When you talk about a soccer team, you almost always talk about its style: high-pressing, possession-heavy, parking-the-bus, etc. A team’s style not only signifies how they play on the field but also reflects its coaching. Since there aren't guidelines on how the style of the team should be defined, everyone uses their own rules and we can't directly compare each other's descriptions.

An accurate quantitative description of the style is needed. It can help one to properly analyze not only the opponent's team but also his/her own team. With an accurate method to describe the style, one can scientifically evaluate if a training exercise is efficient at serving its purpose. We previously have used dimension reduction technique, t-SNE, to find MLS teams with similar styles based on the spatial distribution of activities and pass networks. This time we use a different method, k-means clustering of pass types, to quantitatively measure style, tactical specialization, and the influence of coaching on a team’s system.