The purpose of this study was to study the relationships between overall distance covered by soccer players and the general network properties and notational variables. Six official games played by a team during the UEFA Champions League were analyzed. The sum of distance covered of soccer players per game was associated with the network density and total arcs and with goals scored, goals suffered, total attempts, ball possession, passes attempts and passes completed. Nearly perfect correlations were found between distance covered and goals suffered (-0.95; 90%CI: -0.99;-0.71). Moderate correlations were found between distance covered and total attempts (0.40; 90%CI: -0.48;0.88), ball possession (-0.35; 90%CI: -0.52;0.87) and passes attempt (-0.35; 90%CI: -0.52;0.87). Small correlations were found between distance covered and passes completed (-0.29; 90%CI: -0.85;0.58), total arcs (-0.14; 90%CI: -0.80;0.67) and network density (0.11; 90%CI: -0.78;0.69). Trivial correlations were found between distance covered and goals scored (-0.07; 90%CI: -0.77;0.71). Results suggest that a higher value of goals suffered are strongly associated with lower level of distance covered. Moreover, teams that covered greater distances are moderately associated with greater values of goals attempts and with smaller values of ball possession and passes completed.

Keywords: digraph theory; network analysis; adjacency matrices; performance analysis; match analysis.