Patterns of Play in the Counterattack of Elite Football Teams - A Mixed Method Approach

Abstract

This study aimed to detect and analyse regular patterns of play in football teams during their offensive phase, through the combination of the sequential analysis technique and semi-structured interviews of experienced first League Portuguese coaches. The sample included 36 games (12 per team) of the F.C. Barcelona, Internazionalle Milano, and Manchester United teams that were analysed through sequential analysis with the software SDIS-GSEQ. Based on the detected patterns, semi-structured interviews were carried out with 8 expert high-performance football coaches. Data were analysed through the content analysis technique using the software Nvivo 9. The detected patterns of play revealed specific characteristics of different philosophies of play. Through the performed content analysis we could observe that coaches interpreting play patterns mainly based their opinions on tactical-strategic and tactical-technical aspects, and on the characteristics of the players on their team. On the other hand, consideration was given to three of the main evolutionary trends of play/soccer practice, which focus on the development of exercises that cover: i) the connection between the four play moments (offensive/defensive organization and transitions); ii) the pre-programmed ball possession recovery; iii) the execution of set pieces.

Ball Recovery Consistency as a Performance Indicator in Elite Soccer

“…Although all four teams in the semi-finals of the FIFA 2014 tournament showed stability and consistency of performance in whole competitions, the separation of team performance in different zones revealed that the ball recovery performance of the Netherlands and Brazil in the offensive zone was weaker than other teams, indicating an imbalance in the team power in four zones of the field. Although this study overlooked the effect of factors such as opponent quality and competition stage 4 , it appears that lack of equal distribution of elite players in different positions in Netherlands and Brazil teams, due to difference in fitness level and technical readiness of players 23,24 , led to lack of integrative occurrence of the ball recovery and transition process of defense to offense over time. In confirmation of this, researchers observed that, regarding the failure of teams that could not qualify for the final of EURO 2012, other teams compared with the finalists Spain and Italy performed poorly and inconsistently with respect to the offensive and defensive indicators 15 .…”

“…Analyzing the scored goals at three World Cups 1998, 2002, and 2006, revealed that in the 1998 and 2002 World Cups, most goals were scored in the second half, however, in FIFA 2006, there was no significant difference between the two halves 21 . Although this study did not focus on the scored goals, the comparison with the three World Cups revealed that coaches had found out, throughout the development of soccer, that the success of the sports teams is not only linked with technical and physical capabilities 22,23 , but also with performance consistency over both halftimes. Thus, there would be no difference between the first and second halves.…”

What Performance Analysts Need to Know About Research Trends in Association Football (2012–2016): A Systematic Review

“…Sequential patterns analyze sequential combinations of interactions that emerge between players during a match or a set of matches [33]. Some studies (Table 9) have analyzed the attacking patterns of teams in different competitions, considering criteria such as duration of an attacking sequence of play, number and role of the players involved in the attack, zone of pitch where the actions were performed, type of technical behaviors and the number and co-location of players of both teams (interaction context) in the space adjacent to the ball on field [34,35].…”

“…A temporal pattern can be described as a repeated temporal and sequential combination of the same order of events during a period, which are relatively invariant [33]. This kind of analysis, when focused on the sequence (and temporality) of events, supports the detection of patterns of play which have higher probabilities of occurrence than chance.…”

“…It seemed that, in winning matches, the team was more likely to continue using the same playing pattern [35]. The study by Sarmento et al [33], using sequential analysis, is the only study in this updated review that involved the expert opinions of professional coaches to interpret the data. This close relationship between researchers and professionals can be very fruitful for interpreting data in match analysis.…”