As many year-end Twitter threads have highlighted: 2020 was a great year for soccer analytics. New open-sourced data sets have enabled a new wave of amateur content, while ever more sophisticated research is published by clubs, data providers and universities around the world. Having followed the space for a few years now it becomes increasingly difficult to follow and digest all relevant research. James Yorke, who obviously has much more experience and a better overview on research then me, already raised a similar concern more than a year ago.

I finally had some time to play around with the free Statsbomb data. I previously wanted to look into using the crosstalk package to link interactive charts and this data set which includes all of Messi’s La Liga free kicks gave me a good excuse. Launch Dashboard The initial idea was to link the location of free kicks to their goal impact (or their impact outside of the goal as long as they are not blocked).