Identifying individuality and variability in team tactics by means of statistical shape analysis and multilayer perceptrons Jörg M. Jäger ⇑ , Wolfgang I. Schöllhorn Institute of Sport Science, Department of Training and Movement Science, Johannes Gutenberg University, Albert Schweitzer Straße 22, 55099 Mainz, Germany article info Article history: Available online 16 March 2011 PsycINFO classification: 2240 3720 4160 Keywords: Statistical shape analysis Volleyball Variability Individuality Artificial neural networks Team tactics abstract Offensive and defensive systems of play represent important aspects of team sports. They include the players’ positions at cer- tain situations during a match, i.e., when players have to be on spe- cific positions on the court. Patterns of play emerge based on the formations of the players on the court. Recognition of these pat- terns is important to react adequately and to adjust own strategies to the opponent. Furthermore, the ability to apply variable patterns of play seems to be promising since they make it harder for the opponent to adjust. The purpose of this study is to identify different team tactical patterns in volleyball and to analyze differences in variability. Overall 120 standard situations of six national teams in women’s volleyball are analyzed during a world championship tournament. Twenty situations from each national team are chosen, including the base defence position (start configuration) and the two players block with middle back deep (end configuration). The shapes of the defence formations at the start and end configurations during the defence of each national team as well as the variability of these defence formations are statistically analyzed. Furthermore these shapes data are used to train multilayer perceptrons in order to test whether artificial neural networks can recognize the teams by their tactical patterns. Results show significant differences between the national teams in both the base defence position at the start and the two players block with middle back deep at the end of the standard defence situation. Furthermore, the national teams show significant 0167-9457/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.humov.2010.09.005 ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +49 174 767 00 27. E-mail addresses: joerg.m.jaeger@gmx.de (J.M. Jäger), wolfgang.schoellhorn@uni-mainz.de (W.I. Schöllhorn). Human Movement Science 31 (2012) 303–317 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Human Movement Science journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/humov