Goaaal! ⚽ Six ways to visualize the Euros
With the European Championship underway, hardly a day goes by without us hearing joyous, football-induced cheer from a pub down the road. But football doesn’t only produce thrills, excitement and media buzz. It also produces data – lots of it – and everything from goals and attempts to player-specific statistics can be visualized in creative ways. Here are six ideas to get you started.
1. Create a starting lineup in our Sports template
One of the most discussed pre-game topics is speculation and announcements aroud the starting lineup and formation. Our Sports template has got you covered here.
The template allows you to show player positions in your chosen formation, images of the players and any extra information, such as their league team. The example above recreates the starting line up from the England vs Croatia game on 13 June 2021.
To get started with a line up in the Sports template
- Choose the line up starting point from our Sports template.
- Enter the team members’ names in the order that the positions are played in the data tab and optionally add images.
- Specify the formation of the team with the preset or custom functionality in Flourish, or enter your own x and y positions in the data tab. Learn more about this in our help doc.
2. Compare players across multiple common variables
With 24 participating countries and 264 players across six groups, it can be hard to get a good overview of the players in the tournament. Our Radar template can help with that. We used data from UEFA’s website to create a stellar chart with the top scorers in each group.
In order to compare their overall careers, we selected six attributes to compare: goals, non-penalty goals, assists, penalty kicks made, and the number of yellow and red cards received.
To get started with a radar chart:
- Select one of our Radar starting points.
- Choose between radar and stellar charts – read more about the difference charts in our blog post here.
- Enhance your popups and panels – this is a fantastic way to add more precise and detailed information while keeping your chart simple and digestible.
- Make the most of filters – create an easy-to-read, understandable chart and let the user decide which data they want to see.
3. Plot key match statistics using our “Line, bar, pie” template
Using our core Line, bar, pie template, you can quickly visualize key statistics and see how different countries compare. As demonstrated in the second slide in the example below, you can use filtering to create explorable and animated charts.
To get started with our Line, bar, pie template
- Choose a starting point from our template chooser and add your data to the template.
- To give the visualisation a more sporty feel, you can color each stack with the color of the team to show the players.
- Edit axis ticks and labels as well as number formatting where applicable
- Enhance your visualization by adding flag images in the header and footer.
- To add a filter, go to the Controls settings and switch to a single-select filter to let the user switch between the key stats they’re interested in
4. Create a searchable fixtures table with country flags
Let readers know when matches are on with a list of fixtures created using our Table template. In our example below, we included details of the round, location, home & away teams and their group.
We’ve also added a column for the results of matches. Once you’ve dropped the embed code into your site, you can simply fill in the results as matches happen and hit republish for the changes to be reflected on your page.
To get started with a searchable fixtures table:
- Choose the searchable database starting point of our Table template
- Upload your data to the template, including separate columns for flag images, or upload your own images directly into the cells
- Go to Cell styles settings, and set custom column widths to make your image columns narrower and give more space to columns like Location. Learn more in our overview help doc.
5. Visualize competitions and results with an animated bar chart race
A Bar chart race can be a fun and engaging way to visualize competitions, results and scores.
To get started with a bar chart race:
- Start by creating a new bar chart race using one of our starting points.
- Your data should have a row for each participant, a column for each time period and should be cumulative – i.e. total goals scored by that team so far.
- You can also display images in your bar chart race. To upload an image, right-click on a desired cell and select Upload file. Learn more about this here.
- To make your bar chart race more informative and engaging, you can also add captions.
6. Visualize team players with our Cards template
Our Cards template is perfect for visualizing team and player profiles along with additional information. It comes with popups, panels and filtering and allows right customization, from adding a hover state as done in our example below to a collapsible section.
To get started with cards:
- Select one of our Cards starting points.
- Add more information to popups or panels via the Info for popups column binding and customize your content.
- If you want to customize your visualization even further, you can do this by turning on the advanced Cards settings and using custom code to change the cards properties.
Explore sports coverage by other Flourish users
In the cards below, you’ll find examples of sports coverage from some of our Flourish users. If you have sports visualizations that aren’t displayed here, do reach out to hello@flourish.studio to share your creations!