Stories from FIFA World Cup 2022 — Interactive Visual Analytics

CS661 course project. An interactive web app that tells the story of the 2022 FIFA World Cup through 12 coordinated visualizations, built on StatsBomb open data — including the 360 freeze-frame dataset. Drill from tournament-wide trends down to a single shot's tactical context.

Project contributors:

Hardik Singh
Dwij Sukhadiya
Sumit Jain
Tanmay Jain
Darshan Tandel
Rohit Vinod Atkurkar
Itesh Mishra

Stack: Streamlit · Plotly · statsbombpy · mplsoccer · scipy · networkx · shapely · pandas

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Quick start

# 1. create + activate a virtual environment
python -m venv .venv
.venv\Scripts\activate            # Windows (PowerShell: .\.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1)
# source .venv/bin/activate       # macOS / Linux

# 2. install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

# 3. fetch the data once (~5–10 min; writes parquet snapshots to data/cache/)
python scripts/fetch_data.py

# 4. run the app
streamlit run app.py

Open the printed Local URL (default http://localhost:8501). First load builds caches (~a few seconds); afterwards everything is instant. Use the sidebar's Refresh data button to clear caches.

The data files in data/cache/*.parquet are gitignored — run step 3 after cloning.

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The 12 visualizations

Tab 1 — Tournament

1.1 Interactive Knockout Bracket

R16→Final structure with scores. Click any match to jump directly to that match in the Match tab.

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1.2 xG vs Goals Scatter

Team finishing efficiency plotted against a y=x reference line. Over-performers sit above the line; click a team dot to navigate to the Player tab for that squad.

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Tab 2 — Match

2.1 Match Momentum

Cumulative xG timeline for both teams across the match. Box-select any minute window to brush-link the Shot Map, Passing Network, and Time-Scrubber to that time range.

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2.2 Animated Time-Scrubber

Ball position and 360 player locations animated through the match using Plotly frames. Scrub to any moment; linked to the momentum brush window.

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2.3 Passing Network

Players plotted at their average positions; edge thickness = pass volume, edge colour = betweenness centrality. Reveals the structural spine of each team's build-up play.

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2.4 Shot Map + 360 Freeze-Frame

Every shot on the pitch (size = xG, colour = outcome). Click any shot to open a 360 freeze-frame panel showing all 22 players at the moment of the attempt.

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Tab 3 — Player

3.1 Action Density Heatmap

KDE heatmap showing where a player operates on the pitch. Toggle action type (passes, carries, shots, duels) and scope (all matches vs single match).

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3.2 Progressive Pass & Carry Map

All passes and carries that moved the ball ≥25% closer to goal, drawn as arrows on the pitch. Shows a player's direct contribution to advancing possession.

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3.3 3D Shot Trajectories

The player's shots rendered as arcs toward goal in 3D (Plotly surface). Colour encodes outcome; height encodes the ball's flight path.

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3.4 Goalmouth Placement

Shot end-placement projected onto the goal-frame plane. Immediately shows where a player targets (corners, low, high) and which attempts were saved vs scored.

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Tab 4 — Tactical

4.1 Voronoi Pitch Control

The pitch partitioned into zones controlled by each team using Voronoi tessellation (scipy + shapely). Colour intensity shows how contested each region is.

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4.2 xT Surface + Possession Replay

Markov-chain Expected Threat grid overlaid on the pitch. Animate any selected possession sequence to watch the xT value climb as the ball progresses toward goal.

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Cross-tab links: bracket → Match, team scatter → Player, momentum brush → shot map / passing network / scrubber (all share session_state).

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Architecture

Four horizontal layers — each file has a single responsibility.

fifa-wc2022-va/
├── app.py                  # entry: page config, sidebar filters, session-state tab nav
├── data/
│   ├── loader.py           # cached parquet loaders (matches / events / 360)
│   ├── transforms.py       # event → shots / passes / carries / possessions
│   └── cache/              # parquet snapshots (gitignored)
├── analytics/
│   ├── xt_model.py         # Expected Threat (Markov-chain value iteration)
│   ├── pitch_control.py    # Voronoi cells + pitch clipping
│   ├── network_metrics.py  # passing-network builder + betweenness
│   └── progression.py      # progressive pass / carry filters
├── viz/
│   ├── pitch.py            # reusable StatsBomb pitch (Plotly) — used by 7 visuals
│   ├── tab1_tournament.py  # 1.1, 1.2
│   ├── tab2_match.py       # 2.1–2.4
│   ├── tab3_player.py      # 3.1–3.4
│   └── tab4_advanced.py    # 4.1, 4.2
├── utils/
│   ├── state.py            # session_state keys + get_filtered_events()
│   └── styling.py          # palette + CSS injection
├── SCHEMA.md               # StatsBomb data dictionary
└── scripts/fetch_data.py   # one-time data download

Data source

StatsBomb Open Data — FIFA World Cup 2022 (competition_id=43, season_id=106): 64 matches, 234,637 events, ~3M 360 freeze-frame rows. See SCHEMA.md for the full column dictionary. (One match, 3869152, has no 360 data — handled with a graceful fallback.)

Notes

• Pitch coordinates are StatsBomb 120×80; attacking goal at x=120.
• xT uses the turnover-free Markov model (relative threat surface).
• Built solo with Claude Code as coding assistant.