# Contextual Sprint Classification in Soccer Based on Deep Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.15659 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.15659/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 5 of its 26 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Jun 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Learning Phrase Representations using RNN Encoder-Decoder for Statistical Machine Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.1078/) (2014)
- [Ball Trajectory Inference from Multi-Agent Sports Contexts Using Set Transformer and Hierarchical Bi-LSTM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.08206/) (2023)
- [Fine-Grained Retrieval of Sports Plays using Tree-Based Alignment of Trajectories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.02255/) (2017)
- [SoccerCPD: Formation and Role Change-Point Detection in Soccer Matches Using Spatiotemporal Tracking Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.10926/) (2022)
- [Is it worth the effort? Understanding and contextualizing physical metrics in soccer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.02313/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [PathCRF: Ball-Free Soccer Event Detection via Possession Path Inference from Player Trajectories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.12080/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The analysis of high-intensity runs (or sprints) in soccer has long been a topic of interest for sports science researchers and practitioners. In particular, recent studies suggested contextualizing sprints based on their tactical purposes to better understand the physical-tactical requirements of modern match-play. However, they have a limitation in scalability, as human experts have to manually classify hundreds of sprints for every match. To address this challenge, this paper proposes a deep learning framework for automatically classifying sprints in soccer into contextual categories. The proposed model covers the permutation-invariant and sequential nature of multi-agent trajectories in soccer by deploying Set Transformers and a bidirectional GRU. We train the model with category labels made through the collaboration of human annotators and a rule-based classifier. Experimental results show that our model classifies sprints in the test dataset into 15 categories with the accuracy of 77.65%, implying the potential of the proposed framework for facilitating the integrated analysis of soccer sprints at scale.