Mathematics Higher Level Internal

Assessment Exploration

“The Best Angle to Perform a

Through-ball in Association Football”

Candidate Number: Johnson Du

School Number:
Examination Session: May 2019
 Table of Contents

Introduction ………………………………………….…………… 2
Rationale ………………………………………………………….. 2

Aim ……………………………….……………………………….. 2

Methodology …….………………………………………………… 3

Approximation …………………..……………………………….. 4

Variables ……………………………………….…………………. 5

Presentation of Data ……………………………….……………. 6

Data Analysis ……………………..……………………………… 8

Modelling ……………………………………….………………… 10

Conclusion ……………………………………..………………… 12

Evaluation ……………………………………………………….. 12

Bibliography …………………………………………………….. 14

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Introduction
Association football is one of the most influential and most-watched team sport in the world.
Amongst the various skill involved in football, passing could be judged as the most basic but
hardest skill. Through-ball is one kind of passing—more advanced than regular face-to-face passes.
It requires the passer, usually behind the receiver, to pass the ball while the receiver is running. The
ball passes through obstacles and arrives at the receiver’s foot, who is still running at a fast speed.
Passing a stunning through-ball could be the key to winning a match of any kind—even a world cup
final. However, passing a beautiful through-ball was so hard, that it rarely appears on matches of
my level. I am a member of the school’s varsity football team, and we play tournaments with other
high schools. An accurate through ball would almost guarantee a goal in our tournament. Through-
ball is the most time-efficient way to pass a ball, but it is highly dangerous if the quality of the pass
is poor. Components of a through-ball are simple: one passer, one receiver, one ball and one
obstacle.

Rationale
There is never a formula for how to pass a through-ball. Player uses their experience and
intuition to pass through-balls as accurate as possible. For skilled professional players, they have
their own formula based on their experiences. But for amateur players, it’s extremely hard to control
the direction and speed of the ball. However, the passes could be analysed mathematically using
vectors and calculus, so less experienced players can have a smarter judge on how to perform the
pass.

Aim
Therefore, this leads to the question, How to perform a perfect through-ball? I will create a
mathematical model to represent The best angle to perform a through-ball based on the distance
to the receiver. The “best” through ball will be defined as the shortest possible running distance of
the receiver. By using a drone to videotape the passes, I can insert the videos into a program
called Logger Pro to analyse the videos, therefore coming up with a function to represent its
velocity (more will be explained in the Collection Of Data section). This exploration will allow the
less experienced player like me to make a smarter decision: whether or not to pass a risky through
ball in a real game situation. It could possibly improve my performance in football, making me a
better football player.

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Methodology
The mathematical model I’m
creating will model the best angle to
perform a through-ball based on the
distance between passer and the
receiver. Therefore the independent
variable will be the distance whereas
the dependent variable that needed to
be modeled will be the angle. There Figure 1: Image of Phantom 3 SE
(Banner-fa7b98ace0a3510dfed4b4d751137a6a)
are two main parameters that needed to
be considered. The path of the football and the path of the player.In addition, there are
approximations that needed to be made, otherwise, this exploration would be too complicated. To
illustrate my model for easier understanding, the model could be referred to Figure 2 on Page 4.

1) Path of the Football (Pball):

To represent the path of the football (Pball), I used the vector form of a line. The device I
used is an aerial camera (Figure 1) that hovers approximately 10 meters above the football pitch.
The camera shoots clips of me passing to my friend. The clips then were imported into Logger Pro
for further analysis. Logger Pro will help me trace the movement of the pass and provide me a
displacement-time graph, therefore a function (!x (t)) to represent the displacement of the ball could
be derived. This function will become the parameter in the vector formula, the position vector will
⃗ y)), and the direction
be the distance between the passer and the receiver in vector form (! d (x,
⃗ y)):
vector can be derived from the angle between the path of the pass and the horizontal line (! p (x,

!Pball = d ⃗ + x (t) p ⃗
2) Path of Receiver (Preceiver):

I also used the vector formula to represent the path of the receiver (Preceiver). The receiver
basically ran along the y axis, so the position vector will be (0,0)
! . To avoid complexity, I will
approximate the receiver’s velocity to the average sprinting speed of our football team (!v). Because
the receiver only ran along the y-axis, the direction vector would be!(0,v) whereas the parameter is !t.
Therefore, the representation will be:

!Preceiver = 0 + t (0)
v

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 Figure 2: Diagram to Illustrate the Mathematical Model

Approximation:
The Magnus Effect, which is the generation of a sidewise force on a spinning cylindrical or
spherical solid (Britannica 2006), won’t be considered. If the spinning of the ball is considered, then
there will be too much unpredictability and complexity when collecting data. I will kick the ball at
the center to minimize the Magnus effect.
The bouncing effect of the ball also won’t be considered. I will try my best to play the ball
on the ground. However, the ball will still bounce because of the roughness of the pitch and high
velocity.
I need to approximate the velocity of the ball because I cannot control my strength perfectly.
Therefore, the drone must videotape my passes multiple times to achieve an average displacement-
time graph of the ball. I will pass the ball with my full strength every time, so there won’t be great
disparities between each pass.
The velocity of the receiver also needs an approximation. In real game situations, receivers
of through-balls sprints for most of the times as they ran for the pass. Therefore I will use our
team’s average sprinting speed 4.70m
! s −1 (Sancinelli 2018) for the velocity (!v) of the receiver.

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Variables:
Independent Variable 1:
The independent variable in this exploration, according to the research questions, is the
distance between the passer and the receiver. According to the x-y coordinate in Figure 2, we are
only changing the x value of the passer, or in other words, the x component in the position vector
⃗ y). The independent variable will be represented as x! .
! d (x, d

Independent Variable 2:
According to the research question, the value we are finding is the angle between the path
of the ball (!Pball) and the x axis. However, we are actually finding the best angle, and the definition
for “best” depends on the value of the length of the path of the receiver (!Preceiver). For every distinct
x! d, the shorter the length, the better the angle. To represent the distance covered by P
! receiver, we need
to find the time t! for P
! ball and P
! receiver to intersect.
⃗ p, yp ). For the direction
To represent to angle, we need to use the direction vector ! p (x

vector to work properly with the vector parameter x′(t)

! , the magnitude of the sum of x! p and y! p

should be equal to 1. Now, the direction vector can be expressed by:

⃗ p,
! p (x 1 − xp2 )

Then, we can easily represent the direction vector of P

! ball using the cosine identity:

θ! p = arccos xp ⟹ xp = cos θp

! p ⃗ = (cos θp , 1 − cos2 θp )

With every different value of x! d, we change the value of θ! p to find the minimal value of t! .

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Dependent Variable:
According to the research question, the dependent variable will be the determination of the
“best” angle. The best angle is determined by the how short the receiver needs to run. Because the

path for the receiver is expressed by !Preceiver = 0 + t (0), the smaller the !t is, the shorter the
v
distance will be. Therefore we are finding the shortest !t possible. The mathematical expression of
out research question is shown below.
cos θp
(4.70) ( 0 )
0 xd
!t ⋅ = + x (t) ⋅
1 − cos2 θp

x! d and θ! p are independent variables that we need to change. The only thing left to complete this

expression is the expression for the displacement of the ball. Therefore, we will find this expression
by collecting data using the method aforementioned in Methodology section.

Presentation of Data:
The drone took seven clips
of my full-strength pass in total. The
clips were then inserted into the
software Logger Pro to analyze. I
have put two cones with a separation
of 10 meters onto the pitch (Figure 3).
This is used for the indication of
scale. The software Logger Pro will
recognize the scale and scale the
displacement into real life length. By Figure 2: The Video Clip Shot by the Drone
clicking on the position of the ball by every
frame using the cursor, a graph of displacement over time is automatically plotted (Figure 4, Figure
5, next page).
The clip stops when the ball is completely still, but some pass is longer than the other pass.
Therefore the last displacement recording is simply being extended for infinite amount of time.
One flaw of this method is that the drone is not completely stable in the air. Although the drone has
shock-absorbing system implemented, the image still vibrate just slightly.

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 Figure 4: Tracing the Football Figure 5: Plotting the position of Football

According to Figure 5, the software provided as both the x displacement (red) and the y
displacement (blue). To come up with the total displacement, simply implement the Pythagorus
Theorem to the x and y value at every frame. Then, a graph is plotted to show the displacement over
time of the seven passes (Figure 6). The raw data is attached in the appendix.
Every trial shows a increasing trend
with decreasing slope. All trial starts at !(0,0),
but gradually disperses. This is why so many
trials are taken to eliminate anomalous
passes. For easier analysis, we must come up
with the graph with the average displacement
of all seven passes. To do this, the average
displacement over the seven trials of every
single frame is calculated using spreadsheets,
Figure 6: Displacement of the ball of every trial
and
the final graph of the average displacement
over time of a through-ball pass is shown in
Figure 7.

Figure 7: Average displacement of the ball over time

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References

“Banner-fa7b98ace0a3510dfed4b4d751137a6a.” Phantom 3 SE - DJI⼤疆创新, www.dji.com/cn/

phantom-3-se.

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Magnus Effect.” Encyclopædia Britannica

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 22 Dec. 2006, www.britannica.com/science/Magnus-effect.

Rumsey, Deborah. "How To Calculate A Regression Line - Dummies". Dummies, https://

www.dummies.com/education/math/statistics/how-to-calculate-a-regression-line/. Accessed 28

Aug 2018.

Sancinelli, Simone. “Puiscore.” Puiscore, 24 Jan. 2018, itatutor.wixsite.com/puiscore.

"STATISTICA Help | Residuals And Predicted Values". Documentation.Statsoft.Com, 2014, http://

documentation.statsoft.com/STATISTICAHelp.aspx?path=MultipleRegression/

MultipleRegressionAnalysis/Dialogs/MultipleRegressionResidualsandPredictedValues.

Accessed 28 Aug 2018.

Stephanie. "RMSE: Root Mean Square Error". Statistics How To, 2016, http://

www.statisticshowto.com/rmse/. Accessed 28 Aug 2018.

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