Making sense of long data sequences

In the game of football (i.e. soccer), players pass the ball around, and eventually someone takes a shot. If the ball breaches the net, the team scores a point, and the game restarts from the center. If an errant shot surpasses the goal line, the opposing goalkeeper restarts the action; if the shot is intercepted by an opponent pushing the ball out of bounds, the attacking team retains possession and restarts the action with a corner or a throw-in. The action can also be stopped and restarted before a shot attempt, if the ball lands out of bounds at any time. If a referee accidentally touches the ball, a restart is in order...I won't detail all the possibilities. The point is that a football match can be represented by a set of sequences, each of which has a distinct (re)start and a distinct end. Each sequence involves a subset of the players; the same player can feature multiple times. Each ending signifies the ball never reaching another player – it goes out of bounds, or into goal,…