About network theory and soccer - Barca (FC Barcelona) is successful with a type of football called tiki-taki …..
The pointer: Marginal Revolution - a blog I read frequently.
BTW, the Austrian electronics company abatec offers a Local Position Measurement systems that is used in sports. In soccer, it measures the motions and positions of the players (and the ball) and combines them with their biometric data. A great tool to test different strategies in practice … It's used by top teams, like the national team of the Netherlands (that played a great world championship 2014).
So, using such techniques the network theory above could be enriched with quantitative information?