Fig. 1

Examples of different ways pressure may be visualised via an exemplar from football. The metric of pitch control is used, a concept which defines the probability that an athlete or team has control of a specific point. a Static image of the pitch with player locations and pitch control at the time indicated by the red line in b. Ball possession is represented by the white circle. b Time series of pitch control of the attacking team calculated as a minute by minute average of pitch control over course of a game, where 1 represents total pitch control by team 1, 0.5 represents equal levels of pitch control of both teams and 0 relates to total pitch control by team 2. The red line indicates the time a was taken from. c Density plot of the level of pitch control of passer. d Density plot of the level of pitch control of receiver