ABSTRACT
The objective analysis of team performance in soccer has long been hindered by the continuous and fast-moving nature of the game. No such difficulties exist for sports such as tennis, baseball and American football, where the action is broken down into a series of discrete events, relatively easy to record, and from which performance can be assessed and strategies and tactics developed. A comprehensive shorthand system for recording the action of a soccer game has, however, been in existence since 1950. The use of this ‘Reep system’ of performance analysis by Wolverhampton Wanderers during the mid-1950s has been well documented (Reep, 1982) and many other professional teams in England have since made successful use of the performance analysis of data provided by this system, an outline of which is given in Pollard (1986).
