# Automated Explanation of Machine Learning Models of Footballing Actions in Words

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.00767 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.00767/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 8 of its 38 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Apr 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11903/) (2022)
- [A Unified Approach to Interpreting Model Predictions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07874/) (2017)
- [Model Cards for Model Reporting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.03993/) (2018)
- [Prompt Programming for Large Language Models: Beyond the Few-Shot Paradigm](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.07350/) (2021)
- [Actions Speak Louder Than Goals: Valuing Player Actions in Soccer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.07127/) (2018)
- [QPass: a Merit-based Evaluation of Soccer Passes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.03532/) (2016)
- [Representing data in words: A context engineering approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.15509/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

While football analytics has changed the way teams and analysts assess performance, there remains a communication gap between machine learning practice and how coaching staff talk about football. Coaches and practitioners require actionable insights, which are not always provided by models. To bridge this gap, we show how to build wordalizations (a novel approach that leverages large language models) for shots in football. Specifically, we first build an expected goals model using logistic regression. We then use the co-efficients of this regression model to write sentences describing how factors (such as distance, angle and defensive pressure) contribute to the model's prediction. Finally, we use large language models to give an entertaining description of the shot. We describe our approach in a model card and provide an interactive open-source application describing shots in recent tournaments. We discuss how shot wordalisations might aid communication in coaching and football commentary, and give a further example of how the same approach can be applied to other actions in football.