Structural Pass Analysis in Football: Learning Pass Archetypes and Tactical Impact from Spatio-Temporal Tracking Data

arXiv:2603.28916v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Passing actions are commonly evaluated through ball progression and attacking outcomes, yet their relationship with the spatial organisation of the opposition provides an additional perspective on passing behaviour. This study introduces an interpretable framework for describing passing structure using synchronised event and tracking data. Three complementary descriptors are proposed: Line Bypass Score (LBS), measuring the difference in goal-side opponent counts between passer and receiver; Space Gain Metric (SGM), comparing their nearest-opponent distances; and Structural Disruption Index (SDI), summarising differences in defensive organisation between pass initiation and a sampled state one second later. Following transformation and standardisation, these descriptors are combined into Tactical Impact Value (TIV), a fixed-weight structural composite. Applied to 41,078 open-play passing events from the 2022 FIFA World Cup, the framework identifies four interpretable profiles: Circulatory, Destabilising, Line-breaking, and Space-expanding. The profiles exhibit distinct structural signatures and different distributions of territorial-crossing and recorded attacking indicators. Team, spatial, player, and passer--receiver analyses further demonstrate how the representation can describe passing behaviour across analytical scales. The framework complements outcome-oriented approaches by connecting individual passing actions with measurable characteristics of opposition positioning and defensive organisation.