Here, we investigate joint actions of football players (European association football; soccer) to understand how players perform as a collective and how this relates to team success.
Collective behavior characterizes the way in which an individual's activity is influenced by other members of its group, and in turn how they influence it [1]. In a system consisting of many similar ‘units’ [2] (such as fish in a shoal, birds in a flock, or players of a team sport [3]) the interactions between them can be simple (attraction/repulsion) or more complex, and can occur between neighbours in space [4] or through an underlying social network [5]. In human behavior joint action is ubiquitous, such as during pedestrian traffic, teamwork ( e.g. bucket brigade or human chain), team sports, or group dance, where movements are adjusted according to the ongoing actions of others to fit the demands of the tasks at hand [6], [7], [8], [9]. Here, we investigate joint actions of football players (European association football; soccer) to understand how players perform as a collective and how this relates to team success.