Guardiola, Klopp, and Pochettino: The Purveyors of What? The Use of Passing Network Analysis to Identify and Compare Coaching Styles in Professional Football.

We applied social networks analysis to objectively discriminate and describe interpersonal interaction dynamics of players across different top-coaching styles. The aim was to compare metrics in the passing networks of Jürgen Klopp, Pep Guardiola, and Mauricio Pochettino across the UEFA Champions League seasons from 2017 to 2020. Data on completed passes from 92 games were gathered and average passing networks metrics were computed. We were not only able to find the foundations on which these elite coaches build the passing dynamics in their respective teams, but also to determine important differences that represent their particular coaching signatures. The local cluster coefficient was the only metric not significantly different between coaches. Still, we found higher average shortest-path length for Guardiola's network (mean ± std = 3.00 ± 0.45 a.u.) compared to Klopp's (2.80 ± 0.52 a.u.,

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Copyright © 2021 Immler, Rappelsberger, Baca and Exel.

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The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.