Introducing the Problem
The data set I chose to look at is Hudl Statsbomb’s free release of their match record for the 2020 UEFA Euros. The “problem” that I chose to tackle with this data is to discover the key players for the top teams in the tournament. The definition of key player I chose are players with the most utilization within the tournament, and the top teams that I would look at are the teams that sat at the top of the FIFA rankings at the time. This definition of key player would mean that I would look to find the players with the most minutes played, the most passes, the most carries, etc.
Introducing the Data
Hudl Statsbomb’s 2020 UEFA Euros dataset is accessible through a free python library, and it has statistics for all of the matches played in the tournament. These statistics include, but are not limited to, blocks, tackles, carries, passes, shots, xG, and location data for applicable events. These statistics are separated into distinct events within each match.
Data Pre-Processing
When pre-processing the data, I used my pre-existing knowledge of soccer to understand, for the most part, what statistics I was looking for. With my goal to look for the most utilized players, I decided that I would look for the players that had the ball the most, and to determine who had the ball the most, I looked for the players that carried the ball and passed the ball the most. To do so, I filtered the data for events that were considered carries and stored that within a variable, and then did the same for events that were considered passes. I then separated the data so that these stats were only compared against directly against players within the same team.
Visualizations
Carries for Portugal vs France
In this visualization, we can see that Paul Pogba, Raphael Varane, Presnel Kimpembe, and N’golo Kante have the most carries for France. For Portugal, Ruben Dias, Renato Sanches, Pepe (Kepler Ferreira), and Raphael Guerreiro have the most carries.
Passes for Portugal vs France
In this visualization, Paul Pogba, Raphael Varane, Presnel Kimpembe, and N’golo Kante have the most passes attempted for France. For Portugal, Ruben Dias, Renato Sanches, Pepe, and Raphael Guerreiro have the most passes attempted.
For both teams, their midfielders and center-backs have the most carries and passes. This observations allows us to infer that both teams tend to play out of the back half of the field. To provide more detail, this means that Portugal and France aim to use the midfielders and center-backs to hold possession of the ball and progress the ball up the field.
Impact
The definition of a key player for any team varies widely between different people. This means that the stats that I used within this visualizations might not help determine who was vital to these top teams for other people. Another limitation of these visualizations is that they only include data from when Portugal and France played each other. With more data from other matches, these stats could change drastically, which would make these observations obsolete.
Summary
Using my definition of key player, I determined that for both France and Portugal, the back half of their teams were key for their success in the tournament. Both teams asked their defenders and midfielders to have the ball for most of the match.
References
https://www.hudl.com/blog/hudl-statsbomb-free-euro-2025-data
https://www.hudl.com/blog/using-hudl-statsbomb-free-data-in-python
https://github.com/statsbomb/statsbombpy
Colin Pham 
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