Soccer event data in ggplot2 with ggsoccer

Package

Author

Ben Torvaney

Basic soccer pitch

Creating a soccer pitch with ggsoccer is straightforward. Load the library and add the annotate_pitch layer to ggplot function. In addition, you can use theme_pitch if you want a void theme.

# install.packages("ggplot2)")
# install.packages("ggsoccer")
library(ggplot2)
library(ggsoccer)

ggplot() +
  annotate_pitch() +
  theme_pitch()

Basic soccer pitch in ggplot2 with ggsoccer

Pitch color

By default the pitch is white with gray lines, but you can customize all the colors. The colour argument allows modifying the color of the lines while the fill argument modifies the color of the pitch. If you want to change the color of the rest of the plot modify the panel.background component of the theme function with an element_rect as follows.

Change the pitch color in ggsoccer

library(ggplot2)
library(ggsoccer)

ggplot() +
 annotate_pitch(colour = "white",
                fill = "#3ab54a") +
 theme_pitch() +
 theme(panel.background = element_rect(fill = "#3ab54a"))

Shot map

You can pass a data frame to create a shot map. Note that the pitch goes from 0 to 100 on both axes. You can also crop the pitch setting axes limits as in any other plot made with ggplot2.

library(ggplot2)
library(ggsoccer)

# Data
set.seed(1)
df <- data.frame(x = rnorm(20, 80, 10), 
                 y = rnorm(20, 50, 20),
                 Shot = sample(c("In", "Out"),
                               40, replace = TRUE))

ggplot(df) +
 annotate_pitch(colour = "white",
                fill = "#3ab54a") +
 geom_point(aes(x = x, y = y, fill = Shot),
            shape = 21,
            size = 4) +
 coord_cartesian(xlim = c(45, 105))+ 
 theme_pitch() +
 theme(panel.background = element_rect(fill = "#3ab54a"))

Soccer shot map in ggplot2

Pass map

Similarly to creating a shot map you can also create a pass map but specifying all the coordinates of the arrows on your data frame and using geom_segment to create the arrows.

Soccer pass map in ggplot2 with ggsoccer

library(ggplot2)
library(ggsoccer)

# Data
pass <- data.frame(x1 = c(12, 30, 62, 75),
                   x2 = c(25, 59, 67, 80),
                   y1 = c(50, 74, 49, 30),
                   y2 = c(75, 49, 32, 80))

ggplot(pass) +
 annotate_pitch(colour = "white",
                fill = "#3ab54a") +
  geom_segment(aes(x = x1, y = y1, xend = x2, yend = y2),
               arrow = arrow(length = unit(0.3, "cm"),
                             type = "closed")) +
 theme_pitch() +
 theme(panel.background = element_rect(fill = "#3ab54a"))

Pitch dimensions

The dimensions of the pitch can be modified to fit your needs. Create a list with the corresponding dimensions of each element and pass it to the annotate_pitch function.

library(ggplot2)
library(ggsoccer)

dimensions <- list(
  length = 50,
  width = 40,
  penalty_box_length = 10,
  penalty_box_width = 20,
  six_yard_box_length = 2,
  six_yard_box_width = 8,
  penalty_spot_distance = 7,
  goal_width = 6,
  origin_x = 0,
  origin_y = 0)

ggplot() +
  annotate_pitch(dimensions = dimensions) +
  theme_pitch()

Modifying the dimensions of the pitch in ggsoccer