Information-Theoretical Analysis of Team Dynamics in Football Matches

Abstract

Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate UniversityDoctor of PhilosophyThis thesis investigates how coordinated behavior emerges within football teams by applying information-theoretic frameworks to spatiotemporal player tracking data. The first part of the thesis applies the causal emergence framework to 34 professional football matches, demonstrating that spatially defined macro-level features provide stronger explanatory power than their micro-level origins based on published work. This analysis reveals that emergent coordination is closely linked to match-critical situations including possession rate and shooting. The second part applies integrated information to the same dataset, revealing higher integration during defensive phases, which is opposite to the causal emergence results. This divergence reflects the frameworks’ differing emphases: integrated information captures internal irreducibility, while causal emergence highlights differentiated roles. Simulation based validation supports this interpretation. The third part analyzes transfer entropy matrices to uncover latent patterns of players’ interaction. Clustering in TE space reveals consistent separation between static and active phases, while non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) identifies dominant interaction components linked to key match events. Together, these analyses demonstrate the complementary strengths of causal emergence, integrated information, and transfer entropy in characterizing multiscale patterns of coordination in team sports. The thesis offers practical insights relevant to fields ranging from sports analytics to collective systems.doctoral thesi