The relationship between technical performance and popularity of football players: an example of the Saudi Pro League

Introduction. The technical performance of players is

remarkable in sports science. Studies regarding the tie between

technical performance and popularity are scarce. In addition

to this, the Saudi Pro League calls attention to their huge

investments in the football industry. In particular, forward

players are the high spot of this investment. Aim of Study. This

study includes two main purposes. First, the study aims to

evaluate the technical performance of football players. Second,

it aims to investigate the relationship between their popularity

and technical performance. Material and Methods. The sample

of the study consisted of 50 forward players who competed in

the Saudi Pro League during the season of 2023/2024. Data for

the study were collected from Transfermarkt, the official website

of the Saudi Pro League, Google Trends, and Instagram. In the

first phase of the study, the complex proportional assessment

(COPRAS) method, a technique applied in multiple-criteria

decision analysis (MCDA), was used to analyze the data. For this

purpose, the criteria (number of assists, goals, passes, shots, and

touches) were established and weighted through the stepwise

weight assessment ratio analysis (SWARA). In the second phase

of the study, Spearman correlation analysis was used to test the

relationship between technical performance and popularity.

Results. The findings of the study showed that Cristiano

Ronaldo, Riyad Mahrez, and Aleksandar Mitrović were the

top 3 performers. Additionally, there is a correlation between

technical performance, Instagram followers, Google Web index,

and YouTube index. Conclusions. This study demonstrates that

the variables of assists, goals, passes, shots, and touches are valid

to evaluate the technical performance of forward players, on the

condition that they are weighted appropriately by the experts.

The combination of the COPRAS ranking technique with the

SWARA weighting technique provides consistent results with

previous studies. There is a significant relationship between the

technical performance of players and their popularity.