Measuring Tactical Behaviour in Football

Abstract

The present study explored how football players' dynamic positional data can be used to assess tactical behaviour by measuring movement patterns and inter-player coordination. A pre post-test design was used to assess the effects of a 13-week constructivist and cognitivist training program by measuring behaviour in a 5 × 5 football small-sided game, played on a 60 × 40 m outdoor natural turf pitch. Data was captured at 5 Hz by GPS devices (SPI Pro, GPSports, Canberra, Australia) and analysed with non-linear signal processing methods. Approximate entropy values were lower in post-test situations suggesting that these time series became more regular with increasing expertise in football. Relative phase post-test values showed frequent periods with a clear trend to moving in anti-phase, as measured by players' distance to the centre of the team. These advances may open new research topics under the tactical scope and allow narrowing the gap between sports sciences and sports coaching.

Influencia de la longitud del campo en los comportamientos inter e intra -equipo en jóvenes jugadores de fútbol

“…In addition, the literature anales de psicología, 2017, vol. 33, nº 3 (october) describes several useful frameworks for studying intra-and inter-team behavior and dynamics in SSGs (Folgado, Lemmink, Frencken, & Sampaio, 2014;Sampaio & Maçãs, 2012).…”

“…Consistent with an ecological dynamics approach (Seifert, Button, & Davids, 2013), use of the same task constraints in training sessions involving players with different levels of expertise could lead to the emergence of different tactical behaviors (Silva et al, 2014 a, b & c). More skilled players tend to form a larger team shape, which could be interpreted as a strategy for creating space (Sampaio & Maçãs, 2012;Silva et al, 2014b). Folgado et al (2014), using player length per width ratio measurements, showed how the shape of teams varied in different SSGs according to player age and numbers.…”

Comparison of the physical demands in sub13 and sub14 football players on a 7-a-side game played with different lengths

“…Probablemente, por un lado, a nivel individual, un peor componente neuromuscular y capacidad anaeróbica (Harley et al 2010) en los sub13 podría influir en una menor eficiencia de carrera y, por tanto en un mayor player load. Por otro lado, a nivel colectivo, una mayor alternancia en la posesión del balón en jugadores sub13 menos expertos (Folgado, Lemmink, Frencken, & Sampaio, 2014) podría ser la causa de que los jugadores se vieran obligados a alternar continuamente las labores ofensivas y defensivas, provocando un mayor número de cambios de dirección, una mayor carrera no lineal o un juego más desordenado (Sampaio & Maçãs, 2012), lo que podría favorecer un aumento de aceleraciones, desaceleraciones y cambio de dirección. Recientemente se ha comenzado a proponer ratios entre la distancia total de carrera y el PL como métrica para valorar la eficiencia de la carrera o tipología de la tarea (Polglaze, Dawson, Hiscock, & Peeling, 2015), por poner algunos ejemplos.…”

SoccerEye: A Software Solution to Observe and Record Behaviours in Sport Settings

“…As in other team sports, the success relies on cooperative relationships between players of the same team and their behaviour towards the opponent team [11][12][13], which together are known as idiosyncratic intra-and inter-dynamic interactions [14]. Previous studies have reported the importance of environmental and situational variables, such as the type of competition [13], match location (home vs. away) [4,15], match status [16,17], elapsed match time/game period [5,18], and psychological goal [19].…”

“…These factors influence both attacking and defensive behaviours [20]. Accordingly, match analysis based on behavioural tactics appears to be the most effective for studying the dynamic patterns of the game [14]. With this in mind, a number of studies have adopted the observational methodology from psychological research, in particular the sequential and diachronic type of analysis [11,12,21,22].…”