Single-Node Dependency Index

What it is

The single-season read of how concentrated ball circulation is on one player, via pass network (PN) betweenness centrality — the snapshot version of M-2's multi-season dispersion trend. A high dependency score names the individual variable the team actually leans on, and doubles as an early-warning signal for what an opponent should target to neutralise it. Concept stage: needs a normalised betweenness benchmark across a full squad.

Built from

Grounded in existing KPIs/data: PN.

Development status

Concept — an idea with the measurement method still to be established.

2026 World Cup example

Approximate
No betweenness centrality here — the PMSRs give each player's share of team passes, so the proxy used is a single player's peak pass share per match, which is a distribution measure, not a network-centrality one. It ran opposite to the theory: quartiles by top-passer share won 28.6% → 40.8% → 41.8% → 43.8% — concentration went up with winning, not down. The report's own pass-volume-entropy proxy for network dispersion failed the same way (picked the winner only 38.0% of the time, backwards). Read together: dominant teams concentrate circulation on a deep facilitator rather than spreading it, which is the opposite of what this KPI expects — a genuine open problem, not a confirmation. Read the full report →