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chahk , (edited )

Shutter speed is only half the equation. What's your aperture set to? If you shoot wife-open (lowest f number) on a fast lens (e.g. f/1.4), the area that is in focus will be too shallow, and the camera's AF will have trouble locking onto fast moving subjects. Step it down to f/4-f/8 to get more of the area in focus,and get the shutter even faster to 1/4000 or even 1/8000 to freeze the motion. Of course if you're shooting indoors that would require cranking up the ISO to compensate, which may introduce noise. It's a matter of finding the right balance.

Zagorath OP ,
@Zagorath@aussie.zone avatar

So, ideally I'd like to keep the aperture wide precisely because I want the low depth-of-field. As it happens my lens isn't a very fast one (55–200 mm f/4.0–5.6), and a fair few of my photos were stopped down to around f/6–8 anyway, especially the ones where I had switched to manual, but the reason I was asking for assistance on how to nail the focus is to help get the sharpest subject I can and be able to keep a nice soft background.

chahk , (edited )

With max shutter speed (looks to be 1/8000 on your D7500) try following your subject while shooting (a.k.a. panning), and you should get nice motion blur on the background like this: https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4af1e0_0c4400474dff4f94a8873a2d235b1139~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_1280,h_720,al_c,q_90/4af1e0_0c4400474dff4f94a8873a2d235b1139~mv2.webp

https://digital-photography-school.com/6-tips-master-panning-photography/

Also to keep in mind that many consumer grade lenses get soft at their max zoom levels.

Zagorath OP ,
@Zagorath@aussie.zone avatar

Panning to blur the background is definitely a technique I've done before when shooting triathlons & cycling. It works great! Though I don't want to be anywhere near max shutter speed to get it to work. Needs to be well under (or above? What's the correct terminology here lol. Slower than.) 1/1000. But I'm not sure that it's a technique that really translates to team field sports where players' movements are so much less predictable.

consumer grade lenses get soft at their max zoom levels

Oh that's very interesting. I did not know that! Thanks.

EddoWagt ,

There's no way that shot was taken with 1/8000th of a second, that would result in pretty much no motion blur. That F1 shot was probably taken closer to 1/50th

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