A player's defensive behaviour reveals how they affect the game without the ball: how they close down the ball-carrier, control space, and shape the opponent's next decision.

Event data has always struggled to measure it, recording the completed action — the tackle, the interception — but only when a defender actually touches the ball.

On-Ball Engagements close that gap. They exist whether or not the defender touches the ball, capturing the volume and effect of a player's defensive behaviour and providing the foundation for deeper analysis.

Each engagement is described by the type of pressure it represents — Pressing, Pressure, Recovery Press or Counter Press — the outcome it produces, and the phase of play in which it occurs. 

For the full breakdown of engagement types and outcomes, see Episode 1.

Here, we focus on Pressure, individual pressure applied directly to the ball-carrier, independent of any coordinated chain, looking at how often a player applies it, and what the outcome is.

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Applied Use Case

The Ball Winning Midfielder

The ability to disrupt the opposition’s play individually sets certain midfielders apart. Plotting Pressure Engagements against one of the On-Ball Engagement outcomes, Direct Regain, separates those who pressure most often from those who most often immediately win the ball back for their team with these actions.

Metric Definition

Pressure Engagements is the number of times a player applies direct, individual pressure to the opposition's ball-carrier, measured per 30 minutes of opponent time in possession (OTIP).

Direct Regain is the share of a player’s pressure engagements where the defender themselves breaks up the play or wins the ball outright, a measure of pure individual effectiveness.

On-Ball Engagements are one of the key contextual metric groups that make up our Game Intelligence suite, combining on and off-ball insights for more precise performance and stylistic profiling. Get in touch to learn more.