.bsky.social and myself, ofc) are at it again! Below is a VAEP inspired breakdown of the Women’s Euros group stages - read to see which players and teams have shown out or bombed (whoops, Netherlands 👀): open.substack.com/pub/beyondth...

Our Women's Euro 2025 predictions are out! 🔮 Spain 🇪🇸 is our model's favorite to win the title, with Germany 🇩🇪 close behind. Meanwhile, Belgium 🇧🇪 will most likely be eliminated in the group stage. w\ @jessejdavis.bsky.social dtai.cs.kuleuven.be/sports/blog/...

Our Women's Euro 2025 predictions are out! 🔮 Spain 🇪🇸 is our model's favorite to win the title, with Germany 🇩🇪 close behind. Meanwhile, Belgium 🇧🇪 will most likely be eliminated in the group stage. w\ @jessejdavis.bsky.social dtai.cs.kuleuven.be/sports/blog/...

We're looking for an ML Engineer to join our team at Sportec Solutions. Lots of exciting projects in the pipeline, including ones with skeletal-tracking data. Apply or pass it on to someone who might be interested! sportec-solutions.jobs.personio.de/job/2151299?...

🚀 Ingestify 0.7.0 is live Parsing football data with kloppy is fun. The hard bit is fetching raw files and keeping them clean and version-safe. That’s the gap Ingestify fills. github.com/PySport/inge...

I strongly believe biomechanical analysis will be the next big leap in sports analytics—and not just for the pros. I got a glimpse by testing the @runeasi.bsky.social sensor (a @dtai-kuleuven.bsky.social spin-off) and wrote about how it helped during my marathon training → runeasi.ai/my-marathon-...

Had the pleasure of attending the Linköping Hockey Analytics Conference this week. Thought “icing” was just for cakes, but somehow they still let me on stage 😅 Loved the welcoming community and saw lots of familiar ideas with huge potential across sports. #LINHAC

I’m honored by @leanderalphabet.bsky.social excellent write up of our soccer research! Lots of credit to my wonderful collaborators @janvanhaaren.be @wannesm.bsky.social @probberechts.bsky.social Maaike Lotte Tom @lorenzocascioli.bsky.social @hugoriosneto.bsky.social Max Arne Tim & so many others

The Belgian lab shaping modern soccer’s data revolution

👀 Something's changed at kloppy.pysport.org We’ve completely rewritten and reorganized 𝐤𝐥𝐨𝐩𝐩𝐲's documentation, now with: • 🚀 Quickstart Guide for new users • 📖 API Reference for power users Dive in & let us know what you think! @pysport.org 🤩

The paper submission deadline is approaching! Submit your work to our 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐩 𝐨𝐧 𝐌𝐋 & 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐌𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐒𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐬 𝐀𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐲𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 at @ecmlpkdd.org by 𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐞 𝟏𝟒!

🚨The third and final blog post in our series on possession value models design decisions🔍: Can the features chosen to represent the game state inadvertently bias player ratings? w/ @probberechts.bsky.social @jessejdavis.bsky.social Lode Van Tente dtai.cs.kuleuven.be/sports/blog/...

📣 Excited to share that the Workshop on Machine Learning and Data Mining for Sports Analytics (MLSA) will be held again this September as part of @ecmlpkdd.org! w/ @hugoriosneto.bsky.social, @azimmerdm.bsky.social and Maaike Van Roy dtai.cs.kuleuven.be/events/MLSA25

The proceedings of the latest edition of our (@jessejdavis.bsky.social, @janvanhaaren.be, Ulf Brefeld) workshop are finally out: link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-86692-0 And the organization for this year's edition's already underway: dtai.cs.kuleuven.be/events/MLSA25/

⭐ 𝐏𝐲𝐒𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐗 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐬𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐓𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐬 𝐹𝑟𝑒𝑒 𝐶𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑢𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑇𝑖𝑐𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑠 are available for our 𝑃𝑦𝑆𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡 𝑋 Stats Perform event in London on March 17th! 🎙️ We'll have various talks by Jonny Whitmore & @dannydinsdale.bsky.social, Sebastien Coustou, @tk5.futbol, Manuel Bassek (Floodlight) and more!

Love this! 🇧🇪 5K runner John Heymans used machine learning to optimize his race schedule for the best shot at Olympic qualification—writing the algorithm himself with a little help from ChatGPT. 🏃‍♂️💻 www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVDa...

We are hiring for PhD positions! I’m looking for people interested in exploring the intersection of learning and reasoning with applications to anomaly detection and sports. @dtai-kuleuven.bsky.social @wannesm.bsky.social www.kuleuven.be/personeel/jo...

This is a great initiative by @PySport! A common theme in the discussion was how many started their projects to learn. For me, contributing to open-source and collaborating with others has been instrumental in becoming a better programmer. Excited to see what’s next! 🚀

I built 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗺𝗹𝗶𝘁-𝘀𝗼𝗰𝗰𝗲𝗿, a custom React component for Streamlit for working with soccer tracking data. And a blog post on 𝗕𝗶𝗴 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮, 𝗧𝗶𝗻𝘆 𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗺𝘀

🎄 𝐤𝐥𝐨𝐩𝐩𝐲==𝟑.𝟏𝟔.𝟎 Happy Holidays to the Sports Analytics Community! This release contains some exciting updates, you can find the highlights in this thread. But first, we're really excited that @probberechts.bsky.social has officially joined as a maintainer! 💙

"we know nothing about how soccer actually works", pt. 47,321 dtai.cs.kuleuven.be/sports/blog/...

🏃‍♂️⏪ 🏃‍♀️ 𝐀𝐧 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐮𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐌𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧 𝐒𝐨𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐫 It's been over a year now since I was invited to present my 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐲 metric to a small group of people at a SkillCorner event in Dallas, TX. I've finally put some effort into writing a blog on it! unravelsports.github.io/2024/12/12/p...