Soccer Zones and the Importance of Zone 14
Continuing to explore the world of soccer analytics, we keep coming across the concept of zones in soccer. Soccer zones refer to a way to subdivide the pitch into smaller segments. Different zones tend to have different styles of play. Some lead to more scoring, some are contested near mid field. Some are flat out un-interesting. Because of this, keeping the concept of zones in mind can be helpful for analysts, players, coaches, and fans.
Breaking down the entire pitch into the 18 different soccer zones helps everyone talk about the game in a more concrete, specific way. In this article we’re going to look at the concept of soccer zones broadly. We’ll look at how they’re defined, how coaches, players and analysts can use them, and why the famous zone 14 is so important. The reason is actually more subtle than what I first guessed.
First, though, we’ll start by defining what we mean specifically when we talk about zones. In the next section we’ll talk about the geometry of a soccer pitch and how it is broken down into 18 different zones.
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The Geometry of a Soccer Pitch
The point of discussing zones in soccer is to create more specificity when we refer to where players are located. Instead of saying a player is “in the corner” or “near midfield”, we can divide the field up into more zones to avoid ambiguity. Instead of saying a player is “in the opponents territory right in front of the goal”, we’ll be able to say he is in zone 17. Let’s see what a plain soccer pitch looks like.
A soccer pitch is 125 meters long and 85 meters wide. The goals are about 8 meters wide and are surrounded by two boxes usually called the 6 yard box and the 18 yard box. These numbers refer to their widths. The heights of the two boxes are 20 yard and 44 yards, respectively. The dimensions of the smaller box are going to be important when discussing soccer zones.
Looking at this picture, there is a lot of open area that can make it hard to refer to player positioning. If I am a good passer, where should I be positioned? If I am looking to run a play by making a key pass while swinging the ball to the other side of the pitcher, where should I be positioned? In the next section, we’ll look at how the field is subdivided into 18 soccer zones that will help gives us the terminology to answer these questions.
Defining Soccer Zones Geometrically
The idea of soccer zones relies on breaking down the pitch into smaller rectangles. The zones are defined by drawing lines all the way down the pitch from the ends of the 6 yard box. This splits the field into three strips wide. This naturally splits the field into left, right, and center.
To create the 18 zones, we further subdivide the field vertically. Each half of the field is further subdivided into 3 more sections. This results in a total of 6 vertical partitions and 3 horizontal ones for a total of 18 soccer zones. The geometry of this subdivision of the field is shown in the Figure below.
The numbering of the zones starts from the top right (our own goal) and continues to the bottom left. Standing in your own goal looking at your opponents’, the corner on your right is zone 1, the goal is in zone 2, and the corner on your left is zone 3. This continues all the way until the left corner at our opponent’s goal, being numbered 18.
Zones 1-6 are best thought of as your defensive zones. If the ball is in these zones, your opponent is trying to score. The six zones around mid field are often referred to as the central zone(s). The ball being here is contested and is often where possession is up for grabs. These are zones 7-12.
The last six zones, numbers 13-18, are our offensive zones. If the ball is in any one of these zones, we have a distinctly heightened chance of scoring. In these six zones, we take corner kicks, penalty kicks, and almost all of our attempts on goal. One of these zones, though, has a heightened importance because of its overwhelming importance to the act of scoring goals.
Zone 14
There are many reasons why getting the ball to zone 14 is an important part of a successful team’s strategy. Obviously, the proximity of this soccer zone to the opponent’s goal makes it so many goals will be scored from this region. But this isn’t actually the reason that zone 14 is the most talked about soccer zone. Let’s look at more specifics. We’ll start with intuition and then talk a little bit about analytics.
The Intuition behind Zone 14
In the previous paragraph we said that obviously zone 14 in soccer was important because it is in the center of the field right in front of the goal! And this is true, but is actually not the main reason zone 14 is so important. Sure, a shot taken from right in front of the goal is easier than many other shots. But the real reason zone 14 is so important is passing.
In soccer, the defenders constantly rush to the ball. The longer the ball stays in one area, the harder it gets to maintain possession. Zone 14 is so important because a skilled player who receives a pass in this soccer zone can facilitate the rest of the offense. They can swing the ball to nearly any open player near the opponents goal.
A quick pass into zone 14 allows a talented offensive player to quickly change the direction of attack and force the defense out of position. Many offenses now are designed to move the ball into zone 14, a centralized location to run the offense from, and facilitate an attack from there.
Equally important, being centralized and close to all of the relevant scoring zones makes it so that if a player is open, a passer in zone 14 can get them the ball. If the ball is closer to the goal, there will be more defenders and the pass will be harder to make. If the ball is on one side of the field, then passes all the way across the pitch will be harder. Zone 14 is perfectly centered near the opponent’s goal to facilitate an offense.
This concept is not dissimilar to the concept of “swinging the ball” in the NBA. Oftentimes you’ll see many passes around the perimeter in quick succession in order to force the defense out of position or to force them to play catch up. Eventually, a player will have an open shot. One of the key places for an elite passer in the NBA is the top of the key. From there, the ball can move anywhere on the court and find any available open player. This is the equivalent of zone 14 in soccer.
The Analytics
What do the analytics say? Certainly if zone 14 is one of the most important soccer zones then the analytics should support this data somehow.
If you look back at our post about expected goals (xG), two of the inputs into the model include both distance and angle to the goal. The closer you are to the goal, the more likely your shot is to go in. The closer you are to midfield, the more likely your shot is to go in.
However, these two pieces of data alone would support that zone 17 should be the most important of the soccer zones. Zone 17 is directly in front of the goal while zone 14 is a few meters further away. The analytics via xG say that the highest probability shots should originate from zone 17! So why isn’t zone 17 the key zone?
Remember: zone 14 is all about passing, not shooting. The goal of getting the ball into zone 14 is to facilitate the offense. The goal is to swing the ball to different sides of the pitch. Therefore, using a shooting model to evaluate the importance of zone 14 isn’t the best approach!
How Teams Use Zones in Soccer
Zones in soccer aren’t only used for data analysts to talk about the game. It is also used by teams and coaches to prepare for the games. It is also an extremely useful tool at all levels of soccer.
We’ve already looked at how professional footballers use zones to to help facilitate the offense. The top teams know how to use the zones in many different contexts to optimize their play. Defender positioning, fast break opportunities, and overall team coordinate can use the concept of soccer zones to take good play and transform it into great play.
Talking about soccer zones is a good way to help younger players develop as well. This website talks about using soccer zones to teach what is often called positional play in soccer. But even more fundamental knowledge can be imparted to developing players by talking about soccer zones. I think the more we watch soccer and the more we think about soccer, the more we’re going to hear about zones.
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