Soccer Analytics Student Challenge

Are you good with data? Are you passionate about soccer? Can you tell the difference between men's and women's football? Then form a team, assemble a classifier, and win a paid internship with the KNIME Analytics Platform.


Association football (soccer) is the world's most popular sport. But do men and women play it the same way?  

If you know the answer, then REGISTER for the challenge (ETH moodle access required). Starts October 16 (see kick-off below), ends November 20. Teams of up to four students. Mixed-gender teams strongly recommended.

This challenge is organized by Prof. Dr. Ulrik Brandes in cooperation with the KNIME Analytics Platform and supported by the ETH AI Center.

The external page KNIME Analytics Platform is a free open-source tool to make decisions based on data. Originally an academic start-up out of Konstanz, it is now a global enterprise with additional offices in Zürich, Berlin, and Austin.

Check out the external page Gettig Started guide to learn about building KNIME workflows. Programming is optional.


The Challenge

Build a KNIME workflow that is able to discriminate between men's and women's football using only technical and tactical features, i.e., differences that can be explained by physical differences are to be controlled for.

  1. A KNIME workflow that reads anonymized StatsBomb 360 event data of a single match, and outputs whether the data is from a men's or women's match. This binary classification should be accompanied by some kind of certificate how this particular outcome came about.
  2. A document describing how the classifier was built, on what basis the classification is made, and how you controlled for athletic features (i.e., why you are sure that this is not a consequence of differences in physiology and training facilities).

Submissions will be evaluated by a group of data and football experts based on classification performance, conceptual design, and convincingness of explanation.  

  • Registration deadline: October 17
  • Submission deadline: November 20
  • Winner announcement: November 24

The Prizes

  • Top three winning teams: granted the opportunity to publicly present their contribution at the hybrid external page Data Connect Zurich event in 2024 organized by the Swiss KNIME community
  • Winning team: offered a paid internship at one of the KNIME offices in Europe

Organizer

Prof. Dr. Ulrik Brandes
Full Professor at the Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences
Head of Dep. of Humanities, Social and Pol.Sc.
  • WEP J 14
  • +41 44 632 21 96
  • ubrandes@ethz.ch

Professur für Soziale Netzwerke
Weinbergstr.109
8006 Zürich
Switzerland