Harder, shorter, sharper, forward: A comparison of women's and men's elite football gameplay (2020-2025)

Abstract

Elite football is believed to have evolved in recent years, yet systematic evidence for the pace and form of that change remains sparse. Drawing on event-level records for 13,018 matches across ten top-tier men's and women's leagues in England, Spain, Germany, Italy, and the United States (2020-2025), we quantify match dynamics through two complementary lenses: conventional performance statistics and pitch-passing networks that track ball movement across spatial regions of the field. Between 2020 and 2025, average passing volume, pass accuracy, and the proportion of passes made under pressure all increased, with the largest year-on-year changes occurring in women's competitions. Network measures reveal that normalized outreach decreased, indicating teams increasingly concentrate ball circulation into shorter-range passing connections rather than wide spatial distribution. These trends are consistent across countries and tiers, yet persistent national differences indicate that stylistic diversity remains. Notably, women's competitions exhibit stronger rates of change across most metrics, consistent with an accelerating professionalization, while the systematic decline in network outreach across all competitions points to a sport-wide tactical convergence toward shorter, more concentrated passing structures.

Figures (14)

• Figure 1: Pitch-passing network construction. Schematic illustration of the transformation from raw match events to pitch-passing networks, shown for a representative match between Arsenal and Liverpool. (A-B) All recorded events including passes (beige), carries/dribbles (purple), shots (blue), fouls (red), and other actions (gray). (C-D) Spatial distribution of passes, color-coded by type: ground passes (blue), high passes (yellow), and low passes (pink). (E-F) Final pitch-passing networks constructed on a 10×5 grid (50 nodes). Node size reflects total passing activity; edge thickness indicates pass frequency between regions. Red nodes highlight regions with self-loops (multiple passes within the same zone); yellow nodes indicate regions without self-loops. The network representation captures spatial organization and directional flow of ball circulation.
• Figure 2: Evolution of possession intensity and passing precision. Top: Passes per possession across team tiers for men's (left) and women's (right) football. Bottom: Overall pass accuracy across team tiers. Each panel shows distributions across five seasons (2020-2025), with temporal trends indicated by yellow lines. Asterisks ($\star$) denote statistically significant trends ($p < 0.05$ and absolute change > 5%).
• Figure 3: Intensification of play under defensive pressure. Passes completed under pressure per match, shown for men's (left) and women's (right) football across all ten competitions. Each panel displays distributions split by season (top), by country (middle) and competitive tier (bottom). The colors indicate the season. Yellow trend lines with asterisks ($\star$) indicate significant temporal increases ($p < 0.05$ and change $> 5\%$). All the leagues show consistent upward trends across tiers, countries and genders.
• Figure 4: Spatial organization and gameplay dynamics. Offside infractions accumulated per team over the course of each season (i.e., summed across all matches), shown by season (top) and country (bottom). All panels compare men's (left) and women's (right) football across five seasons. Yellow trend lines with asterisks indicate significant changes ($p < 0.05$ and change > 5%). Note the pronounced country-level differences in offsides, with Spain exhibiting substantially higher rates than other nations.
• Figure 5: Evolution of spatial positioning: Vertical play and pass center of mass. Top row: ratio of forward-directed to lateral passes across the pitch by tier, with seasons indicated by color. Bottom row: longitudinal (x-coordinate) position of pass origins for three groups: all men's teams (left), all women's teams excluding Italy (center), and Serie A Women (right). A notable increase in the percentage of vertical passes is observed across seasons, competitions, and tiers. While men's football shows declining attacking depth and other women's leagues show minimal change, Serie A Women exhibits a strong progressive increase in forward positioning, suggesting rapid tactical modernization within this competition.